Lo In, Lo Out

Lately, I have talked about anglicisms in use in Spanish, particularly in Mexico. Today, as I watched La Oreja, a Mexican entertainment program, I heard two more English words used in Spanish in an interesting way I had never encountered before. Popular tabloid reporters were being asked what would be Lo in and Lo out this year. This is a case of serious Spanglish, except this time not in the US, rather in Mexico itself.
First of all, the headline onscreen when this was showing read just that: Lo in, lo out. This uses the Spanish neuter article lo, found with adjectives, it's used to designate abstract qualities. The quotation in question would then be literally translated as "The in, the out". Since lo is being used, a non-linear translation would be "What's in, what's out", which would be in opposition to using el, the masculine definite article, where El in, el out, though still being "The in, the out", would actually mean "The one in, the one out". Lo is frequently used in Spanish, the only Romance language having that opposition between lo (also the form of the third-person singular direct object pronoun) and el (cp. Portuguese o, Catalan el, French le [Old Fr. lo], Italian lo[obj. pron.]/il[art.]). Lo bueno would then mean "That which is good", and el bueno "The good one (m)". This is the same lo found in the construction lo que (that which), and the lo when used with adjectives can be thought of as belonging to that construction, so that lo bueno and lo que es bueno can be taken to mean the same thing: "that which is good". Some examples to illustrate this:
Lo bueno de esto es que tiene solución. » The good thing about this is that it has a solution.
Lo prohibido » (An actual song name) The prohibited thing
Lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo » The good, the bad and the ugly (NB. This refers to things, not people, of course; in Spanish, because of lo, there is no ambiguity.)

Another use of lo in this way is with adjectives too (even in feminine forms), actually applying to people, but in an adverbial manner:
Lo fea que es y tiene un novio tan apuesto. » She is so ugly, yet she has such a handsome boyfriend.
La fea, with the femine definite article, would mean "The ugly girl", whereras, lo fea carries the meaning of "That which is ugly about her".

Therefore, the phrase we started with Lo in, lo out would accurately translate to "The things that are out, the things that are in". This could have been said just as well Lo que está in, lo que está out, however, lo by itself suffices for the same intended meaning. So, lo was taken and coupled with the English words "in" and "out", similar to what we have seen in other cases of Spanglish; nothing new about that anymore. However, here, the Spanish equivalents of those words would not have sufficed for what was indended; saying Lo dentro, lo fuera would not have made much sense; saying Lo que está adentro, lo que está afuera is gramatically correct and would have been understood, but not with the indended idea in mind. "In" and "out" were used because they have entered the Spanish vocabulary (in Mexico, at least) through the meanings they carry in the world fashion, as in what styles are in, and which ones are out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think your blog is really interesting!! i´m going to learn a lot about romanic languages here! :)
Patryluna

Adam said...

My Porteña friend used lo to refer to her house or her friends house. I asked her what it meant and she said its just slang to say place as in house.

Ex. Estoy en lo de Julia.

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