Genetically Modified Fruit Flies Can Smell Light

Artsmith is right, the closest translation would be "did you smell.."

I highly recomend el "Lazarillo de Tormes" as a masterpiece of the picaresque spanish literature of the 16Th century. Along with Quevedo's works and el Quijote, de Cervantes.

Download el Lazarillo from here.

Yahlasit

Being spanish my native langage, I find it not too dificult to understand spanish texts from 500 years back, but one of the words that intrigued me the most, is Olé, not olisteis, I can't find any earlier references to it than el Lazarillo (I haven't investigated thoroughly though).

So, using common sense and having read the mentioned book, it all became pretty clear to me, taking into account the following:

In castellano (where spoken) a final "D" is added to imperative verbs, for example:

In spanish "Córre !" 2nd person, singular (tu). Would be:

In castellano "Corred !" 2nd person, singular (vos).

But in many countries (like España or Argentina) where a spanish more close to castellano is spoken, the final "D" is removed and they would say "Corré !" accentuating the letter é or whichever vowel at the end of other words.

Now, back to the mistery word (Olé), you surely have seen in bullfights (corridas de toros), when the matador dodges the bull, the crowd shouts:Olé !, for me making reference to the phrase of Lazarillo when abandoning the bleeding blind master.

Now if you're not bored yet, let me speak about the origins of the word "usted" (less formal "tu").

Ancient spaniards used this form when talking to some one, for example:

"Vuestra merced no ose entrar en la cofradia de CR4" (Thou shall not dare to join the CR4 brotherhood).

Vuestra merced was later contracted as Vuesarced, then vuaced, then voced and finally usted (You).

Yahlasit