Hall 1101-351

Kelvin michaca
Word portrait
10/28/18
Dr. Carrie Hall
We all get mad and pissed at points. We use some hurtful words or phrases to express how we feel. A word my friends and I use is vale(s) verga. My friends and I use this word most of the time when we are fed up in stress or anger. The Spanish word is a Mexican slang word so it’s commonly used by Mexicans. I always According to the urban dictionary vales verga means, “You’re worth dick” and in the Spanish dictionary vale verga means “to not give a fuck”. When I’m at work I hear my co-workers use vales verga but use it as it’s stated in the Spanish dictionary. I remember at work they were talking about the lottery winners. One of my co-worker said “me vale verga quien gana si no es yo”. For those who don’t speak Spanish it means he doesn’t give a fuck who wins if it’s not him. I don’t use it as stated in the dictionaries. The main word in the phrase is verga which means dick however my friends and I use it to say “fuck” all the time. We use the word in an English sentence all the time so we are technically speaking Spanglish.
My friends and I play fortnite on ps4 and sometimes things get heated. We were playing squads on ps4. We are good at the game but not good enough. It was me, Kevin, tony, and Allen. We use it when we lag in the game and when we’re doing good in the game, but things don’t turn out well for me We started pretty good early in the game. We landed in a spot called retail row and there were two other squads besides us.
Once I had guns I said “I’m going to push”.
“Alright in right behind you kel” Allen said.
“Bet I got shield for you”
Mean while tony stressing with lag “Vale verga man I can’t even open chest man”. In this statement he used it as fuck
We were able to kill one of the squads and not lose a man in battle. We kept getting into battles and winning them. Then we got into a battle it was okay but then a squad was third partying. They shooting at us when we were already at low health and we had run out of mats (materials). Once we died, I noticed I had 13 kills so my respond to that was “Vale verga. Bruh why would they push man I had 13 kills for no reason”. In this statement I used vales verga as fuck. We mostly use the word when speaking English because we grew up putting Spanish words into English sentences.
Another time I use this word is when we were playing soccer against a rival team. It’s just a friendly game with no referee. We call the bpe because they from Bronx park east and they call us campo players because we from play at a place we call el campo. We cool with them but they give us competition. My team started off good we were up 3- 0 and the game was up 10. Later on in the match they caught up and passed us. They had 5 goals and we still had 3 goals. Since they had 5 goals we went into half time. We sat down and I whispered “Vales verga man we had it all we had to do was continue what we were doing” I used the as Fuck. So it’s safe to say that I use the word as fuck all the time. We continued to argue, but we then came up with a game plan to win. We ended up winning 10-8. After the game and we shook hands with the team we faced my friend Jason said exhausted “vale verga guys we could’ve spanked them but we slacked off”. He used it that as we were worthless not just us but him as well.
When I use the word out loud and when my mom is around she’ll end up hitting me because she thinks the way I’m using the word means worthless dick or I don’t give a fuck. Instead I’m using it as fuck and yes it’s a bad word to but not worse as those dictionary meaning because I’m not saying it towards anyone. When I was playing bo4 (Call of duty: Black Ops 4) I had terrible teammates and we were facing good players so of course we were losing. Once I was getting spawn trapped I got heated. I said “Verga man, you guys trash”. When I said that my mom was around me so she smacked me and said “What’s wrong with you saying these words (in Spanish)”. I told her I didn’t mean it like that but she didn’t want to hear it even though I meant it as fuck. Only people who would’ve understood are my friends because that’s how we use it.
Since it’s a Mexican slang word most people wouldn’t understand and since we tweaked the meaning people who know the word would be offended. A person commented “I live in Texas so I’m pretty familiar with Mexican slang but there’s one phrase that I don’t quite understand: valer verga. I know that “me vale verga” just means “I don’t give a f*ck” but I don’t understand it in other contexts”( If I would of used the word with meaning this person would have been confused and even the person stated he doesn’t understand the word being used in other context. So imagine me saying “vales verga I lost my keys”, he would have been confused. He wouldn’t think I said f*ck because that’s not the actual definition it’s an inside definition between me and my friends. He would of the thought of the definition he said.
So my word is used to show expression and not to insult someone in my definition. Everyone has a special word with a different meaning than what it what it was given from the start and my word is vales verga.