Pablo

Hola, ¿qué tal estás?

Soy Pablo de Coffee Break Spanish and up next we're going to explore one of my favorite topics about languages, slang.

But in particular, we're going to focus on slang words to talk about work in Spanish.

Prepárate porque empezamos.

Let's start with one of the first slang words for work you'll hear in Spain.

Curro.

It sounds cool, right?

This one is super common and it means work.

Entonces, por ejemplo, si alguien te pregunta ¿Qué tal el curro?

Now you know that they're asking how's work or how's work going.

So, curro is a noun, but you can also use the verb currar, which means to work.

So, you can say things like mañana no curro, I'm not working tomorrow, lucky you if that's the case.

Or you can also ask someone ¿De qué curras?

to ask them what they do for a living.

There are other derived words from curro, such as currante, which essentially means worker.

However, currante sometimes also has the connotation of a hardworking person, someone who is very committed to what they do.

So, if you hear someone say es muy currante, that means that that person is very hardworking.

Muy bien, so far we've seen curro, currar and currante, but we actually use many other slang words for work in Spain.

Por ejemplo, a personal favorite of mine is faena, and I honestly use this one a lot.

I think it's maybe more common in the region of Valencia, where I'm from, and essentially faena means work, but it can also mean task.