Embarazado (World Book «ehm bahr ah ZAH doh») (Spanish for pregnant) is a notorious false friend for non-native students of Spanish: attempting to say "I'm embarrassed" by saying estoy embarazado, which means "I'm pregnant" in Spanish. This may be confusing or baffling when said by a man, and potentially "embarrassing". A similar error would be to say "Soy embarazado" which means something like "I am a pregnant man".¹ The use of ser / soy implies a permanent state, while estar / estoy indicates something is mutable. Confusion may also arise through the use of the phrase tengo vergüenza (meaning "I have shame") or the more correct phrases me da vergüenza or estoy avergonzado (idiomatically meaning "I am embarrassed", "I am ashamed", or "I am bashful").² Pregnancy Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more embryos or fetuses by female mammals, including humans, inside their bodies. ... It has been suggested that Embarazado be merged into this article or section. ... Embarrassment is an unpleasant emotional state experienced upon having a socially unacceptable act or condition witnessed by or revealed to others. ...

Embarazado is a past participle, meaning that it indicates a state resulting from a previous action. In English, past participles end in -ed (e.g., destroyed), and embarazado therefore translates directly into English as "impregnated". It is a conjugated form of embarazar "to impregnate". As the word embarazado is masculine, it is rarely encountered in Spanish. It is more common for the word embarazada to be used to describe pregnancy. In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

The English word embarassed is indirectly derived from the Spanish word. Embarrassed was first used in English in 1664, derived from the French word embarrasser, "to block," or "obstruct",³ which is derived from the Spanish embarazar. The Spanish word comes from the Portuguese embaraçar, which probably derived from the combination of the prefix em- (from Latin im- for "in-") with baraça "a noose", or "rope".⁴ Baraça could be derived from the Celtic word barr, "tuft".⁵ (Celtic people actually settled much of Spain and Portugal beginning in the 700s BC, the second group of people to do so.)⁶ However, some say the Spanish word actually came from the Italian imbarazzare, from imbarazzo, "obstacle" or "obstruction". This word came from imbarrare, "to block", or "bar", which is a combination of in-, "in" with barra, "bar" (from the Vulgar Latin barra, which is of unknown origin).⁷ Look up prefix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, spoken by ancient and modern Celts alike. ... Vulgar Latin, as in this political engraving at Pompeii, was the language of the ordinary people of the Roman Empire, distinct from the Classical Latin of literature. ...

See also

• Spanglish

Spanglish, a portmanteau of the words Spanish and English, is a name used to refer to a range of language-contact phenomena, primarily in the speech of the Hispanic population of the United States, which is exposed to both Spanish and English. ...

Endnotes

1. "embarazada," Collins Spanish Dictionary, (2003) p. 380.
2. "embarrassed," op. cit., p. 1311.
3. "embarras," The Oxford English Dictionary, (1989) <http://dictionary.oed.com> [Accessed February 15, 2006].
4. "embarrass," Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (2002) <http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com> [Accessed February 15, 2006].
5. "embarazar," Diccionario de la lengua española, Real Acadamia Española <http://buscon.rae.es/diccionario/drae.htm> [Accessed February 15, 2006].
6. "Iberian," Encyclopaedia Britannica, <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9041884> [Accessed February 15, 2006].
7. "embarrass," The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (2000) <http://www.bartleby.com/61/12/E0101200.html> [Accessed February 15, 2006].