Originally Posted by leafar

Menos mal literally translates as "less bad", but that makes no sense in its context, and doesnt mean anything to do with less or bad.

Its hard to explain, but ill try.

Lets say that you tell someone that youve finally found a job, or that something that you wanted to do was difficult but you finally did it, or that something that you wanted to happen finally happened, or that there was a bad situation but at least something good happened or came out of it.

Its like a combination of "at last" , "at least..." and "thank goodness for that". Its a very positive phrase. Im surprised that theres no equivalent in english. Theres also an element of "at least", as cornflakegirl says.

I dont know id this is a canary islands phrase or if its said everywhere in spanish speaking countries. There are other phrases like this also, like :

Ni que va (i cant even explain what this means, not because i dont know but because theres just no translation)

Pa mi ver

O sea

Cono (with the line above the N) is used as an expression in all sorts of situations.

Puto. The word "puta" means slut, but in spanish (as you probably know) an a at the end of a word refers to female (hence puta) but an o refers to masculine. So, puto is a silly kind of variation to puta, which i guess means male slut, or just a derogatory name for a man, like calling a man a pussy in english. In a part of a south american country (i cant remember which one) they have this word : macha. Macho means male, masculine, so macha refers to a very masculine woman. Its like saying "man woman".

What a weird language i speak.

etc etc. If anyone wants me to try and translate any of these ask and ill try.