pampas

[prettygoodword]

Continuing the Quechua weeks, this one isn’t really surprising but I simply didn’t know about it:


pampas (PAM-puhz, PAM-puhs, PAHM-pahs) - n., an extensive, grassy plain in South America south of the Amazon.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

Covers all of east-central Argentina, Uruguay, and southernmost Brazil. Where the gauchos roam. As usual, we got it from Latin American Spanish pampas, the plural of pampa (it's usually plural), from Quechua pampa, flat ground/field.

---L.

Comments

[ranunculus]

I read a couple of narratives by people (men) who rode horseback from southern Argentina to the USA I think both did it around 100 years ago. Well before the Pan American highway was made. Essentially they were trip journals. Both guys bought horses from the gauchos. I re-read parts of both books in the last few years. One was quite good, the other showed extreme prejudice about the people he met along the way. Guess who I'd rather ride with!

[prettygoodword]

The one with the better horse?

[ranunculus]

The one with the better horses, yes. They both took two horses.
The one that chose a horse who ultimately had lameness issues was also the one who referred to some villagers as "dirty savages", and many other people as "ignorant and stupid".

[full_metal_ox]

I wonder to what extent the second guy’s capacity for Winning Friends And Influencing People determined the quality of his ride: because…

A…he treated the horse with similar disdain as a thing that shouldn’t inconvenience him by needing upkeep or consideration of its limits, and/or…

B…because the locals suddenly found the perfect asshole upon whom to unload the equine lemon.

[ranunculus]

Probably more of the former. I think the horse made it across most or all of South America before being replaced and left behind. I think the really sad thing about that guy is that he was so stuck in his own head, and undoubtedly anger, that he couldn't see that people are usually really nice, not to mention interesting, if you treat them with respect. What is worse, it didn't seem to me that he learned to be more tolerant as he went. It was more like the guys who go out to climb a mountain, he was just doing it to brag that he had done it.

[full_metal_ox]

“Oh, in my younger days I spent some time in Uberwald," said the Patrician. "In those days rich young men from Ankh-Morpork used to go on what we called the Grand Sneer, visiting far-flung countries and cities in order to see at first hand how inferior they were. Or so it seemed, at any rate.”

—Sir Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant.

[ranunculus]

Pratchett was right.

[full_metal_ox]

A pompous ass in the pampas grass.

[prettygoodword]

Ugh. I ... hate's too strong a word ... uncordially dislike people like that.