Oft-told is the tale of the little old German lady who, squeezing herself and her seven bags of flowers into the seat across from me (in a bus in Lichtenburg, East Berlin, 2006), threw me a piercing gaze and quite clearly squeaked “Geeeeps?”
I gave her as uncomprehending a stare as I could, and she explained “Ob Sie genug Platz haben!” (if you [formal] have enough room). I understood, mumbled something affirmative, and began to work out the fact that “Geeps?” was “Gibt’s?” a contraction of “Gibt es?” which means “Is there?” – as in enough space. I was pretty proud to have reached that conclusion by the time the bus dropped me off at Sewanstrasse, 15 minutes later.
This kind of thing used to happen to me quite a bit in Chile. Chileans do not dish out crisp little sentences as many Latin Americans do. They lob around crazy mud-pies at full speed, after having changed some endings, remove “s” and “d,” and toss in a bunch of diminutives and slang.
Thus, mas o menos becomes maomeno; quieres is queri; estas is estai; café is cafecito; pescado is pescao; mucho is caleta; fiesta is carrete; perrito is cachorro; cerveza is chela, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
I learned Spanish in Chile, and never studied formally – which essentially means I speak Chileno rather than castellano. There are some words that I learned wrong, like “respuesta” (response). Chileans pronounce this word “repueta” – and that is how I thought it was spelled for a long time. I recently discovered that “paraguas” has an “s” at the end.
Just last week I was advised, to my great consternation, that “denantes” – a word I use quite a bit to mean “before,” or “a minute ago” – exists only in Chile, and is grammatically questionable. As a devoted grammarian, I was concerned: how many other incorrect Chilenismos pollute my Spanish?
A few months ago I met a Mexicana and was blown away by her enunciation, and the relaxed pace of her speech. At first I thought she had slowed down deliberately for my benefit – but it eventually dawned on me that that was simply how she spoke. For a few minutes I was in danger of becoming embittered against the entire nation of Chile for making me suffer. But I couldn’t – I love Chilean Spanish! And I’m incredibly relieved that I can finally (mostly) understand.
Nereida Heller is currently volunteering in Puerto Aisén, Chile with the English Open Doors Program. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.
For more musings on learning another language, check out these posts from other La Vida Idealist bloggers: “How to Learn a Language“; “The Multiple Personalities of You“; “¿Dónde Está El Baño?“; “Help! I’ve Reached the Foreign Language Flatlands!”; “What Your Language Teacher Doesn’t Want You to Know”; “Could You Pick Up Some Milk and a Second Language While You’re Out?”; “Forget Language Teachers…I’ve Got Kids”; and “5 Surprises About International Volunteering: #2 – Language Non-Barriers.”
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Richard – I definitely know and hate the “blur of sound” phenomenon. I haven’t felt it in Spanish a while, having lived in immersion-isolation for so long. But there’s a German lady here who, out of some misguided confidence in my skills, speaks to me auf Deutsch when she sees me. The result, a hideous mix of Spanish and semi-German, is no bueno. I usually only manage to inquire after her husband, make a lunch date, and tell her my German is terrible before running away in panic.
When you hear Parisien French, it is not like southern French, which I have a chance of understanding. For example, she said, “Je sh pa” which, believe it or not, was “I don’t know (je ne sais pas”. Absolutely no one uses the ‘ne’ in the negative; even the transcriptions of a dialogue in my French workbook leaves the ne out. Just a very small example of “city” speech, which to us gringos is just a blur of sound.
So Chileans are the New Yorkers of South America, essentially. Let’s hear it for the fast-talking, slang-lobbing crowd!
Good news: according the the Real Academia, “denante” without “s” is fine!
(http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=denante)
Hmm. Did you detect the derivation of “denantes”? Clearly “antes” = “before” but presumably the beginning of the word is a corruption of something.
Also interesting that Mexican Spanish sounds clearly enunciated and relaxed to you — because it sounded rapid and confusing to me when I was your age and in Mexico!