The Top 5 Most Inefficient Spanish Words

Sometimes Spanish isn't
the quickest way to get
your point across.

A lot of Spanish words are pretty similar to their English counterparts for example “rico” means “rich” and “tu” means “you,” but some Spanish words just go completely off the rails. Spanish is a fun sounding language, but it’s not considered the most efficient language in the world and here are the top 5 reasons why:

5. “Boligrafo”

Boligrafo is the Spanish word for pen. This is just way too many letters to say “pen.” It’s no surprise that a lot of Spanish people use the word “pluma” instead or even say “boli.”

4. “Divertido”

Divertido means fun and I’ll tell you what isn’t fun, that’s pronouncing three or four syllables to say something that in English is three letters long. This is just a clunky word. If you don’t believe me try singing the Tigger song from “Winnie the Pooh” in Spanish. You can get through the bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, pouncy part, but saying divertido five times in a row sounds weird.

3. “Solamente”

This is probably the most ironic Spanish to English translation. Saying “solamente” is saying “just” the adverb which means “without anything further” while using nine letters to do it. That’s a bit excessive.

2. “Desvanecimiento”

This means “fading.” I don’t think I need to say anything else.

And the number one most inefficient Spanish word is...

1. “Nosotros”

Nosotros is the Spanish word for “we” and it has to be the most inefficient word in Spanish. In English it’s just two damn letters and in Spanish it’s eight. Each letter in English here has the value of four Spanish letters. That’s a horrible exchange rate for Spanish people. The only benefit to this is when Spanish people are going down a slide they don’t say “NOSOTROS!” while English people say “Weeee!” which I guess could be confusing, actually no it’s not. I can’t find any positives here.

Nosotros is taking over your country.