But no worries, there is always someone to teach you … just be careful who it is, as someone might end up teaching you something inappropriate on purpose 😉 I have a mental picture of some poor tourist in a bar, and everyone is trying to get him to say funny things to have a laugh at his expense…įirst of all, let’s review few words that you will find quite often on our blog: In Costa Rica, we have a lot of words and phrases that can basically create a second language that only Costa Ricans will understand. What? No, that didn’t translate quite right! Probably because I am trying to translate a phrase that is part of Costa Rican slang! Like this Story? Also like us on Facebook.Well, this topic has a lot of fabric to cut?. ¡Qué Chiva! 23 Cool Costa Rican Slang Words from the Happiest Place on Earth Want to learn Tico Spanish before you go abroad? Here are some great articles:Ģ3 Essential Spanish Expressions to Learn Before Visiting Costa Rica No matter where I go or how good my Spanish becomes, I’ll always have a little tico in my Spanish.
#TICO MEANING IN SPANISH HOW TO#
I’ve found it’s a good way to break the ice when people aren’t sure how to talk to the foreigner. “And what do you need to find when you get back to the U.S.?”Īctually, any tico laughs and thinks it’s cute when the gringa throws a slang word into a conversation or discussion. “And what were you doing this afternoon?” “Renee, how do you get home from school?”
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One of my mamá tica’s favorite things to do when guests are over is to demonstrate my tico vocabulary. I kind of just sit back and count the “ maes.”
It’s too much effort to keep up with all the slang and weird phrasings. I never really listen to conversations between my host brother and his friends. “Mae, I went to the store yesterday, mae, and this mae kept looking at me like he knew me, but mae, I’ve never seen him before in my life. Mae is like dude or bro, but used a lot more commonly than the two combined. They speak what I like to call “ Mae,” as that’s the most common word. When two guys my age talk to each other, they don’t speak Spanish. I’ve started picking up slang a lot more this semester, both because I understand Spanish better and because I have more tico friends. As frustrating as it might be at first, you start realizing that every country uses slang, and it is an integral part of every culture. The more you speak to locals, the more integrated and aware you will be that everyone speaks in slang. Ready for another one? There are eleven different words for “drinking straw” in Spanish! Torta in other Latin American countries also has completely other connotations, some good, and some bad! So the question is - what do we learn?Īll I know is that when I told someone from Mexico I like torta (textbook: cake), he asked me what was so special about a sandwich? Then, when my mamá tica put tortas in front of me, I was surprised to see neither cake nor a sandwich, but rather meat patties. That is why studying abroad in Mexico, Central America or South America, can really broaden your horizons and Spanish vocabulary - making you more likely to be considered fluent in the eyes of any Latin American counterpart. Living in the Americas, it would probably make more sense that we start learning slang and idioms from Latin America, but often they are not built into our curriculums.
students tend to be taught the European version of Spanish in schools, but what I have witnessed, is that most are actually more interested in the Mexican/Latin American kind. When people told me we don’t learn “real life” Spanish in school, I never really understood what they meant until I started studying in Costa Rica. Here she gives her take on tico (Costa Rican) Spanish. Staying with a host family and taking classes in Spanish not only helped her improve her Spanish - but it also helped her discover that speaking like locals isn’t quite like the textbooks she’s used to. ISEP student Renee, a Spanish major from the University of North Texas, spent a whole year in Costa Rica at Universidad Nacional.
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