[funsec] Inquiring Gringos Want to Know

[Marcos Agüero]

David M Chess escribió:
>> Gringo comes from the Spanish word "griego" which 
>> means "Greek".  It was used in spain to refer to 
>> any sea-faring foreigner, or anyone babbling in 
>> an unintelligible tongue.
I've never heard about "griego" as foreigner, despite I'm from Spain :)

> And the way I heard it years ago is that gringos were originally called 
> gringos because they were always singing that annoying song "Green Grow 
> the Rushes, Oh".  (I swear, I really did read that somewhere in my youth; 
> and they weren't kidding or anything.)
In wikipedia appears almost all etymology we've described:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo

On the DRAE, our official Dictionary, it says that the etymology is not
clear:
http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?LEMA=gringo&TIPO_HTML=2&FORMATO=ampliado&sourceid=mozilla-search
 (in Spanish)
However the meanings are foreigner, an unitelligible tonge, or an US
(England or even Russian!) Citizen.

regards!