I need a Spanish language expert.

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
07/13/2017 at 12:07 • Filed to: None

I spoke with a man last night who was a francotirador in the Nicaraguan army during the Reagan era. The man is now an American citizen. My linguistic question is, how does franco fit into the term francotirador for sniper?

DISCUSSION (23)

Aremmes > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:10

Franco means frank, or true, so a francotirador aims true.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Aremmes
07/13/2017 at 12:13

Thank you for that brilliant response! I was with another man last night who spent a couple of years in Chile and who is pretty much fluent in Spanish, but he did not know how this fit.

Ash78, voting early and often > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:18

Rolls off the tongue better than Ciertofusilador que Actua como Muñeca de Reagan pero Niega toda Responsabilidad por sus Acciones.

But probably what Aremmes said. TIL.

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:19

It was taken straight from the French franc-tireur. Nice explanation about franc-tireur here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francs-tireurs

“franco” , same word, exists also in Italian meaning you don’t have to work or perform as usual (as in “off-duty”). In Argentina and Uruguay “día franco” means your free day if you are a waiter, nurse, policeman - whoever works usually on weekends and holidays. but that comes from Italian (lots of Italian migrants went there in the early 20th century).

Aremmes > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:19

I bet that man was thinking of Francisco Franco and trying to come up with an explanation for why snipers are called “Franco shooters” in Spanish.

I also may have made that up.

AuthiCooper1300 > Aremmes
07/13/2017 at 12:19

No, not at all, sorry.

Besides do not confuse Sp “franco” (meaning “frank” or “sincere”) with Eng “true” (which would be “verdadero” or, depending on context, “fiel” in Sp.). The meaning of “true” as “precise” or “accurate” would be conveyed in Spanish by saying “preciso”, “exacto” or “certero”.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/13/2017 at 12:23

So there is inherent, then, a specialty in the moniker?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Aremmes
07/13/2017 at 12:25

Well, Google Tranlate provides francotirador as the translation for sniper ...

You are not saying that your initial response was a joke, are you? If it was your interpretation, then it’s more than valid.

Aremmes > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:29

Oh, my original response was just my interpretation. I’m not well versed in military customs and jargon, and a lot of Spanish compound words consist of adverb-verb or verb-noun pairs, so I went with the etymological route. The made-up part was about the “Franco shooters”, which would’ve been funny if true.

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:29

Not really. A francotirador, in Spanish, is merely a “sniper”, whether a regular soldier, a policeman, a criminal or a member of a guerilla group. If you are talking about a sniper in the sense of a “marksman” in the armed forces you’d call him a tirador de élite, at least in Peninsular Spanish.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Aremmes
07/13/2017 at 12:33

I love literal translations in language. And I love interpretive translations as well.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/13/2017 at 12:35

Then I am a bit confused about the Italian meaning of franco might apply here. Perhaps it does not.

What is Peninsular Spanish?

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:43

I mentioned “franco” because in very specific contexts and varieties of Spanish it can mean something akin to “free” and you were wondering if “franco” had anything to do with the original meaning.

The whole point of a franc-tireur was that not being regular army but a civilian (i.e. “free”) he was not subject to the rules of war.

“Peninsular Spanish” is the technical term for the varieties of Spanish spoken in the Iberian Peninsula (plus the Canaries and Balearic Islands).

Spanish spoken in Latin America (South America, Central America, North America + the Caribbean) is closely related to Southern varieties of Peninsular Spanish, but there are many differences in vocabulary and pronounciation, of course.

Just in case it is not abundantly clear yet I am a Spanish native speaker (and went through four years of Spanish studies at university.)

Ash78, voting early and often > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 12:44

Peninsula = Castilian (usually). It’s a whole different ballgame, including loan words, terminology, even verb structures.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/13/2017 at 12:56

You may regret telling me that because as I attempt to learn Spanish, I may become a nuisance.

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 13:07

Not at all. I love languages!

One question: you say this man was “in the Nicaraguan army during the Reagan era”. It sounds as if he were “regular army”. But you also say he was sniper. Maybe he was not in the regular army but in a paramilitary unit fighting against Nicaragua’s regular army? When Reagan was elected the Sandinistas were already in power.

I am not interested in the politics part, incidentally - just that the dates do not seem to match the rest of the description.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/13/2017 at 13:54

It’s an interesting thing. The man is someone I know through church and his English isn’t very good and we will be working fairly closely together and I am more than a bit curious about his experiences, though he might prefer not to rehearse any of them to me. I’ve served in the US Army and I follow military things fairly closely and I am not interested in learning how many people he killed so much as what type of rifle(s) he trained on, et cetera. I love languages also. Languages are informed by the culture that owns them, or vise versa, or both.

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 14:17

It is easy to assume that if he was a paramilitary he most likely received some SF training by US advisers, or his instructors were likely to have been schooled by US advisers at some stage.

If he was already in the army before the fall of Somoza his training would also have been inspired by US military doctrine, but wouldn’t have been anywhere near so thorough.

If you are interested in language/languages I’d recommend you start reading about Old English. It is utterly fascinating. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/13/2017 at 14:56

Thanks for the tip. The thing is, I barely have time to scrape together what I’ve learned so far in Spanish. I am a public school math teacher in California, so there are plenty of (non-Peninsular) Spanish speakers to help me along. But this will give me and my new friend at church some things to discuss.

AuthiCooper1300 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 15:11

Clearly it is better if you can practice speaking the language in real-life situations with native speakers. But in my experience it also helps a lot (and I really mean a lot a lot) to read as much as you can in the language you are interested in.

You should choose subjects (or news items) you like, are interested in or know already about, so that you don’t have to look up vocab in the dictionary every two minutes.

Structures will start seeping into your brain little by little.

If you can both practice it with native speakers and keep working on it by reading you’ll make huge strides.

You’ll have to keep at it though.

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
07/13/2017 at 23:55

Fascinating discussion.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn
07/14/2017 at 00:49

Ain’t it though?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > AuthiCooper1300
07/14/2017 at 00:53

Re-reading. The fellow mentioned Reagan. I’ll look you up when I’ve learned more, which may well not be for some weeks.