Monday, November 27, 2006

A little Caliche

Caliche is Salvadoran Spanish. Everyplace has it's own way of saying things; here they take Nawat words and some crazy uses of English and put it together, resulting me having to learn a whole other dialect! I have to be careful here, too...some things that were just fine in Colombian costeñol are most definitely not okay to say here. Here's some fun Caliche for y'all:

cipote, cipota- young boy or girl
choto- for free (like all the concert at San Miguel's carnaval)
chucho- dog
cabal- eactly, certainly, yeah that's right
chivo- cool (same as chévere, bacano, etc.)
guanaco- salvadoreños might use this to refer to themselves, although it could also be used in a negative sense
paja- lie
garrobo- iguana
- an interjection used to stress an affirmative statement
púchica- a nice way of saying damn or the barranquillero favorite, hijo de puta
chulón / chulona- naked, nude, unclothed; there's a statue on Boulevard Constitución in San Salvador fondly refered to as La Chulona

There's also a lot of veggies that are called by their Nawat names: ejote=habicuelas=frijoles=green beans, elote=mazorca=corn on the cob. And so on.

1 comment:

MamaJolley said...

Thanks for the Caliche words! The last time my husband was in El Salvador, he got an assignment to translate a number of Caliche words into English, and I'm trying to help!! THX!!