Perhaps my experience tells me that many tango dancers go out of their way to make beginners feel uncomfortable. They laugh at us if we use do Spanish terms, and they (or different ones) laugh at us if we don't - we can't win, but perhaps that's the idea. Admit that you might have ever been a ballroom dancer and they queue up to tell you that your posture's all wrong, and that you only understand dancing sequences, and that you have to be ready to forget everything you have ever learned. Hm.
The obvious reason to use Spanish terms is that it is reasonable to assume they represent 'common ground' across language boundaries. While pretending that the dance style is entirely improvised and spontaneous (although its remarkable how everyone keeps inventing the same dozen or so fundamental actions - perhaps they're on to something) we all know what we mean by using a commonly understood term. My original (and genuine) question here was about an obvious similarity between actions, and my question intended to help me distill the difference (if there was one) between them.
