One of the off-syllabus words from elementary school French was “merde”. Any 6th grade student will tell you that you haven’t learned a language if you haven’t learned its equivalent for “shit”.

Since I’m taking Spanish lessons, I felt obliged to look up the Spanish word. It’s “mierda”. I knew that French and Spanish were closely related so I wasn’t too surprised to see it’s similarity to “merde”.

The other day, our Spanish instructor introduced us to the names of the days of the week. He then interrupted himself with “Does anyone know the Spanish word for “shit?”

I got to call out “mierda” which impressed the other students. I guess it’s not just the elementary school students who use the “gotta know shit” standard.

The reason that the instructor was asking was to illustrate one of the Spanish euphemisms. In English, some folks use “shoot” instead of “shit”. In the same way, Spanish speakers will say “miércoles” (“Wednesday”) instead of “mierda”.

As in “I came home and found that the dog had Wednesdayed all over the carpet.

#keepingitclassy