Bodega v. Mercado and Tienda

[Peter Farruggio]

Bodega  = Puerto Rican word for "general store"

Historically, NYC's Spanish speaking population has been Puerto Rican,
since the 1917 arrangement that made all PR natives into de facto US
citizens (actually colonized subjects), so through the past 80 years the
bodega has been THE organic cultural institution of the barrio and thus, to
New Yorkers, it has been where one must go to get Caribbean products.

Pete Farruggio





At 08:54 AM 3/29/00, you wrote:
>Reading The Times the other day I came to the conclusion that much of the
>language it uses is New York specific (or at least seems that way to me).
>
>According to a headline, and about 20 times in the article itself, there
>was a shooting at a bodega.
>
>Now, bodega to me is a place to buy some nice Spanish wine or its a bar
>where you can drink it. Yet the Times (and Websters) have it as a hispanic
>grocery store.
>
>Having done half of high school and all of college in Texas, a corner
>grocery store catering to Hispanics would, to me, be a "mercado" or a
>"tienda."
>
>Neither, mercado nor bodega are in DARE. OED only has the wine store
>definition, M-W has both wine store and grocery store. As does my Spanish
>dictionary - but it limits the grocery store definition to Central America,
>and specifically mentions Peru and Venezuela.
>
>Question then, does bodega make it into the New York's lexicon and the
>pages of the New York Times because the majority of Spanish-speaking
>immigrants are from Peru and Venezuela (Central America)? I would guess,
>therefore, that bodega is not the Mexican word for "grocer's" or that's
>what we'd call it in Texas.
>
>Has there ever been a study or comparison of what things are called in
>different regions due to immigrant influence?
>
>Kathleen E. Miller
>Research Assistant to William Safire
>The New York Times