Me fui pa' Chepe

I've been traveling again, and this time I headed back to Costa Rica.  I had some unfinished tourism there.  That and my wife told me that's where we were spending our vacation.

The good news is this time around I was really able to explore a bit more of the country and picked up on quite a bit more Spanish as well.

Let's jump right into things.

I'm going to share the Costa Rican slang that I picked up, so let's start off with the word pachuco.

So what does pachuco (or pachuca) mean in Costa Rica?

Pachuco is nothing more than the name for Costa Rican slang.  Well, ok, I'm over simplifying it a bit, but for the purposes of this blog post, understanding that the word pachuco refers to the slang specifically spoken in Costa Rica is good enough.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about some actual pachuco terms.

I stayed in the city of Chepe.   What's that?  You don't see it on the map?  Well, that's because chepe  is the nickname for the capital city of Costa Rica, which happens to be San José.

Me fui pa' Chepe 
I went to San Jose

Voy en camino pa' Chepe. Vamos a ver que tanta presa habrá
I'm on my way to San Jose.  We'll see how much traffic there's going to be

By the way, that pa'  is short for para.

You can find the sign above on Avenida Central in San José,  and if you're wondering, SJO is the airport code for the Aeropuerto Internacional Juan Santamaría in Chepe.

Here's another word I found interesting.

Tucas

Tucas are logs, as in trees that have been cut down.

But I'm sure that my faithful readers already know I didn't post that term because I find cut down trees interesting.  However, I will say that the word tucas may only carry that meaning in Costa Rica.

Now let's look at the definition of the word tucas that qualifies it for this blog.

In Costa Rican Spanish tucas means legs,  especially if they're a pair of good looking legs.

¡Qué tucas tiene esa mujer!
That woman's got some nice legs!

You can use the word tucas to refer to men or women, like your buddy the body builder who has legs like tree stumps.  But more than likely you'll hear this used to refer to a woman with nice legs.

¡Que tucas tienes huevon!
You got some legs on you dude

By the way, be careful with the word huevón.  I translated it as dude, but it's actually one of those bad words that you can use to refer to someone you have a really good relationship with.  So if you're not best buddies or you're not absolutely positive the person you're talking to won't take offense,  I suggest you use that one with caution.  You may also see it spelled as guevón.

Tucas is a very informal word, so keep that in mind while your chatting with your Costa Rican pals.


While I've been to Costa Rica a few times, this is the first time I've noticed the usage of the verb ocupar.  Ticos use the verb ocupar as a synonym of the verb necesitar.   I've run into this in Mexico as well.

Let's take a closer look.

No ocupo nada
I don't need anything

¿Se ocupa algo?
Do you need anything?

Si ocupas ir al baño vas a necesitar la llave
If you need to go the bathroom you're going to need the key

¿Un cajero ocupa?
You need an ATM ?

By the way, cajero is short for cajero automatico.  Oh, I almost forgot.  I wrote about how to use an ATM in Spanish a while back.   recommend you read it, it's called Marque su pin.

Did you notice the word ticos a few sentences back?  If you don't know what a tico is, let me explain.

A tico is a person from Costa Rica.  A guy from Costa Rica to be exact.  A woman from Costa Rica would be a tica.  If you're looking for a more formal word to describe someone from Costa Rica then you want the word Costarricense which is the official term for a person from Costa Rica.


¿Eres tico?
Are you Costa Rican?

Soy más tico que el gallo pinto
I'm more Costa Rican than a spotted rooster

Well, that last one doesn't make a lot of sense does it?  What does a spotted rooster have to do with being Costa Rican? 

First things first.  When you hear someone in Costa Rica talk about gallo pinto, more then likely they aren't referring to a spotted rooster, but rather a very traditional Costa Rican dish.  In fact, it's considered the national dish.

A traditional gallo pinto might look something like this:

I love a good plate of rice and beans, so you can't keep me away from gallo pinto when I'm in Costa Rica.

Ok, let's switch gears completely.

This may come as a surprise, but Chepe has it's share of traffic as well.  Let's learn a little about how to talk about traffic in Costa Rica like a real tico.

Presa is the de facto word ticos use for traffic.   In fact, there are actually at least 7 Ways to say traffic in Spanish, but for now let's take a look at a very Costa Rican expression.  Well, two of them to be exact.

Chupar presa and comer presa.

Comer presa  literally means to eat traffic.   And chupar presa means to suck traffic.  Clearly the literal translations don't do us any good.

Let's look at some examples.

Si va por ahi se va a chupar toda la presa
If you go that way you're going hit all the traffic

Se va a comer toda la presa
You're going to run into all the traffic

You can also say something a little less slangy like:

¿Hay mucha presa?
Is there a lot of traffic?

Toss those phrases around and you're going to raise more than a few eyebrows because now you're sounding super tico.

Let's keep going.

I saw a few zaguates running around the streets of San José.  And if you have no clue what a zaguate is, don't feel bad, I didn't know either.

Zaguates are stray dogs or dogs that are not pure breed.  Apparently ticos have a love of dogs because they have a few pieces of artwork dedicated to zaguates on Avenida Central.   By the way, Avenida Central is the main street in downtown Chepe.

Here's another word I found interesting that you'll definitely need to know if you're chatting with the locals.

¿Hay campos?

A campo in Costa Rica can refer to a place to sit, like an empty seat.  I went to the cine (movies) and the person working the counter told me:

Todavía hay campos
There are still seats

Honestly, that took me by surprise.  If they hadn't showed me the seating chart, I would have been at a complete loss.  It actually wasn't until a day or two later when a friend filled me in on the use of the word campo and then I was finally able to put it all together.

Here's one last example:

No hay campos
There are no seats

You can also safely translate that as "there's no place to sit".

Another interesting phrase I picked up is a cachete.  So what does a cachete mean?  Here are some examples.

¿Cómo estás? A cachete mae
How are you?  It's all good

In this context, a cachete could also be translated as awesome or great.  But why hear it from me when you can hear it first hand from a tico?

If you can't see the video, here's the direct link:  https://vimeo.com/249425415


A Cachete | Tico Slang from Brett Campbell on Vimeo.


Here are a few more examples.

¿Cómo te fue en el examen?  ¡A cachete! 
How did you do on the exam?  Great!

Este carro está a cachete mae
This car is awesome dude

The other context I heard a cachete in had to do with food.

My amiga ordered something or another, I don't recall exactly what it was, and when the waitress asked what she wanted on it, she replied:

a cachete
With everything

Con todo would be a more neutral way to respond.

Wow, we've talked about a lot of stuff.  I'm going to cover one more thing and then we'll get this wrapped up.

I did a little shopping while I was in Chepe and there were a couple of things that jumped out at me.

While I was looking at a few shirts the attendant said to me:

Puede medirselo
You can try it on

I'm accustomed to using and hearing the verb probarse to talk about trying on clothes, but apparently medirse works as well.

¿Me lo puedo probar?
Can I try it on?

¿Me lo puedo medir?
Can I try it on?

I was in search of a camisa de la sele.  The sele is the short way of referring to the national soccer team of Costa Rica,   La Selección de Fútbol de Costa Rica.   Now you know why it's simply referred to as la sele.

Camisa just means shirt.   So a camisa de la sele refers to a soccer jersey of the national soccer team.

Add a few more inches around the middle and I look just as good in my camisa de la sele as the mannequin does.

Finding my camisa de la sele was no easy task.  Well, not for someone who doesn't want to pay full retail for an official jersey.  I was looking for a quality knock off at a reasonable price.  And for that I had to find una china.

Una china is una tienda de chinos, or as we would say, a Chinese store.   They're everywhere in downtown Chepe.  It took a bit of searching but I finally got my camisa de la sele.

And with that we're finally done.  Now you're ready to impress some folks with your Costa Rican Spanish.

If you want or need to learn more Costa Rican slang, I found these lessons on Costa Rican Spanish to be of great help.  They do a great job of zeroing in on the most common terms.  You can also find several books on Costa Rican slang at Amazon.

I've got a few more things to share about my trip, so stay tuned for more!  You can also read my other posts on Costa Rican Spanish.

¡Hasta la próxima!

Qué pichudo mae

Today we're going to look at a thank you note for a wedding gift I gave to my tico friend that just recently got married.  By the way, if you're wondering what the word tico means, it's an apodo (nick name) for the people of Costa Rica, or costarricenses.  And tica would be used for a woman.

He knows how much I love learning colloquial Spanish so he wrote the thank you note in pure Costa Rican slang.  Needless to say translating it kept me busy for several hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.   This little note certainly put my Spanish skills to the test.

I thought you all would enjoy the Spanish I learned, especially since I've already done all the hard work.

We're going to take a close look at this card, so here it is.

I'm not sure what was harder, deciphering his handwriting or the slang.  But with that said, let's examine this note line by line.

Qué pichudo mae

Let's start with the easy stuff, the word mae

Mae is the de facto Costa Rican word for dude, and you'll hear it constantly walking up and down the streets of San Jose and most likely all of Costa Rica.  Guys use it, girls use it, it's everywhere.  You can also use it to refer to a person in general.

Ese mae no me cae bien
I don't like that guy

Mae, ¿Dónde estás?
Dude, where are you?

Now, as always exercise some caution because you may just run across the one person who doesn't like the word or is offended by it.  Or takes offense at you (a.k.a a gringo) using it, but the word itself is perfectly safe.  Just remember it carries this meaning in Costa Rica.  In another country it may not exist at all or possibly be offensive.  Know your audience.

Next we get to pichudo.  Pichudo is another very Costa Rican word meaning genial or buenísimo in standard Spanish.   In English it would be something along the great, cool or awesome.

So our translation would be something along the lines of:

Qué pichudo mae
How awesome dude

Translating slang isn't an exact science, but this conveys the idea.

The next line is a bit trickier and I actually needed help with this one.

Mae, demasiados tenquius por esa harina

If you're looking at the word tenquius and can't figure out what it means or how to pronounce it, don't feel bad, you're not alone.  I searched the internet far and wide for the meaning of that one to no avail.  It turns it out it means "thank you's", but it sounds like "tank youz".  Go figure.

The next word, harina, is a lot easier.  The dictionary meaning is flour, but in Costa Rican Spanish it's money.  In fact, the currency of Costa Rica is called colones, but I'll write more about that in another post.

The literal translation "Too many thank you's" just doesn't sound right to my English ears, so I'm going with the below instead.

Mae, demasiados tenquius por esa harina
Dude, thanks so much for the money

Moving on the next line, this is something else I would never have figured out with my friends help.

Esta en tuas!

This actually has a bit of history to go with it and you will totally impress your Costa Rican friends with your knowledge of this one.  Or at least the one's old enough to remember this.

The first thing you need to know is that this phrase, when written in proper Spanish, is actually

Está en todas

And unlike the vast majority of the Spanish phrases I learn, I was actually able to learn the origin of this one.  Or least how it become popular.

These may look familiar to you.

Yep, they look like M&M's don't they?

Our phrase, estás en todas, became a popular saying as a result of an 80's commercial.   Thanks to the magic of YouTube, we get to watch this too.

If you don't see the video below, here's the direct link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zbqXBrBXUM

¡Con teens estás en todas!

Now, this is the hard part, translating our expression.   I'm thinking it's somewhere along the lines of you're awesome or really cool.

Moving right along we get to the next line.

Fue un placer contar con teus en esa tafies tan memorable

Keeping with our tradition of tackling the easy words first, tafies is a fiesta, or party in English.

Teus is a bit trickier.  My amigo tico told me that this simply means usted in pachuco.  Great, now we have to figure what pachuco is.

Pachuco is a very informal and slangy form of Costa Rican Spanish, which according to Google has it's roots in Mexican Spanish used in the days of zoot suits.   I can't really tell you much about it but a Google search will give you enough info to keep you busy if you're really interested.

And if you don't know, everyone in Costa Rica speaks with usted.  It's just what they do.

Fue un placer contar con teus en esa tafies tan memorable
It was a pleasure to have your support in this memorable occasion

As I mentioned earlier, tafies means party, but for translation purposes occasion or celebration seems to fit better.

Me comprare una chema y la guila unas chanclas

Chema is Costa Rican slang for a shirt.  And just so you know, they use the word cachos for shoes.  I mentioned that in some of my earlier posts about Costan Rican Spanish.


Next we get another very, very common word in Costa Rican slang.  Guila.

Here's a well written definition in Spanish I found.

Guila should actually be written as güila, and it can be used to refer to a guy or a girl in general, or your girlfriend or boyfriend.  It's always written as güila, so to specify the gender you  say el güila or la güila.  In informal writing it's nearly always seen written with a regular u and not ü (with the diaeresis).

Mae, esa güila es muy bonita
Dude, that girl is really pretty

¿Como está su guila?
How's your girlfriend?

Es un queque, right?  That's tico for "it's easy, right?"

Moving on.

Chanclas, are flip flops or sandalias (sandals).  Generally speaking, chanclas and sandalias are synonyms, with the exception that chanclas also refers to flip flips, while typically sandalias does not.

The word chancla generally refers to any flat sandal, but that's not a strict rule.  Various styles of sandals can be referred to as chanclas.

Me comprare una chema y la guila unas chanclas
I'm going to buy myself a shirt and my girlfriend some sandals

And we're finally getting to the end.

Espero que se le haga un nudo en la jupa desentrañando mi mensaje escrito en lenguaje de tiquicia.

Jupa means cabeza, or head.  And Tiquicia is nothing more than an affectionate reference to the country of Costa Rica itself.

Espero que se le haga un nudo en la jupa desentrañando mi mensaje escrito en lenguaje de tiquicia.
I hope you tie a knot in your head trying to figure out my message written in the language of Costa Rica.

And there you have it.  Go forth and impress your tico (Costa Rican) friends with this new bit of Spanish you've learned today.

If you want or need to learn more Costa Rican slang, I found these lessons on Costa Rican Spanish to be of great help.  They do a great job of zeroing in on the most common terms.  You can also find several books on Costa Rican slang at Amazon.

Of course the best thing to do to learn some Costa Rican slang is to make friends with some ticos or hop on a plane to Tiquicia, but if you can't do either one of those then the options I gave you above aren't bad either.

¡Hasta la próxima!

¿Vas a poner la maría?

If you missed my first two posts about my Costa Rica adventures, you can read them here:

1.  Tienes que cancelar la entrada
2.  ¡Pura Vida!

Let's see if I can wrap things up in this post.  So far I covered the language and now it's time to talk about my second favorite thing, comida.

When I travel the first thing I usually want to do when I get off the plane is find someone to talk to in a local bar and have a beer.  So let's start with what's probably the most popular beer in Costa Rica:

I'm not huge on beer, it's more of something I do on vacation.  But I have to admit, it wasn't bad. Although I preferred the Imperial Silver:

You can probably tell those are photos I got off the internet.  As many of those things as I drank you'd think I would have taken my own photos.  Oh well.

Costa Rica is famous for it's casados.  A casado is what I'm going to call a combination plate for lack of a better word.  You get some type of meat and a couple of sides.  Here's one I tried:

As you can see I ordered pescado (fish).  And to be specific, it was Corvina (Sea bass).  The other items on the plate are arroz, frijoles, plátano maduro, ensalada and a limón madarin.  I have to to admit, it was ¡muy rico!

By the way, muy rico literally translates to "very rich" but when it comes to food that's a very common way to say it's "really good".

¿Cómo está la comida?
Está muy rica

How's the food?
It's really good

Even the fast food chains serve casados.

Costa Rica is also very famous for it's Gallo Pinto.  Gallo Pinto is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast food.  Here's a photo of what a breakfast of Gallo Pinto might look like.

I'm ashamed to say I never tried the Gallo Pinto.  Oh well, that's my excuse for another trip to Costa Rica.  I did however, try a lomito.

Lomito isn't exclusively Costa Rican, nor is it anything particularly Spanish.  It's the word the waitress told me they use for steak in Costa Rica.

There are a lot of good places to eat in Costa Rica, you can find lots of little restaurants walking up and down the street.  And these little restaurants are called Sodas.

 All this talk of food is making me hungry.  It's time to change subjects.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is taxi's.  The streets of San Jose are flooded with these little red cabs.

The meter is called a taxímetro.

Por favor, ponga el taxímetro
Please turn on the meter

You may need that phrase may often than you think.  It will keep the taxi driver honest.  And speaking of honest cab drivers, there are people that moonlight as cab drivers that don't have a taxímetro.  These so-called cabs are called piratas and aside from the fact they aren't necessarily safe, you're going to end up paying more.

The taxímetro is also called La María.

¿Vas a poner la maría?
Are you going to turn on the meter?

And that's it, we're done!  At least for today.  There's one more thing I want to share with you but it will have to wait for my next post.

Oh, before I go, you may remember I mentioned plátanos maduros earlier.  If you don't what those are, then read my below posts.  And if even you do know what they are, you still probably want to read these posts because you might just be surprised at what you learn.

1. ¿Tostones o amarillos?
2. Banano-Banana-Guineo-Plátano


¡Hasta la próxima!

¡Pura Vida!

It's time to pick up where I left off with my adventures in Costa Rican Spanish.  I probably should have started with this one, but it's never too late so let's get to it.

Pura vida is practically the national slogan of Costa Rica.  Pura vida is more than just words, it's a way of life. It's all about taking things easy and just enjoying life.  Kinda like "Don't worry, be happy".  Here are the basics of how it's used.

Hola mae, ¿cómo va?  ¿Pura vida?
Pura vida mae

Hi dude, how are you?  It's all good?
It's all good dude

By the way, mae is pronounced "my".  And tuanis (two-juan-knees) is considered a synonym of pura vida.

¿Cómo está mae? 
Tuanis

How are you dude?
Great

If your Spanish is good or you're up for a challenge, here's a good (and relatively short) read about tuanis.  But if you want some insight from the experts then click here to learn more cool Costa Rican slang.

Let's move on to the next topic.

If you happen to be driving in Costa Rica, there is no shortage of parking, which I know as estacionamento, but in Costa Rica it's known as parqueo.

Here's an interesting street sign:

At first I thought "Is this a typo?".    I had never seen the word virar before, but it's meaning (thanks to the sign) was pretty obvious:

No virar a la izquierda
No left turn

This jumped out at me because I'm used to seeing signs that say "No girar a la izquierda".  But it's always nice to have options right?


While walking through downtown San Jose I saw a shoe store named Cachos.

Cachos is not only the name of the store, but it's also slang for shoes.  When I confirmed it's meaning with my tico friend he also told me they use caballo for jeans and chema for shirt.

Like any other city San Jose has it's share of corner stores and in Costa Rica these corner stores are called pulperías.

I was fortunate enough to get a candid shot of Costa Rica's new presidente.  He just happened to be campaigning downtown.  If you're curious about the details of the election, here's an article, in Spanish of course.

The last thing I'm going to talk about in this post is Costa Rican plata.  Plata is slang for dinero.  If you want to learn some more slang words for dinero, you can read my post Más minutos menos lana.

Costa rican money is called colones.  Here are some pictures:

I love the currency of Costa Rica, it's very colorful.  Way more fun than our boring American dollars.

That's it for today.  I think one more post will wrap up my Costa Rican adventures, so stay tuned.  If you missed the other posts, you can find them here:

1.  Tiene que cancelar la entrada
2.  ¿Vas a poner la maría?

¡hasta la próxima!

Tiene que cancelar la entrada

My faithful readers, you are in for a big surprise today.  What is it you ask?  Instead of talking about Mexican Spanish as I so often do, I'll be sharing my experiences from my trip to Costa Rica.  This will probably take more than one post, so the first thing I'm going to talk about is the Spanish (Costa Rican slang) I heard.

The were two words that I must have heard every 5 minutes that stick out in my mind.  Mae and buenas.  Let's start with mae.

Mae, or maes in plural is the Costa Rican version of dude.  I heard this everywhere.  And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.  It was being used by men and women of all ages.

Hola mae, ¿cómo estás?
Hi dude, how are you?

Oye mae
Hey dude

Maes, ¿adónde vamos?
Dudes (guys/fellas) where are we going?

By the way, mae is pronounced "my".

Next is buenas.  Buenas simply an informal greeting, a shortened version of buenos días and buenas tarde/noche.  You can use it any time of day or night, and to be honest I could probably count the number of times I heard anything else used as a greeting on one hand.

My Spanish is far from perfect, but it's gotten good enough to the point that it's rare that I'm completely stumped.  But apparently it's not that rare.

 Tiene que cancelar la entrada

I was walking into a night club when I heard this.  While I understood each and every single word clearly I had no idea what he was talking about.

As far as I knew, the verb cancelar (according to the dictionary) meant to cancel or void.  So my mind starts racing trying to figure this out.  I knew entrada meant cover charge/entrance fee, so is he telling me I can't go in?

¿Qué diablos me esta diciendo este mae?
What the hell is this dude saying to me?

Well, I didn't have to wait long to find out what he was saying.  He points to the caja (In this case the window where  you have to pay the entrance fee) and now I know what's going on.

Tiene que cancelar la entrada
You have to pay the cover

And when I paid the exit fee to leave Costa Rica, the receipt was stamped cancelado.

Apparently cancelar and pagar can be used as synonyms in Costa Rica.  And now that I "doy cuenta" (realize) what he was saying, I remember a friend had told me his story of the same thing happening to him in Colombia.  Now you all know and hopefully won't be taken by surprise.

I noticed the word hale on several doors.  Obviously this means pull.  What I found surprising is that I've seen this as jale in Mexico.

I overheard a couple of maes using the word guilas.  A guila is nothing more than a colloquial way to refer to a woman.

Mae, mira estas guilas
Dude, check out those girls

Bretear means to work.

Tengo que bretear hoy
I have to work today

¿Breteas hoy?
Are you working today?

While I was browsing through a souvenir shop, a young lady told me:

Tenemos paños

Once again my so-called improved Spanish that rarely leaves me stumped has left me stumped once again.  She explained to me that paño means towel.  The dictionary calls it a rag, but hey, close enough, right?  She also told me they aren't always synonyms.

I'll leave you with a few more words before I wrap this up.  In fact, I probably should have started with these.

People from Costa Rica are costarricenses.  But locally they're know as ticos and ticas.  Ticos are men and ticas are woman.

¿Eres tico?
Are you Costa Rican?

That's it for today.  I still have a few more words for you and some more fotos, so stay tuned.  In the mean time, click here if you want to learn a little more about Costa Rican slang.

Be sure to check out the rest of my posts on my experiences in Costa Rica.

1.  ¡Pura vida!
2.  ¿Vas a poner la maría?


You also might want to check out some of my other travel related posts.

¡Hasta la próxima!