Before moving to Chile, you did your homework and signed up for some Spanish classes. Good for you! Funny thing is that on your first days around town you started noticing that the words were very different. Welcome to our world!
For example: “La Liebre” which means Hare, in Chile means the public bus. “La Guagua” which for Google translator means a bus, is actually a Baby in Chile. You will hear the word Cachay a lot, and also Weon. (They can be good or bad in the same sentence!) Easy right?!
Lucky for us foreigners, now there is a really cool App available to help us understand what folks are actually saying. The name of the App is Chilenismos, you can find it for IOs in the app store. It has over 300 Chilean expressions, with 500 different definitions. Click here to get the app.
Adam Teale, the creator of the app, wrote to us and we were interested right away. He is an expat, who came traveling to Atacama but instead fell in love and has now been living in Chile for over four years. =) =) Right away, he noticed the constant use of slang, and in order to learn he started keeping track of all the expressions. This is how his app was born and a year after its launch it has doubled in the amount of phrases.
We downloaded the app and gave it a try. It is actually entertaining and FUN. It even has a Game to help you practice speaking like an actual Chilean (Try it with some Pisco, and a drinking game might be born!) Only downside is that the definitions are in Spanish, but with basic Spanish they are easy to understand.
Here are some of our favorite new expressions. Our minds were thinking one thing, but it turns out we were wrong…
1) A la suerte de la olla/To the pots luck: go with the flow, or let´s see how things go.
2) Bailar con la fea/Dance with the ugly one: to be unlucky.
3) Cabeza de Pescado/Fish Head: someone who speaks non-sense.
4) Peinar la Muñeca/To Comb the doll: to be crazy.
5) Rayar La papa/to peal a potato: someone who is obsessed with one subject
6) Subir al columpio/To climb the swing: to be annoyed over something a person did.
7) Vacunar a alguien/To give someone a shot: to con a person, to rip someone off.
8) Darle con el palo al gato/To hit the cat with a stick: managed to pull something off that was very unlikely.
9) El dia del Nispero/The day of the Fig: a day that will never arrive. (No translation for a Nispero in English, OMG, what fruit is it??))
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