During the time I was in the USA, many people asked me to speak a little bit of Spanish,whether it was out of curiosity or because they spoke Spanish too.This situation made me feel a bit uncomfortable, mainly because I had to speak a neutral Spanish in order to be understood.I knew that if I talked to them with my natural Chilean accent, they would look at me perplexed.
Somehow, I thought I was being unfaithful to my own identity. Therefore in an attempt to keep my chilenity, I stated to explain some modisms and features of my language (what I like to call Chilean Spanish) to the people a talked to.
First of all, we tend to OMIT some letters at the begining and at the end of a word. For instance in the following sentence: Estoy enamorado ( meaning " I'm in love"), we eliminate 'es' in estoy and the 'd' in enamorado, changing to: ´Toy enamorao. This patern is repeated in all words ended in "do". Sometimes, especially in a semi-formal context ,s, turns into a very soft derivation of h: E'htoy enamorao/ E'htamoh cansadoh ( instead of estamos cansados, meaning "we are tired").
Another distinctive feature is to place the word "la" (the) before a name when both speakers know the person. This is often used in informal and semi-formal conversations:
Eg -¿Quien te dio ese libro? ( Who gave you that book?)
-La Sthephanie me lo dio ( Sthephanie did)
The complexity of Chilean Spanish not only is due to these particular characteristics and grammatical deviations, but also for some words and expressions which literal translation does not have any sense without the context.The following link shows a useful article with some of the most used Chilean slangs.
Which of them caught your attention the most? Do you think you would be able to survive in the Chilean jungle?
Fascinating, Yessie! I think it would be interesting to find a site where we could listen to the different Latin American accents, to see if we Norteños can hear the differences...
ReplyDeleteThis was really interesting, and I knew some of this from our interview! I can not even imagine the feeling of being uncomfortable in my own language; actually, I can't imagine immersing myself in a completely different culture at all--I am not that brave. However, major props to you for figuring all of this out. I think that I WOULD fair well in the "Chilean Jungle" if I started learning the language in school at a young age like you, but now, no, I don't think I could.
ReplyDelete(Oh, and my favorite word on the list is "Doblado: Very drunk, stoned, unconscious..."
In high school, I visited my family in China for a few weeks. One thing that happened when I was there was that people gave me "sweets" because they thought it was American and I would like it. Most people don't have desserts after meals the same way we do in the US, but they do have some artificially sweet foods (like ice cream that's not actually made out of cream and chocolate candy things that are not at all what we would consider chocolate). I know this is not linguistics, but I remember thinking that they just didn't understand what dessert was like in America. They were being so kind in trying to make me feel at home, but it was so different from what they thought I was used to. Is this at all related to what you were feeling when people tried to speak Spanish with you (but it wasn't actually YOUR Spanish)?
ReplyDeleteAlso, it was really fun to learn some of the unique characteristics of Chilean Spanish! I remember learning some of them when we were still on campus, but I didn't know that el/la went before names of people that both parties know.
"Embarrarla" is cool because its dictionary definition is 'to splatter with mud,' so the slang definition 'to ruin a situation' makes a lot of sense. I also liked "tocar el violin"; it means third wheeling, but it brings up a funny image of playing the violin for a couple, making the idea of third-wheeling a little different.