In Panama, a tinaco is a garbage can. It is the only Spanish speaking place in the Americas that calls their garbage cans by this name. The name originated because in the early 20th century, the Americans owned a garbage pickup company called, Tin and Company.....and they had metal barrels that they would use to place outside each home for garbage pickup. The barrels said, "Tin and Co." The words stuck beyond the life of the company. They closed operations decades ago, but people still refer to garbage cans as "el tinaco." A simple colloquialism,but this example illustrates how words evolve in a language, and how different countries of the same basic language (in this case, Spanish) evolve different words for the same things.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Panamanian for trash
Someone sent this to me in an email. More than just a way that different words evolve, it is an example of how the ubiquity of certain things (in this case US trash bins) influence a language and culture, and also how languages influence each other. The tinaco is a popular example when people talk about the American influence in Panama. Further, a tinaker is a stray dog (a dog that roams around the tinacos. The "ce" in spanish is a soft c so it changes to a k. tinaco-> tinacer-->tinaker. get it?)
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Allow me to denounce that Tin and Company story as an urban legend and not true. Tinaco is a Spanish word referring originally to a wooden trough or tub. Stray dogs which raid garbage cans are jocularly referred to as tinaceros (as if that were a breed). That is further jocularly translated into English as tinaker.
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