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Chilean Spanish Posted by on Jun 26, 2008 in Spanish Culture, Spanish Vocabulary

I went to high school with two Chilean kids and one year I spent Christmas Eve with their families. I ended up learning some Chilean Spanish expressions. Here are some interesting ones:

¿Cachai? – Do you understand? Get it?
Agarrar p’al hueveo/leseo/chuleteo – make fun of someone
Al tiro – right away, immediately
Año de la pera – many, many years ago
Cabra/o – girl; boy
Cabra/o chica/o – young girl/boy
Chupar – to drink (alcoholic beverages) a lot
Colarse – to crash a party
Copucha – gossip
Cuico/a – snobbish high-class person
Guagua – baby
Guata – belly
Huevón – jerk, idiot
Llorar a moco tendido – to cry one’s eyes out
Lolo – young man
Mijito – Chilean way of addressing someone (it comes from Mi hijito, “my little son”.)
Pajarón – absent-minded
Pisco – a kind of aguardiente
Pololo/a – boyfriend/girlfriend
¡Por la cresta! – Holy cow!
Poto – buttocks

If you have advanced Spanish read this article about Chilean Spanish on La Página del Idioma Español (http://www.elcastellano.org/espachil.html).

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Comments:

  1. Gary Blakesley:

    Good day,
    I’m taking a conversational spanish class in the state of Washington, USA. The instructor is lots of fun and has given us a spanish phrase to translate into english for extra credit. The phase is” Koo Tayp Wn.” I suspect it is slang, or a shortened Chilean phrase. Purhaps someting used for online chart?

    It would fun to find the translation. Any help is appreciated.

    Thank you, Gary

  2. david carmona:

    I’m afraid that doesn’t sound like Spanish at all. Even considering the hypothesis for SMS or IM abbreviations, K, Y, and W are low-frequency consonants, and never appear in combination with the other consonants and vowels around them. This could very well be some sort of local slang. Even though I’m a native Spanish speaker, the phrase would be completely wasted on me. Please let us know what it means when you do find out, since I’m quite puzzled by it.

  3. Gary Blakesley:

    David,

    Thank you your reply. I have found the word “Koo” used on a Chilean wesite but was not able to understand it’s meaning from the context. I have also found the abbreviation “wn” used for the word weon. Weon seems to translate into the english word “buddy” although I have read the term may also be derogatory. I have yet to find a rereference to the word “Tayp”

  4. Victor Astete:

    I think “Koo Tayp Wn” could be “Como estai poh weon” with estai being a deformation of estar. In that case the translation would be “how are you buddy”. Assuming that weon is used in an amicable way. If not, you can replace buddy with stupid or idiot

    I`m sorry for my poor english, I`m Chilean

  5. david carmona:

    Muchas gracias por la información, Víctor. Tu comentario ha sido muy útil. No te preocupes por tu inglés, ya que es bastante bueno.
    Un saludo.

  6. Gary Blakesley:

    Victor,

    Thank you very much! Your english is perfectly written. I hope to be able to comminicate in spanish as well as you do in english.

    Gary

  7. kolbjoern:

    Hi, just want to say that i realy like this page. Im trying to get some ideas to topics on my site. Im a noob, so i got a lot of work left on my site. If you wat to take a look, its learn spanish sentences

  8. Daniel:

    Vaya, muy gracioso ver que algo comun, sea relativamente dificil en el exterior. Me llamo Daniel y soy profesor de básica (primaria). Comparto la interpretación de Victor sobre la frase, aunque me parece un poco extraña su escritura.

    Saludos desde Chile

  9. Mary Labelle:

    Waht does SAAAAAAAAAAAAAA mean? Somebody told me it was an Chilean expression?

  10. Jaclyn Ortega:

    Thank you for that clarification Victor. Well I’m also a Spanish speaker but I having hard time understanding the word “WEON” that I almost always see on the facebook status of my 2 Chilean friends, their or their friend’s comments, etc. Although they talk to me in standard Spanish but still it would be a good idea to learn their version & be able to connect to them more with me learning their Chilean Spanish.

  11. Jaclyn Ortega:

    Also most of words mentioned above sound more Quechua than Spanish. Though I’m more used to Castilian Spanish than say Mexican Spanish but still I can understand it. But the ones you mentioned are totally different words or mean very different from the actual Spanish. Take for example the word CHUPAR that you mentioned means “to drink a lot of alcoholic beverages” but in standard Spanish it means “to suck”

  12. Daniel:

    “Waht does SAAAAAAAAAAAAAA mean? Somebody told me it was an Chilean expression?”

    La expresión SAAAAAAAAAAAAAA es una abreviación del término salta que significa; “sal de aquí, no te creo”

  13. valerie:

    thankyou this helped me alot i needed this for a spanish project