Ok, I want you to forget everything you know about
llevarse for a second.
Yep, try not to think about the 100 different uses you've probably been taught (I'm looking at you:
Me llevo bien con él. / Mi hermano me lleva cuatro años. / ¿Qué te vas a llevar?)
Because today I'm going to teach you a
VERY colloquial meaning of
llevarse in Mexican Spanish…
👉
to have a teasing or roasting dynamic with someone / to be on banter termsI like to think of it as an unwritten social contract.
If
tú y yo nos llevamos, it means we've
BOTH opted into the game: insults,
apodos,
albures, the whole damn shebang!
And this leads us nicely to one of the most Mexican phrases in existence:
El que se lleva, se aguanta.If you dish it out, you have to take it too.💡 Oh, and there’s an adjective form, too (of course there is, lol… this
IS Mexican Spanish, after all):
llevado/aSer (bien) llevado/a describes a person who's
REALLY into rough banter; always pushing it...
No seas tan llevado, porque luego te la van a regresar.Don’t push the banter so hard, because they’ll give it right back to you.You'll also hear the diminutive:
llevadito🧑🏫 And how to know when its being used in this way?
Well, in the Mexican banter sense, you’ll usually hear clues that’ll help you work out the meaning, such as
así,
pesado, or
aguantarse:
No me llevo así con él.I’m not on those kinds of joking terms with him.Con él no me llevo pesado.I don’t have that roast-each-other dynamic with him.So yeah, as always, context is king. 👑