My bf studied japanese in high school and often says "gambate!" (not sure of spelling) to be like. encouraging. I think it means roughly "let's get this bread." However, as someone who took spanish in high school, it always sounds like a command to me. And as near as I can tell, in spanish it would mean "go shrimp yourself."
I'm definitely not a fluent speaker, so I could be wrong, but here's how I got there:
In Spanish, some (informal, I think?) commands are formed by dropping the "r" from the end of an infinitive verb. (Every infinitive verb in Spanish ends in r.) For example, "to run" is "correr." If you want to tell someone to run, it's "corre." If you want to tell someone to do something to something/someone, you append a little pronoun thing to the end. From "besar" (to kiss) we get "bésame" (kiss me). From "cocinar" (to cook) we get "cocínalo" (cook it). From "callar" (to silence) we get "cállate" (silence yourself/shut up).
So, "gambate" immediately reminds me of "cállate," which is a rude command. It would be formed from the verb "gambar" and the second person object "te" for "you/yourself." But "gambar" isn't a word in Spanish. However, "gamba" is a word. It means "shrimp." So while it isn't technically grammatically correct, in the same way we "verb" nouns in English, the noun "gamba" is being used in the place of a verb here. "Gambate" (or more properly "gámbate" to maintain the correct stress for both the Spanish and Japanese). "Go shrimp yourself."
Native spanish speaker. You're quite right about your linguistics here, and spanish speakers love to make up new words by conjugating existing words (at the very least, my parents do)
My confusion stemmed from never having heard the word gamba before. To my knowledge the word for shrimp is camarón
So i looked it up and apparently gamba actually means prawn. So it's actually go prawn yourself
