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?
