Bodega v. Mercado and Tienda

[Sallie Lemons]

I'll let the linguists weigh in on the official etymology, but from "street"
experience living in NY (and attending college/grad school on the upper west side
near Harlem), a bodega is a small, grocery/convenience store. I think I've even
seen the word on the store fronts near school or on the very upper east side
(Spanish Harlem). There is nothing urbane about them (i.e., a place to drink wine).
The Spanish speaking populations in these areas would be mainly from South America
and Puerto Rico.

Kathleen Miller 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