So in Chile you have Spanish and you have Chileano. Chileans love to talk about how poorly they speak, how hard to understand they are and how much slang, catch-phrases and sayings they have. I know other Latin American countries claim to have a lot of this as well but when they come to Chile they realize how much more we have here. As you can imagine, this makes learning the language a little more difficult but get a Chilean talking about their sayings and they can go on and on and think its hilarious when a gringo uses them.

There are a number of common ones that even I pick up on and have heard since being here. Things such as:

Cachai = "understand?" or "get it?"
Como estai? = como estas? = how are you?
Ma o meno = mas o menos = more or less
Huevón = dude
Al tiro = right now
Po = they put this at the end of words, mainly after si and no which really has no significance other than its what they do in Chile.

So, the list could go on. One of my teammates actually has a book called Chilenismos. While hanging out with some friends the other day I heard two new ones that I thought were funny and worth sharing. One is they will call romantic music "musica cebolla." Cebolla means onion. Onions make you cry. Chacai? Get it? Haha. I like that one.

A second one that I learned is "andar a lo gringo." Gringo is the term they use for pretty much any foreigner and it is not derogatory here as it is in some places. Andar means to walk or to go about so basically, "to go/walk gringo style." What does this actually mean you ask? Strangely enough, it means to go commando. That's right, and even Wikipedia mentions this.

Now my Chilean friends said that the meaning comes from one place but I read in another site that the term came about when a poor man from the country, who had never seen a person from the city before, came across a gringo who was wearing cotton underwear. The poor guy only used wool underwear, and he was so fascinated that he and his friend stole the gringo's underwear and for the rest of the time, the gringo had to go without.

My Chilean friends said that it is because whenever you watch movies from the US and someone gets out of bed while having nothing on, they will put their jeans without putting any undergarments on so they are going commando. They associate this with us and so came about the term.

I have no idea which story is true, probably both, but it is quite funny. They actually think that is something most of us do on a regular basis!

It's never boring around here!