Asturian-American Migration Forum

fame: (pronounced FAH-may), sustantivu (noun). Hunger. Tener fame (to be hungry)
Usage: Qué ¿hai fame Nolo? (So, are you hungry, Nolo?)
El rapacín tien fame (The boy is hungry)

Fame continued
Expressions in Central Asturian: Nolo, paez que tas muertu fame. (Nolo, you look absolutely famished.); Cuando la fame entra pela puerta, l’amor sal pela ventana. (When hunger walks in the door, love slides out the window.)

Expressions in West Asturian: A muita fame nun hai pan duru. (No loaf of bread is too hard when you're hungry.)

Variations on fame: Toi esfamiau. (I'm starved.); Entróu-y la famuca. (He suddenly got an appetite.)

Una palaba derivada: Famión. sustantivo. Que pasa fame porque quier. Dizse de los tacaños con la comida, que teniendo de sobra, prefieren pasar fame y matar de fame a los sus fíos.
Exemplu: "Si, ho, los de Manolo tan tos coxos porque de guajes nunca yos dieron bien de comer. En casa Manolo fueron siempre unos famiones"

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A related word: Famión. Noun. S.o. who stays hungry because he wants to. It refers to people who are stingy with food, and although they have plenty, they prefer to starve themselves and their children.
Example: "Yeah, man, Manolo's children all have a limp, because when they were kids they were never given enough to eat. They have always been stingy with food at Manolo's house.

Quien tien fame, con pan sueña. The hungry dream of bread.

Terechu wrote: Exemplu: "Si, ho, los de Manolo tan tos coxos porque de guajes nunca yos dieron bien de comer. En casa Manolo fueron siempre unos famiones"

Wow, that's a biting example of village 'retranca', eh Terechu? Especially the detail about how the children grew up with a limp because the parents were so tight-fisted. I can just see people making merciless fun of a family like that.

There's a very funny song by Los Berrones, maybe some of you have heard it, called 'Chachu'. It's about an older bachelor who you'd see walking the 'caleyes' of Tolivia with his threadbare black umbrella and his heavily-repaired wooden clogs. I think he'd qualify as a 'famión'.

The song pokes fun about his being so cheap that he never married. My grandmother laughed out loud when Los Berrones described the way he wore his 'madreñes desferraes' (the use of old wires to hold the wooden clog together).

Here are the beginning lyrics to the song about Chachu:

'Dicen que tienes muches perres
y nun gastes un chapu sabrá Dios
en onde tendrás el furacu
Cuantos, cuantos restolaron por tos les otravies debaxo las teyes y hasta per les matos

Siempre que te vi andaves sólu per camín
con les madreñes desferraes un paraguón
y un callau'

Me parto con Los Berrones, canten muy bien y además hablen el mismo asturiano que yo, así que capto to's los matices. Sí, el chachu esti fijo que yera un famión, con eses madreñes desferraes!! . "Restolar" sería otra estupenda palabra de la semana.
Los de los coxos yera una teoría muy heavy de mi güela, que tenía unos parientes to's esturniaos, con problemas de columna y cadera y ella decía que yera porque los padres yeren unos famiones. Decía "Son tan famiones que nun comen por nun cagar (con perdón).

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Los Berrones crack me up, they sing really good and besides they speak the same Asturian as I, so I get every nuance of the words. Yep, this "boy" was stingy with his food for sure, with his clogs falling apart because they had no steel bands. "Restolar" would be another great word of the week. Sorry, can't translate that one, it means more or less "nose around" (trying to dig up things in drawers, closets, etc.).
As to the limping, that was a very "heavy" pet theory of my grandma's, who had some relatives with crooked spines and hip problems and she maintained that it was because their parents had always been so stingy with the food, they in fact were so stingy, she used to say, that "they didn't eat, so they wouldn't have to shit" (excuse the expression).

Hey! I just found this very good live performance of "Chacho" on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er7HZgnavt0

For "restolar" how about "snoop"?

Bob, "snoop" does not quite hit it. Restolar is more physical, more like rummaging, and it can imply an unallowed searching, too.
¿Qué andáis restolando por ahí? is question every Asturian kid must have heard when they were caught raiding the pantry / fridge or kitchen cabinets looking for cookies or chocolate, or looking inside closets that were none of their business.