Why do Spanish speakers say “bowl” instead of “tazón”?
Preparando la comida especial para mis gatos
A2 Spanish listening practice · Rioplatense Spanish · Picked for people who know a little
Latin American Spanish has quietly absorbed the English word bowl in casual food and pet-care speech. Traditional Spanish words include tazón (a deep bowl), plato hondo (a deep plate), or cuenco (a small ceramic bowl), but in everyday Latin American conversation about smoothies, breakfast bowls, and pet food, bowl now reads naturally. The English borrowing fits a wider Latin American pattern: gym vocab, Instagram-era food vocab, and pet-care talk all welcome English loanwords without flagging them as foreign.
In this clip, a cat owner prepares a special meal: “Tengo un bowl de comida, dos bowl de comida” (“I have a bowl of food, two bowls of food”). She doesn’t pluralize bowl either, another loanword tell.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this A2 Spanish listening practice video?
How common in written Spanish
How common in spoken Spanish
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.