Proverbial BareFoot in My Mouth

This post is dedicated to “When Chilenismos Go Wrong”.  Throughout the Spanish-speaking world, perfectly innocent and random words in one country will have totally different meanings in another country; where the definitions are not so innocent.  So, as I continue my journey here in Chile, I guess I’ll have to eventually learn not to insert barefoot into my mouth; however, until then….mouth meet foot, you two are going to be very good friends.

I was at work for my very first overt experience of “When Chilenismos Go Wrong”.  In Central American Spanish, of which I’m more familiar, one would use the word “pico” when referring to part of the price of something.  So if someone said, “a taxi ride is $6 y pico”, that means “the taxi ride is $6 and change (or colloquially speaking, “six something”).  However, as I’ve discovered in Chile, “pico” is a vulgar word for “man-bits” (thank you SC for teaching me such an elegant phrase). 

I’ll spare the recounting of the entire scenario, but just know I was at work saying, “the taxi ride is $6 y pico” and the response I received from my co-workers was silence, and then a chuckle (from a woman), a shake of the head and clearing of the throat (from a man), and finally a blurting out of said vulgar word in English (from a woman – my saviour) when I still did not understand what the big deal was.  Thank goodness I didn’t say “pico” in the street; I may have ended up buying something that I was not in the market for!

As I continue to live in Copiapo, and learn more about Chilean Spanish, customs, and culture; I will no doubt commit cultural faux pas as well as language gaffes.  I look forward to butchering Chilenismos, because that will mean that I’m beginning to have a better understanding of Chilean Spanish (sidebar: Chileans like to call their Spanish “Castellano” – which is Spaniard Spanish – Chilean Spanish it is NOT Castellano).  Good news is I was able to find the book “How to Survive in the Chilean Jungle” in Santiago (more on my trip later) so Chilenismos and butchering here I come!

Blessings y Besos,

Jeder