18 OF 20

Salon Spanish barely changes

We checked 20 salon senses in the RAE dictionary for country labels. 18 carry none at all, so they work from Madrid to Mexico City.

Technical words travel. Slang does not. This is the opposite of what the listicles promise.

109 SENSES

None of them is a haircut

Corte, cortar, capa, punta, tinte and tenir are the six words an English speaker looks up. Between them the RAE lists 109 numbered senses. Not one mentions hair.

A haircut is corte de pelo, a compound. The dictionary files it under pelo.

28 SENSES

It has room for a rude gesture

The entry for corte finds space for a sub-entry on corte de mangas, the rude forearm gesture. It has no sub-entry for corte de pelo.

The entry for cortar runs to 33 senses and never reaches hair either.

SENSE 1

The word nobody teaches you

Pelar. Its very first sense is "Cortar o arrancar el pelo a una persona o un animal", with no country label, so it is valid everywhere.

It is marked U. t. c. prnl. So when you hear "Te pelaste?", it means did you get a haircut.

FLEQUILLO

The one word that moves

The fringe is the exception. The RAE entry for flequillo has one sense, no country label, and lists five alternatives: cerquillo, chasquilla, pava, mechon and pollina.

Five other words for one haircut.

FOUR COUNTRIES

Cerquillo does not travel

The RAE labels cerquillo as a fringe in Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay only. Recortarse means to get a haircut in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic only.

Those two are the entire regional split in our sample.

COLOMBIA

Mono means blonde there

The RAE marks sense 3 of mono as coloq. Col., "Dicho de una persona: Que tiene el pelo rubio". Everywhere else mono is a monkey, or cute.

A colour trap, straight out of the dictionary.

NOT MI PELO

Spanish says the, not my

Say "Quiero cortarme el pelo". The RAE writes the rule down: the article is the habitual choice for parts of the body. The me already says whose hair it is.

It marks "Me duele mi cabeza" as outside educated usage.

A1 TO B1

The gap is the bad haircut

The Instituto Cervantes lists pelo and peluqueria in its A1 inventory. The grammar that makes them behave sits in the B1 inventory.

You get the words in month one and the sentence about two years later.

THE EXAMPLE

Cervantes chose a haircut

The example sentence the Instituto Cervantes uses to teach that B1 rule is, literally, a haircut: "Le cortaron el pelo al cero."

Against the marked wrong form, "Cortaron su pelo al cero."

THE RULE

Say el, and name a number

Cortarme el pelo, never mi pelo. And never un poco, which carries no unit. Say dos dedos or dos centimetros instead.

Tap for the full guide, with every RAE entry and the Cervantes levels.