While we are mostly silent or all-too-brief when we say or hear good things about someone, we can have entire conversations and even meet over coffee to gossip and talk trash about people. Sadly, we often don’t use names and labels to build people up, but rather to break them down—to form opinions about them, to judge them, and to criticize them. The Sticks and Stones of Spanish is not a “how-to” book on putting people down, but it does reveal what native Spanish speakers really say about each other in their private conversations. This book’s purpose is to help you become a more adept participant in conversations—as a speaker and a listener. Unless you can understand the terminology used to categorize and generalize about people, you’ll never be fully involved in some of the juiciest conversations life has to offer.