I’ve swum in a few of Colombia’s rivers, but I’ve never fished in any of them. And perhaps that’s for the best– it doesn’t look like that activity is looked upon too favorably, especially now that many of the country’s agricultural sectors are on strike. I’m referring to a phrase that’s been ubiquitous lately: pescar en río revuelto. I know it means to seek to cash in on a bad situation, but I’ve really had to rack my brain to translate it in a way that sounds natural.

Mucho oportunista que se regodea con el malestar de Tunja. Esos vivos intentan pescar en río revuelto que ellos mismos agitan.

Many opportunists are licking their lips over the problems in Tunja. These schemers are trying to profit from the chaos that they themselves are whipping up.

Como siempre unos aprovechados creando zozobra y confusión. Pescando en río revuelto.

Just like always, self-serving opportunists are stirring up anxiety and confusion. They’re trying to take advantage of the bad situation.

Los que siembran papa, cebolla y arroz están en paro, por que los que siembran cizaña trabajan horas extras y saben pescar en río revuelto.

The people who plant potatoes, onions, and rice are on strike, leading those who love to sow discord to put in extra hours as they are experts at exploiting others’ misfortunes.

Caño Cristales, a five-color river in Colombia that I dream of visiting

It looks like to fish in troubled waters is a phrase in English, but it’s not one I know. A río revuelto, ganancia de pescadores is apparently the standard proverb in most countries. The proverb is predicated on the claim that fishermen have the most luck when fishing in choppy water. If a fisherman was catching an eye-popping number of fish while, say, the rough water capsized a boat and people were drowning on the other side of the river . . . well, you can see how that situation would be problematic. Especially if he were to somehow figure out a way to secretly make the water be rough so as to catch more fish, human casualties be damned. But enough about fish–have you learned any proverbs lately? Learning proverbs is definitely one of my favorite things about studying Spanish. So long as it’s in Cervantes’ language, feel free to moralize all you want around me.

I was off work on Friday, but we had a little lunch party at the site where I’ve been working for the past few months to celebrate some birthdays. Seven interpreters (Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Kurdish) and two supervisors. I made a recipe for couscous with spinach, nectarines and pistachios that I first made when I lived in Medellín. The palette for flavors and ingredients in Colombia is rather narrow and only slowly opening up to more international influences, so I remember being treated like a gourmet chef down there for cooking with unconventional (for Colombia) things like couscous and pistachios. Also, Dijon mustard. And omelets. And feta cheese. It was fun to have my dishes considered manna from the gods just because I’d add something “exotic” like cumin–you can only eat so much rice and beans.

While eating a second helping of the couscous, my Colombian coworker said, Como decimos en Colombia, ¡te fajaste! A compliment that at the same time teaches me a new word? The best. I told him it was a new word for me, but I didn’t want to be a nerd and dissect his compliment right there while we were all enjoying ourselves. Qué aguafiestas. So, I accepted it gracefully, and once I was home I was able to look it up and really savor it.

Fajar means to wrap so as to hold something in, to swathe, to swaddle. A faja is usually a girdle or corset, and faja stores for women (and men!) are a very common sight in Colombia. A faja can also be a sash or belt. And in medicine, a brace. Faja can also be a skinny strip or band of something, and that’s where we get the word fajitas from– little strips of meat. OK, I knew all that. But what does fajarse mean in Colombia? Because I’m pretty sure my colleague wasn’t commending me for wearing a girdle like the scary ladies in the vintage ad below.

Nope–sure enough, it’s just as he said. In Colombia, fajarse = to do something successfully, to carry something off, to excel, to outdo yourself.

Julián se fajó anoche con semejante discurso.

Julián hit it out of the park last night with that speech of his.

Nathaly se fajó con esa tesis, cómo será, que hasta le ofrecieron beca para Harvard. 

Nathaly aced her thesis, and get this: they even offered her a scholarship to Harvard.

Oye, te fajaste con este post, tanta razón. Felicitaciones. 

Hey, you outdid yourself with this post. So many good points. Congrats.

Fajarse apparently has a few other meanings, many of them regional. Among other things, it can mean to fight, to work hard, to make out with someone and feel them up, to take the bull by the horns and face a difficult situation, and to tuck your shirt in. If you can keep all of these straight (I’ll do my best to try) and demonstrate your fajarse expertise in front of a Colombian, you’ll have no doubt more than earned their ¡te fajaste!

What’s your favorite colloquial or regional way to pay someone a compliment and give them a verbal high five? It’s an area in which I’d like to be a little more succinct, a little more snappy.

Everybody knows that there are a lot of ways to say drinking straw in Spanish. And there are almost as many words for baby bottle as there are babies. But for my money, I think the word that might have the greatest number of regional differences is popcorn. I think it’s cool that in each country a would-be poet thought that none of the numerous pre-existing denominations for popcorn sufficiently captured its popcorny soul and essence and then took it upon him- or herself to invent one that would. For his or her people, in that time. As fun as these regional words are, it’s helpful to keep a more universal term in your pocket for when you cross borderlines. 

I drew a blank on this most basic word the other day. I was interpreting at the OB/GYN clinic for a prenatal care alternative they offer for women where they meet in a group. After interpreting the chat at the beginning, the leader put in a movie about newborn care. She jokingly apologized for not having any popcorn, and my mind went blank. Popcorn! The only thing that came to my mind was a word that I knew would be absolute gibberish to the women there (all of them were from Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras). However, it was the ONLY word I could recall in that split second, and it is a legitimate one in Colombia: maíz pira. Doing my best to mumble, I hoped that people would understand the spirit of my message from the context and not get hung up on the strange words themselves. I’m usually good at toning down my Colombianness while stateside. I know, I know: When not in Rome, nobody understands (nor, for that matter, cares) what the Romans do.

As I sit here writing this post now, I’m thinking, now how do you say popcorn? Just as convinced as I could be that the standard words for it up and left my brain a long time ago. But, aha! Palomitas graciously flys over to me. Good, good. A little longer and then . . . crispetas crackles in a cobwebbed region of my brain. Excellent! I’m re-earning my popcorn wings. Oh, why did palomitas fail me earlier? Se me fueron las palomitas. If you get that double entendre, go you.

The idea of pyre corn sounds barbaric and medieval. I don’t think you’re supposed to munch on popcorn at a funeral pyre, but that’s what they say in Colombia. (In their pseudo-defense, a pira can also be an hoguera- a bonfire.) Some people use maíz pira only for uncooked popcorn kernels, but others don’t make a distinction. I remember being teased mercilessly one time when I mentioned maíz pira at a movie theater as if this were the most ridiculous thing I could ever say. Movie theater popcorn was always crispetas, I was told. Rightly or wrongly, I then concluded that maíz pira was this unpretentious, folksy term that you only use to describe the humble popcorn you prepare and eat at home. But when you hold it up to the light and are honest with yourself, you see how unsophisticated (seriously, a pyre?) and embarrassing it really is. The term clearly can’t be used to describe the glamorous, gleaming movie theater popcorn you eat while watching Hollywood movies in English. Enter, crispetas. This term appears to come from the Valencian and Catalonian crispetes, which comes from the English crisps. In some parts of Colombia, they only say crispetas. 

Ni a “PALO” te digo un “MITO” . . .
¿Quieres ser mi palomita?

Palomitas (little doves) or palomitas de maíz is the best catch-all, universal word for popcorn. For some reason, rosetas de maíz (rosettes) is how popcorn is usually translated in movie subtitles and dubbing. No country was stepping up to the plate, though, and claiming it as their own. A prescriptive term that some translator is trying his dangdest to disseminate despite its failure to catch on after decades? Finally, Andalusia owned up to it.

Here’s a sample of the many words for popcorn, organized by themes that jump out at me. Countries mean that the word is allegedly used in at least some region of that country, and possibly all of it.

Little goats: chivitas (Mexico), cabritas (Chile)

Onomatopoeia/fun to say: pochoclos (po + choclo- corn) (Argentina, Uruguay), poporopos (Guatemala), cotufas (Venezuela)

Indigenous words: esquites (Náhuatl- Mexico), canguil (Kichwa- Ecuador), pororó/pururú (Guaraní- Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia), cancha/canchita (Quechua- Peru), pipocas (Tupi- Bolivia, Brazil)

And many, many more! So, does popcorn look more like little doves or little goats? What other words do you know? Which one’s your favorite? Don’t tell Colombia, but I quite like pochoclo myself.

As a kid, I always loved to peruse my parents’ adult books. No, not “adult” books, just grown-up books about parenting and marriage (although, naturally, certain scandalous tidbits were especially intriguing to me). By spying on the playbook of the other side, I’d glean fascinating information about their motivations, sneaky tactics, and all the ups and downs of adulthood kept secret from us children. I’d also receive critical insights into myself and how childhood worked. One book I remember reading was The Birth Order Book by Dr. Kevin Leman. The book argued that our birth order (oldest, youngest, or middle child) determined many aspects of our personality. I’m the oldest of five, and supposedly this explains everything about me. Don’t feel sorry for me, fearing that I had a lost childhood–not to worry, I read plenty of Nancy Drew and The Baby-sitters Club and Encyclopedia Brown. Really, whatever I could get my little hands on.

In Spanish, if you’re the oldest, you’re el/la mayor; if you’re the youngest, you’re el/la menor; and if you’re a middle child, you’re el hijo/la hija del medio. I recently learned a few new words for these designations and recalled a few I learned eons ago. Because why take the easy way out when you could say something more colorful?

I have a friend who’s in the throes of an awful despecho, and he’s been letting his heart bleed a little bit online. Here’s a line from something he wrote a while back.

Yo no tengo dudas de lo que siento, y por eso lo expreso, solo te digo que si no soy el número uno en tu vida, no quiero ser un segundón.

There’s no question about what I feel for you, and that’s why I’m expressing it. I’m just letting you know that if I’m not number one in your life, I don’t want to be second best.

Segundón was a new word for me. Other ways of expressing it are to play second fiddle, to be an also-ran, a second-class citizen, second banana (?). A segundón can also be the second child or, by extension, any child who isn’t the firstborn.

A more or less equivalent phrase I’ve learned for segundón is segundo plato, especially in the realm of romantic relationships. If you know someone’s only with you because they couldn’t get their first choice or because they’re trying to get over their ex, you’re their segundo plato, their plato de segunda mesa. Someone who has to settle for whatever leftovers or crumbs are thrown their way. You’re merely the consolation prize for someone who didn’t get the person they really wanted.

Back to families: I remember learning another birth order word last year: el/la cuba. In parts of central Colombia, cuba means the youngest child, the baby of the family. Actually, I learned this when I wrote this post about the phrase estar borracho como una cuba. I made a mental note at the time, y ya. Today, though, I was looking up the word puayá, which I saw in a newspaper article comment, and I happened upon a Muisca-Spanish online dictionary (the Muiscas were the native peoples of Colombia’s present-day Eastern Range). In a list of Muisca words that can be found in modern Colombian Spanish, I ran into cuba again. The Muisca word was cuhuba.

A more standard, universal (though still kind of formal) word for the baby of the family is el benjamín/la benjamina. This comes from the Bible, where Jacob’s youngest son (the thirteenth) was Benjamin, the son of Rachel. The word benjamin also exists in English to mean a youngest and favorite son, but it’s archaic. Wikipedia says that benjamin is used for a youngest son especially when he’s much younger than his brothers; sometimes the name is chosen for a son born to mature parents unlikely to have more children, especially if he has several older siblings. Did anyone anywhere know this? I’m curious.

In Spanish, benjamines is also used to designate the youngest age category for sports and cultural activities, kind of like the peewee division.

Here are some of the other terms I found for the youngest child.

Mexico- xocoyote, tup

Colombia- limpiabarriga, sute, cuncho, pechichón, vejé, limpiapiedra

Venezuela- natieco, cuneco, maraco

Central America- cume, cumiche

Chile- quepucho, puchusco

Spain- caganidos, cabo (de) tripa

Honduras- guanjuro

Other terms whose use was scattered included secaleche, sacaleche, concho, chulco, toñeco, bordón, zurrapa, and pucho.

There were also un sinfín of terms related to the verb raspar (to scrape): raspadura, raspa, raspado, raspado de la olla, and many others.

If you click on Colombia, you’ll see an interactive map that shows where many of the country’s terms are used.

How sad I now feel to be the oldest! I feel cheated– I want a nickname! Even if you have thirteen kids, everyone except for the oldest gets their turn at being the benjamín. Primogénito just can’t hold a candle to the fun of being the nest-pooper (caganidos), the runt piglet (sute), or the pinky finger (tup). I guess I’ll just have to content myself with recounting my lion’s share of the inheritance.

One very famous benjamín

Many of the above terms refer to the youngest being spoiled, mimado. Others indicate that the youngest came along and ruined everything. Still others essentially call the youngest the last batch before the mother “closes shop.” The figurative meaning of cabo tripa and limpiabarriga is easy enough to understand, but I didn’t understand limpiapiedra. Then I read that when women make hot chocolate or other foods that require a grinding stone, they traditionally give whatever’s left over to their kids (like your mom letting you lick the cake batter spoon and bowl). So, the youngest is like those chocolate shavings.

Manuel Mejía Vallejo, a famous Colombian writer had these strong words to say about limpiapiedras.

[Un limpiapiedra es] el que no sirve para nada sino para beber. Era el perdido de la casa, el bohemio, el que no quiso estudiar [. . .] no servía ni siquiera para el militar, era el que le gustaba el trago, el mujeriego, el bohemio de la partida que le gustaba ir de feria en feria, de carnaval en carnaval.

A limpiapiedra is someone who isn’t good for anything but drinking. He was the hopeless case in the family, the bohemian, the one who would refuse to study . . . not even the military had any use for him; he was the one who liked drinking, womanizing–the bohemian in the group who lived life as one endless succession of parties and carnivals.

This article that I read last week in El Tiempo featured the word cuncho.

Durante 20 años, mamá no tuvo descanso. Cada dos años venía un hijo. Fui el último de diez, el ‘cuncho’, como llamaban al menor.

For twenty years, my mother didn’t get a break. Every two years, there was another child. I was the last of ten, the “cuncho,”  as they called the youngest.

In Colombia, cunchos are coffee and hot chocolate dregs. How would you feel being called the dregs? The dregs of society are obviously pond scum– could the dregs of the family possibly be used affectionately? The ones who–gracias a Dios–made it out just in the nick of time? I’ll have to report back to you.

Youngest children, are there any words you particularly like? Any we should never call you (or risk a black eye)? Anyone know any other ways of calling oldest children? I can’t wait to estrenar my new word (cunchita) when I see my youngest sister, Hannah, very soon. Really, what’s not to love about youngest children? And middle children! Good grief, I just realized that I pretty much entirely skipped over them . . . predictably, they’ll say. ¡Se lo compenso! I’ll make it up to you.

Reading some articles the other afternoon in El Tiempo, I noticed on the side box the top five shared articles. Number one was Panties y tinto, dos negocios que interesan a inversionistas foráneos. 

Panties and coffee, two businesses that interest foreign investors.

I remembered the story because I had read it earlier in the morning, and I knew that its headline definitely didn’t say anything about underwear then. At that time, the headline had been Extranjeros en Colombia ven opciones de negocios hasta en el tinto.

Foreigners in Colombia see business possibilities even in their coffee.

I’m pretty sure that even without panties the article was the most shared on the site. (Articles that make it seem like Colombia is being taken over by foreigners, or that foreigners are taking all the good jobs are extremely popular. Also, articles about Colombians who live abroad, especially when they aren’t exactly welcomed by locals. Basically, any article that features what the rest of the world thinks of the South American nation and their dirty laundry.) But I guess throwing the racy allusion to women’s underthings into the mix and the click bait that would translate into was too hard to resist. ¿Amarillistas? Yellow journalism? Yes, and it’s not even New Year’s Eve, which is when you’re supposed to don yellow underwear for good luck.

One thing I liked about the original headline was the play on words where they changed the traditional phrase ver algo hasta en la sopa to hasta en el tinto. To see something or someone even in your soup means you see it absolutely everywhere.

But what’s tinto? Do you know? In Colombia, tinto is black coffee, usually served in a small cup. Not to be confused, of course, with vino tinto–red wine. Ah, ¡tinto! How I’ve missed this word. Frequently diminutivized to tintico, naturally. Some sources report that they also say tinto for black coffee in Venezuela and Ecuador.

Nos tomamos un tinto un día de estos y nos desatrasamos, ¿te parece?

Let’s meet up for coffee soon and catch up. Sound good?

¿Le provoca un tinto a sumercé?

Would you like a cup of coffee?

Lo mejor del trabajo es la máquina del tinto, que es gratis, así que tomé y tomé tinto, alrededor de siete tazas; y eso que hoy era mi primer día y me sentía un poco tímido. Sin duda alguna la empresa se quebrará con mi forma de tomar tinto.

The best thing about the job is the coffee machine, which is free, so I drank and drank coffee, around seven cups. And, you know, today was my first day, and I felt a little shy. I’m absolutely certain that the company will go bankrupt with me drinking coffee like this.

When I first read those lines above a few years back, for some reason my mind momentarily blanked and read the lines as if they said tinta–ink. The best thing about the job is the ink machine (that’s nice), so I drank and drank ink (um, what?), around seven cups of ink (¡ay, Dios mío!). How strange this person was! And forget about the company going bankrupt–what about the havoc he was wreaking on his body? What did he think he was, a notebook? An inkwell? And then . . . oh, ¡tinto! Well, of course. The tinto machine is infaltable in Colombian workplaces. Even better is the señora de los tintos who comes by with the bandeja or the carrito.

If you’re a coffee connoisseur, you might wrinkle your nose at tinto. Colombia’s premium coffee beans have traditionally been exported, and the Colombian coffee you drink outside of Colombia has little resemblance to what you’ll experience in the country. For better or for worse, I’m not a coffee buff (or snob, though I don’t want to suggest that there’s anything wrong in knowing how to appreciate good coffee), so the allegedly “flavorless” coffee that is drunk in Colombia suits me just fine. But more than the perceived quality of the drink, what’s so magical about drinking tinto is the atmosphere it creates and represents. Colombians are wonderfully warm, hospitable, and good at making spaces cozy. By pouring you a cup of tinto, they masterfully put you at ease and make you feel welcome. Whether it’s a get-together of family members, colleagues, friends, or lovers, a cup of tinto is a must for setting the mood. How I wish I had a steaming pocillo de tinto in my hands right now as I sit here writing. Starbucks is coming to Colombia soon, and I don’t know how I feel about that for several reasons. Hopefully, though, Colombia’s coffee traditions and culture will be preserved. 

This post’s title, Tomémonos un tinto, seamos amigos comes from a successful advertising campaign for Águila Roja. Let’s have a tinto; let’s be friends. Starting over a cup of coffee always bodes well for new friendships, and friends and coffee are two things you’ll find no shortage of when you go to Colombia.

How was your Halloween? ¿De qué te disfrazaste? I was a queen bee–abeja reina–and my friend was a beekeeper–el colmenero. We went to a costume dance party and basically won the costume part, but since we’re not great dancers but merely good, another couple won overall. So much fun! Here are some pictures, though unfortunately a bit blurry.

The yellow outfit was the uniform from a dance team that I used to be on, and I painted the black stripes on it with the help of masking tape. Bought the tights, made some pseudo-antennae, and made a crown but didn’t wear it much. For a day there, I was Vocabee. What did you dress up as? Did you buy or make your costume?

OK, now I’m thinking about bees, so let me see if I can’t drum up some relevant Spanish vocabulary.

In Colombia, abeja is a very common and colloquial way of saying that someone is slick, clever. This can be in a good way as in business, or it can indicate someone who takes advantage of others–wily, crafty, sly. Standard synonyms would be listo and astuto, and interestingly enough another way of expressing this is avispado (avispa means wasp). Downright libelous for bees and wasps, if you ask me.

Pilas con Orlando, que ese man es muy abeja.

Watch your back when you’re with Orlando because that guy’s sly as a fox.

Want to say that you’re busy as a bee? Although abeja will convey that idea in some countries, in others hormiguita (little ant) will do it much better.

The word above for beekeeper, colmenero, comes from colmena, which means beehive. When I lived in Bogotá, my first bank account was with Banco Colmena. (It no longer exists.) After always assuming that Colmena was a made-up brand name like Pantene or Cheetos, I was quite surprised to learn one day that I’d been banking with Beehive Bank all along, something that sounds like it came straight from Richard Scarry’s Busytown. I could have been banking with a place named Banco Colchón (Mattress Bank) and been none the wiser.

Why a beehive? I guess the cells of a beehive are supposed to be evocative of how a bank has separate accounts for people’s money to grow and be safe. There used to be another Colombian bank called Conavi whose mascot was a much-loved, iconic bee for several decades. Considered the Colombian Mickey Mouse, la abejita Conavi could be seen everywhere from sporting events to classrooms. A bee was chosen as the symbol of the bank because the insect collects, saves, reinvests and multiplies pollen, honey, and wax for the future use and survival of the bee colony. A beehive also symbolized the thrift and industry of many humble workers. But this bank also merged with another one over time, and the bee disappeared. Told to buzz off, I assume that bees have entirely disappeared from the banking landscape.

And what about honey? I wrote about miel de maple a long time ago, but that’s not really honey; it’s maple syrup. Here are some phrases that talk about the real deal.

Miel sobre hojuelas–I’ve never had hojuelas, but apparently they’re a delicious fried pastry in the shape of leaves. (Hojuelas de maíz is the proper name for corn flakes, but people usually just say confleis.) Although they’re already a scrumptious delicacy in their own right, to drizzle honey over the hojuelas instead of just sugar allegedly ratchets their deliciousness up to an almost unfathomable level. So the phrase miel sobre hojuelas is used to indicate that a good situation was just made even better.

Voy a escribir una novela este mes para el NaNoWriMo, lo que será muy gratificante para mí y un buen reto, y si encima algún editorial acepta mi manuscrito y lo publica, pues miel sobre hojuelas.

I’m going to write a novel this month for NaNoWriMo, which will be very rewarding for me and a good challenge. And if on top of that some publisher accepts and publishes my manuscript, well so much the better.

Todo era miel sobre hojuelas hasta que vi que le daba like a su propio estado, ahí un gran abismo nos separó para siempre.

Everything was as peachy as could be until I saw that he liked his own status–then an enormous abyss separated us forevermore.

No todo es miel sobre hojuelas en el matrimonio, pues a veces hay rachas cuando uno no puede ver a su pareja ni en pintura. 

Not everything about marriage is a bed of roses–sometimes there are periods when one can’t even stand the sight of their partner.

Another phrase I like is dejar (a alguien) con la miel en los labios or quedarse con la miel en los labios. To leave someone with honey on their lips means to leave them hanging, to leave them wanting more, to tantalize them and then stop right before the best part. Imagine someone smearing honey on your lips but you can’t reach to taste it. (Because you have a short tongue? Because your lips are sewn shut? No idea.) Or they give you just a taste and then cruelly whisk it away. Someone builds up your expectations, makes you positively salivate while anticipating it, and then they don’t follow through at the last minute.

No nos dejes con la miel en los labios, cuéntanos ya lo que pasó esa noche entre tú y la japonesa.

Don’t just leave us hanging here; tell us what happened that night between you and the Japanese woman.

Aunque había soñado con ganar, Mario concluyó cuarto en la carrera, así que se quedó con la miel en los labios. 

Although he had dreamed of winning, Mario placed fourth in the race, leaving him disappointed and frustrated.

Maybe the idea isn’t that someone has dripped honey on your lips and that you can’t reach it; maybe the point is that that’s all they did. You wanted the dessert–let’s say it was a mouthwatering piece of baklava that oozed honey–and they waved it in front of your face and even brushed it against your lips, but just as you opened your mouth they snatched their hand away. All you’re left with is the trace of honey on your lips to then savor. While it’s better than nothing, the sweetness would be so brief and piquant that the ache of longing and sense of loss it would provoke would cause unbearable pain.

Finally, a truly wonderful and erudite bee phrase that I definitely need to dust off after having shelved it around age ten: None of your beeswax!

But, of course, that’s not true– what I write here about Spanish and Colombia is all of your beeswax. Let me know if you can think of any other bee-inspired vocab, and definitely share your costumes with us.

La vida da muchas vueltas: I’m moving back to Colombia on January 1. In a nutshell, I’ll be doing three things: writing, translating, and studying.

I want to blog a lot more, and I plan to eventually write a book. Eventually meaning soon, as in I’ll keep regular hours every day and hit the ground running–business cards and all, yikes. There’s a lot I could say about this, but I kind of feel deep down that it’s best to just work at it quietly and then make a big ruckus when I’ve finished. If you want to know more, email me or talk to me in person about it–I’ll definitely want to pick your brain.

I’m also going to work as a translator. I swore up and down a few months back that I’d never translate again, but I had a change of heart when I read a beautiful translation from Japanese in October. I’ve missed the creative responsibility and thrill of translation, and two words in particular from that book–blossoming delectability–sealed it for me. Yes, translation was wretchedly lonely for me before, but, no, that doesn’t mean it has to be that way, I’ve realized. The past two years have been about nothing if not learning from my mistakes. Setting personal boundaries, time management and, above all, balance are key.

And, finally, I’m going to take some classes at the Universidad Nacional.

I can’t wait to be back. I wonder a million things, and I can only know when I get there.

If you live in Bogotá, please get in touch! Passing through at some point? Don’t be a stranger. I’d love to make new friends. Heroclitus said that you can’t step in the same river twice, so I know that everything about Bogotá and my time there will be different, even things I might wistfully wish I could repeat from before. And all of it will be potential material. I’m really excited about being back in Bogotá with this new focus and intentionality, and I hope you enjoy listening to all that zesty and mellifluous Colombian Spanish that flows up over my shoulder and on to the blog.

I got to Bogotá one week ago today, so I thought I’d perform a one-week self check-in, mostly language-related. (Or check-up) Here are some of my scattered thoughts.

1. Bogotá is an immense city. So, even if you lived here before like yours truly or passed through and had a certain experience, you could come back and have an entirely different one if you focus your time on another part. I lived in three areas before (Boyacá with 170-northwestish, Normandía-west/centerish, Autopista with 170-north north), and now I’m downtown. Though they were walking distance from my jobs and thus super convenient, I’ve realized that I always lived in the wrong areas before. Too residential, too tranquilo, too isolated, and too boring for me. YMMV, naturally. I know this sounds like a superficial impression born of my honeymoon period with el centro, but, trust me, I had thought about this for a long, long time. I know myself so much better now, and I know what I need to be happy. I still haven’t answered the city mouse/country mouse question, but if I’m going to be in a city, it needs to walk, talk, look, sound, and smell like a city. I love the buzz, the ajetreo. And all the culture.

2. As if it had made New Year’s resolutions, Bogotá has been on her best behavior for me and I keep thinking I smell a rat . . . but the rat has yet to be produced! Of course, it helps matters not a little that todo el mundo has been on vacation, crowding the other cities, so it’s been kind of dead. Little to no traffic, quiet, clean. Like fitness buffs who despise the flabby masses who clutter up their gyms at the beginning of the year, perhaps the rest of the world’s cities are rolling their eyes as Bogotá pulls herself together for a few weeks in January. Maybe it won’t last. But as a foreigner who came back dreading some of Bogotá’s more unsavory aspects, it’s been a gentle way to ease back into the chaos of this city.

3. Colombia’s no paradise, but with know-how and skill you can figure out how to glide from one beautiful spot to the next, one delightful interaction to the next. And occasionally even find charm in some of the grit. Some of it. No doubt, there are still lots of eyesores, too many needless adefesios. What are your aesthetic needs and dealbreakers? A good question to ask yourself before blithely coming to live, well, anywhere. In more ways than one, I feel more sensitive here.

4. Plenty of things here can make you throw your hands up in despair. Did you get just as outraged and pissed off back home? Did you write your council member and get out the vote and do something about it? I so often hold Colombians to a standard I conveniently wiggle out of because I’m a non-voter, but back home I did just as they do. Not that that gets anyone off the hook-I loathe the red herrings and straw man arguments I can find myself constantly dragged into the moment I, as a foreigner, dare to open my mouth and express anything less than praise about Colombia. But, still, it makes you think.

5. On to Spanish-Here are some things I do well: I manage conversations no problemo (that’s English, if you didn’t know), have zero fear talking to people, can express my zany and at times even witty sense of humor (in a word, be me), I speak much faster, I speak much more fluidly, my accent is better and less traceable (I guess? something I care less about with time), and I’m more confident. Listening still is my Achilles’ heel, but it’s a much smaller heel than I feared. I no longer ask ¿Cómo? after every sentence, for one. It feels like my vocabulary has quintupled. What I relish even more than accolades are when people say nothing at all. Not because they think I’m from here (another silly goal I let go of), but because I’m no longer a needy puppy dog begging for encouragement. It is what it is-growing by a few more words every day.

6. The not so good: I cannot multitask in Spanish. At all! So, don’t even think about asking me to do it. And don’t let me fool you. If I’m peering at something on my computer and nodding along as you say something to me, I’m not catching a lick of it. In English, I couldn’t tune someone out even if I tried (like a mom nagging me to do such and such). Spanish requires all of my brain cells, all of my concentration. If I only half-try to listen to someone, I utterly fail. If I’m engaged and attentive and actively trying to understand them, I usually get all of it, much to my surprise and delight. Before, when my Spanish was really pitiful, it was pretty hopeless-my vocabulary was so slender that I couldn’t hope to make sense of all the gaps. Thus, I wouldn’t even try, retreating into my own little la-la land and then wondering why my listening skills were so bad. Now that I’ve amped up my vocabulary (no tricks, just lots and lots of exposure) and have learned how critical attention is, listening’s no big deal. Personally, I don’t believe that people can truly multitask anyway, and I think there’s no greater gift you can give someone than the gift of your undivided attention. So, I can’t say I really mind not being able to rudely fiddle with some gadget while absently “listening” to someone. I guess I’ll see if I can multitask in time, but I’m in no hurry.

7. I also feel that telling stories and jokes in Spanish is a distinct weakness of mine. Like if I ever tried to tell someone about the time an ex-boyfriend was reading Jerome K. Jerome to me in the car after the 4th of July and an enormous bird that in the split-second appeared to me like an ostrich (but was probably a hawk) took off in flight and hit our windshield, leaving a bowling ball-sized dent that left the mirror about chest level the rest of the two hours back, and he let out this sissy scream and the both of us almost had a heart attack? Forget about it. People fall asleep or wander off long before I ever get to the punch line. I think it’s a mix of missing vocab, pacing, and something I can’t quite put my finger on.

8. There has been grief: Nubia, the mom of the family that I lived with from October 2010 to June 2011 died Saturday morning of gallbladder cancer. Very sad, and Saturday night and Sunday morning were spent at the funeral home. Ella era como una mamá adoptiva para mí. Thankfully, I was able to spend time with her and her daughter, Diana, when I passed through last summer.

9. And there’s been much happiness! But I’d be tattling on myself and others if I gave you details.

10. I decided to go by Katia down here, something I tried before but only in half measures. Katie is really, really hard for Spanish speakers to pronounce, and I tired of being called Keili, Keiri, Kate, and worse. And to spell it-uish! But by substituting one little letter, it’s suddenly so much easier for all parties. You can call me Katie if you want, and certainly friends from before can call me Katie, but I’m enjoying the simplicity. And I don’t think it’s the equivalent of a Santiago going to England and then putting on airs, prancing around and telling everyone to call him James. It just makes my life a little easier, that’s all.

11. My Paisa accent is ancient history, but I can still do it if I concentrate. I’ll be spending the whole weekend with a Paisa, so maybe it will be restoked. My Bogotá accent sounds so high-pitched, squeaky, and petulant to me in comparison. (I know this is ironic, because the Paisa accent is extremely petulant! Or peevish, más bien. I openly admit my bias. Maybe the Colombian accent in general is petulant- a subjective opinion, of course- and I just prefer and notice less the Paisa variety.) The particular cadences of the Bogotá accent also make me feel like I’m always asking a question, and thus unsure of myself?

12. I still need to find a place to live (!), and I still need to start working (!!). And get business cards/presentation cards printed up. Today I had three offers for translation/interpreting work out of the bluest bluest blue, so I think this is the universe’s nudge for me to get to work. Let me know if you’re in Bogotá-I’ve loved hearing from people so far.

A friend and I headed to the Biblioteca Virgilio Barco on Sunday–a place that I think is far and away the most beautiful spot in Bogotá–and on the way stopped to get some lunch. We went to Sopas de Mamá y Postres de la Abuela, a chain that’s especially popular with families on lazy, drizzly Sunday afternoons. Not particularly hungry, I focused on the entradas (appetizers) section of the menu. One option, Corazoncitos de pollo y papas criollas, sounded light but filling. I also have a huge weak spot for papas criollas. A small dish of these yellow potato teenyboppers mixed with some chicken sounded like it would hit the spot quite nicely. I ordered una limonada natural to drink.

When the waitress brought the dish, I was confused to see a small mountain of strangely-shaped black objects on my plate interspersed with the anticipated papas criollas. ¿Eso es pollo? I asked the waitress. That’s chicken? I asked, very skeptical. She nodded and left me to contemplate the mysterious burial mound before me that was composed of what looked like parts of no chicken I’d ever hitherto encountered. I remember thinking, ¿Pollo chamuscado o qué? Scorched chicken, or what? I just couldn’t account for the black color. My mouth not exactly watering, I had no choice but to wish myself a very perfunctory bon appétit and dig in. My friend said that maybe it was hígado or molleja–liver or the gizzard–which happened to not ratchet up my enthusiasm a lick. Meanwhile, he started into a bowl of delicious chili that I wished I had ordered or that he’d be chivalrous enough to give me in exchange for my burial mound (he did share very generously). Not wanting to look like a baby, an ingrate, or a wasteful person, I resigned myself to sucking it up and eating as much of the dish as I could stomach.

To my surprise, it–whatever “it” was–was pretty good. It tasted close enough to chicken and had a normal mouthfeel. No alarm bells went off in my head, but then I leaned in to inspect the black things more closely. They were clearly individual, self-contained units, as if they’d been cranked out on a factory belt. These were not pieces; these were parts. There was also a very suspicious tube-like apparatus poking out of each of them. Baffled, I made myself eat more of them–plate to mouth, plate to mouth, my spirit very lackluster but my palate surprisingly not minding in the slightest. I made sure to space out the papas criollas so that I wouldn’t eat all the good stuff and then find myself facing an entire plate of these black doodads.

And then it hit me: I was eating hearts!!! Chicken hearts!!! Little chicken hearts!!! But, of course! That’s exactly what the menu had said! Corazoncitos de pollo: little chicken hearts. Or, simply chicken hearts, but said with affection, cutesiness, or merely for no reason at all, that Colombian tendency to diminutivize willy-nilly just for the fun of it. Chicken hearties, chicken heartlets. They had spelled it out for me with Plastilina and quedé gringa. Oh, I felt so bruta, bruta, bruta. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I be so dense? How had it not sunk in? The menu had clear as day specified chicken hearts, I had ordered said chicken hearts, my plate was piled with what should have been unmistakably chicken hearts. And yet . . . I knew not what I ate. My dining partner and I laughed for what felt like hours, but my laughter was decidedly bitter.

Let it be said that at no moment had the restaurant lied to me or deceived me in any way. Had I tried to sue, I would have been laughed out of the attorney’s office by the doorman. How can corazoncitos de pollo be understood as anything but, well, corazoncitos de pollo? Because I didn’t realize it was literal, that’s why. I didn’t take them at their word. Because–and this is so very embarrassing to admit, so bear with me–I read corazoncitos de pollo and thought I was going to get small portions of chicken breast in little heart shapes. That’s right, blog: I am everything I denounced in my Freshly Pressed post last March. I am cursi. Yo, la más cursi de todos. I’m poetic, I’m Romantic, I’m figurative, I’m cheesy. Go figure. While the restaurant called al pan, pan, al vino, vino, y a los corazoncitos de pollo, corazoncitos de pollo (that is, they called the proverbial spade a spade), I had to get all symbolic and thus finally received my just desserts: a platter spilling over with chicken hearts. Well, call me a literalist from here on out.

What I was expecting

It was all so obvious in hindsight. That distinct heart shape, that little tube poking out (the aorta). And, yet, it truly didn’t have an organy or offal taste. I’d eat them again if I had to without so much as a whimper, but I probably won’t be ordering them. Certainly not by accident. I made myself eat about half of them–I ate about 15-20 little chicken hearts all told, which still blows my mind. But, hey, at least they weren’t little chicken testicles, little chicken brains, or little chicken eyes. I probably won’t be calling any romantic partners mi corazoncito any time soon, either–the associations with black chicken ventricles and atriums is just too fresh in my mind, mouth, stomach, whatever.

On the bill, it said corazones, probably to save space. Now, if it had said corazones de pollo on the menu, I absolutely would have understood it. The diminutive version, however, threw me for a very regrettable loop. Even my friend–a Colombian–didn’t make the connection, not even when it was right in front of us. Beware of diminutives! They can make even the rankest, most pernicious things sound downright adorable. Don’t be hoodwinked! This mistake had nothing to do with my level of Spanish; instead I didn’t think of the literal meaning of the word and let myself be beguiled and charmed by its darling, innocent-sounding name.

Have you ever been deceived by a food’s name in Spanish and eaten something awful? I ate chunchullo once–chitterlings/intestines–without knowing what it was and felt sick to my stomach. I also once lunched on chigüiro–capybara–without realizing it, but it was actually quite good. And another time I had mondongo–cow stomach soup–and did know what I was eating, and it was also good. But that’s the extent of my jaunts into strange eats. No bofe, no ubre, no sopa de menudencias for me. Not even if you diminutivize them–al perro no lo capan dos veces. (A Colombian proverb that figuratively means that smart people don’t make the same mistake twice; literally that a dog sure as heck doesn’t let himself be neutered a second time.)

And while we’re on the subject, let’s enjoy a great bachata: Aventura’s Mi corazoncito.

Bogotá doesn’t have an official zoo, but who needs a zoo when you have a language? Spanish is teeming with creatures great and small. Except for the other week when I held a dog named Parchita tethered to her leash while trying not to fall off my bike for a few minutes, I’ve yet to spend time with animals here. (Also fleas: jeans, seamstress, animal hoarder.) Yet, there’s been no shortage of critters in my speech. Here are a few animal-themed words and phrases I’ve learned in the past three weeks as well as old ones that might be new for you.

I had a killer neck cramp all day yesterday. I knew this was called tortícolis (turtle neck), and the only upside to the crick was getting to say this word for the first time. But then I was told that another way of calling tortícolis in Colombia is tener el mico al hombro. That is, to have a monkey on your shoulder. (In Colombia, monkey= mico.) Just imagine an organ grinder with a small befezzed monkey perched on his shoulder all day and how sore his neck would be by the end of the day after constantly twisting it to address the simian. Getting this monkey off my shoulder will be an enormous monkey off my back.

I was talking to someone on Sunday who’s from Caquetá, a department located in the Amazonas region. I asked her about typical dishes there, and when she struggled to come up with some, I ran to get my Gran libro de la cocina colombiana. Which is this incredible cookbook I received as a housewarming gift in 2009 that meticulously documents the dishes typical of all 32 of Colombia’s departments. I’ve also discovered that it’s found in many Colombian kitchens, sort of their The Joy of Cooking. As I flipped through the section on the Amazonas region to see if any of the dishes were favorites of hers, I came across a recipe for Manatí.

Manatí (Amazonas)
(Vaca marina)

Mamífero poco común, alrededor del cual el indígena ha tejido una nutrida y a veces extravagante mitología. 
Es muy apreciado por su carne. Tiene en su lomo 4 tipos de carne de sabores, color y textura perfectamente definidos: cerdo, res, pescado y tortuga. Se cocinan por separado, fritándolos, cocinándolos en guiso o asándolos a la brasa sólo condimentados con sal. Los huesos guisados o en sopas son también muy apreciados.

I’m fairly certain I would never eat manatee, but it fascinated me that the recipe was in that book. Sans judgment, a cookbook that was descriptive and not prescriptive. I was also surprised to hear the words for an endangered species flow out of my mouth, something I didn’t realize I knew how to say: en vía de extinción/en peligro de extinción. 

I think I’ve heard two people now call those jaw clips for hair un caimán. Which is an alligator. Also, I read this line a few days ago in a book: The sporting children were receding in a distant crocodile, pale and navy blue, winding their way back to their school and lunch. Which made no sense to me. Then I realized it might have been British English. Sure enough, crocodile: Brit, a line of people, esp schoolchildren, walking two by two. There’s so much English I don’t know.

I heard a fanny pack called a canguro, a kangaroo. I knew the word but wasn’t certain that it was used in Colombia. The word I remember from before for fanny pack is riñonera–kidney bag. So unsavory.

Talking about working out, I confirmed that push-ups are lagartijas–small lizards.

Another animal-related word I’ve learned of late is the word for (the art of) bullfighting: tauromaquia. Somehow, I didn’t know this one before.

To discuss cheapo off-brands, I’ve always said marca pato or marca patito. Lately, though, I’ve heard two different people say marca pajarito and marca gato. Keep your ears perked and you’ll hear lots of other animals used to sully brands, which kind of makes you feel bad for them.

Those are all the animals I can think of that have come up since January 1! Below are a few more common words and phrases you might hear in Colombia.

If you go out to drink with friends, you might decide to order a jirafa (de cerveza), which is a beer tower from which you dispense beer for everyone. I think this is a Colombian word.

To order that giraffe, you and your friends might decide to hacer una vaca. This is when everyone chips in, everyone pools their money together to buy something. This bovine phrase is very universal.

Want to talk about your work and sound Colombian while you do so? Refer to your work as your camel, that is, camello. The verb is camellar. Just like Mexicans have chamba, Chileans pega, Spaniards curro, and so on and so forth, Colombians have camello. I think they say it in Ecuador and Venezuela as well.

Hacer el oso (to do the bear) is to make a fool of yourself and it’s used in many, many countries. ¡Qué oso! How embarrassing! How ridiculous! What a loser!

If you’re in Colombia, you might order a hot dog or hamburger and then notice a funny little egg on top. When you ask what kind of egg it is, you’ll be told it’s a huevo de codorniz, but I don’t think you or anyone should be expected to know what a codorniz is off the top of their head. That would be a quail egg, my friend. Protein! If anything, I might prefer to eat that egg and leave the rest–my mouth is not a sauce depository. I drown.

I’ve written before that abeja (bee) and avispado/a (wasp-like) mean slick, clever, and these words can have good and bad connotations.

To flirt with someone in Colombia and several other countries is echarle los perros. Sic the dogs on them, release the hounds.

You might hear a thief be called a rata or ratero. Rodents’ besmirched reputation is slightly redeemed with the phrase ser un ratón de biblioteca, which means to be a bookworm. These are all universal terms.

In Colombia, a sapo/a can be a snitch/tattletale, a suck-up, or a nosy person. A regular toadie.

Lobo/a in Colombia is trashy. Which means that El lobo de Wall Street is aptly titled. You can be a billionaire and still be a low-class yahoo.

You probably won’t hear this if you’re just passing through Colombia, but it’s one of my favorites: cusumbo solo. A cusumbo solo is a coati, and male adults are usually solitary creatures. Thus, a person who is described as a cusumbo solo in Colombia is one who is essentially lonely, withdrawn from society. Often a man who passes long periods alone, without a partner, be it by choice or otherwise. Though you can be in a relationship and still be a loner, of course.

If you’d come to Bogotá sometime in the last few years, you would have learned that the people who drove horse-drawn carts around town to salvage garbage and transport small loads were called zorreros and the horse and cart were zorras. And if like me, you would have thought, huh, a female fox (a vixen!) and left it at that. Today, for the first time, I looked it up, and it has nothing to do with foxes. According to the DRAE, zorra can also mean a low, strong flatbed cart to transport large loads. They’ve recently been outlawed and decommissioned, so you’re unlikely to see one now. The end of an era.

There are many more zoo terms and phrases. Which ones can you think of?

I’ve always wanted to make a video for this blog so you could experience the immense pleasure of hearing me speak in Spanish, but every time I recorded something I’d find an excuse to let it wither on the vine, so to speak. But you just might get your chance this week–you and the rest of Colombia. You see, I might be (Internet) famous come Wednesday because this morning El Tiempo, Colombia’s most widely read newspaper, interviewed me! I participated in a city-wide trash cleanup at a park next to my apartment, and two journalists from El Tiempo decided to pick my brain for a few minutes on camera. I was given the questions a little beforehand, so obviously I tried to prepare so I’d sound smooth. I still got tongue-tied, of course, especially when I tried to pronounce the name of one of their rivals, El Espectador, which is how I found out about the event. Maybe they’ll be gracious and will cut that part out for me. Also, healthy or not, I have a real predilection for the Paisa accent (Medellín and thereabouts), and sometimes I get a notion to try to exaggerate what trace amounts of it are still left in my speech. This brief interview would be one of those times. They only did one take. So if you hear a Gringa speaking with a quasi-wannabe-Paisa accent on the airwaves in the next few days, con toda seguridad soy yo.

If they decide to publish it, the video should be on their website and be broadcast on their TV channel on Wednesday. I’ll let you know. ¡Manténganse pendientes! Stay tuned.

The only famous people I could give two hoots about serendipitously meeting here in Colombia are a very small number of politicians I respect and a few writers. Well, Shakira too (and her adorable son), but I’m never going to run into her in Bogotá. So, when Antanas Mockus (ex-mayor of Bogotá, defeated presidential candidate when I was here four years ago), who’s like a rock star for me, arrived at the polling station on Sunday with his mother just as my roommate and I were leaving, I was in awe. I was very happy to listen to him talk for a few minutes and then bashfully shake his hand.

As I went around afterward blasting those two hoots, I was a little unsure of how to best express what had happened. I shook his hand, but in Spanish you don’t use any of the verbs for shake: sacudir, temblar, agitar, menear.

A handshake is un apretón de manos. A hand squeeze. But could I say le apreté la mano? Nos apretamos la mano? Nos dimos un apretón de manos? The last thing I wanted to do was ruin my exploit by expressing it in some terribly nerdy way, but I was all thumbs.

The most recent book I read in Spanish was published in 1867, so I’ve got quite a bit of antique Spanish rattling around my brain. And since it was a tragic (and quite chaste) love story, everything was tearful embraces, fervent claspings of hands and impassioned grips that led nowhere between Efraín and María. The verb constantly used that I thus had emblazoned on my brain? Estrechar. I did tell one carful of friends I ran into that le estreché la mano a Mockus, but I felt kind of literary.

And then, by listening, I realized that it’s the simplest thing in the world: you can just say dar la mano. Oh. Le di la mano a Mockus. Nos dimos la mano. I shook Mockus’ hand (well, gave him mine and sort of made him shake it, really–the Spanish is more accurate here). We shook hands. Too easy.

As it turns out, all of these are perfectly valid ways of saying to shake someone’s hand in Spanish. But what are you doing shaking hands? This is the land of the (single) cheek kiss, ¡aprovecha!

I don’t have a picture, and, yes, I know this doesn’t make up for my girl-who-cried-wolf faux pas from the last post. Sorry to be a tease and ultimately all blog and no action. Mea culpa. While we’re on the subject, here are some other famous hands around town lately.

Petro (Bogotá’s mayor) isn’t going anywhere

Mano firme, cerebro ausente: ex-president Uribe heads to the Senate

How many phones do you have? Un fijo? (A landline?) Un celular? (A cell phone?) Pretty typical. Here in Colombia (and many other parts of the Spanish-speaking world), though, you get two more phones. But, don’t worry–no more numbers to memorize. Anybody got a dataphone? And where’s the closest citophone? They sound like something that must have been around in the 80s–some clunky device with big colored buttons and antennae out the wazoo– but in Spanish these are the names of very common objects. I’d forgotten them entirely, so we’ve been getting reacquainted.

Un datáfono is a credit card reader. If you’re at a restaurant and want to pay by card, they usually bring a small credit card reader to your table to swipe it. To ask if they offer this service, you can ask, ¿Tienes datáfono? Whereas I would say, do you take cards? Or you could say this when the pizza boy is at your door and you don’t have much cash on you. I see it translated as dataphone, but I’ve never heard that word. One website I found defined a Dataphone as an early version of a modem that was first released by AT&T in 1960. One look at pictures of this behemoth fuddy-dud and you’d see that dataphone is not an acceptable translation of datáfono. PIN pad, credit card transaction terminal, and credit card swipe machine are other ways of referring to a datáfono. Apparently, Datáfono was a brand name used by Telefónica in Spain in the 80s, and it stuck. The word is universal.

Just what you’d expect a “dataphone” to look like

Though most are more along these lines

Lo que no apareció: “EN 2050″

Un citófono is what is used in the reception areas of apartment buildings to buzz the residents to see if it’s OK to let visitors in. Or the buttons on the outside of the building that visitors press to call up to residents. In a word, a buzzer. (Which I always want to translate as buzón! But buzón is mailbox, or voicemail: buzón de mensajes) Or an intercom. The DRAE says that this word is Colombian, and it’s also used in Chile for some reason. Citofono is the word in Italian. The name comes from circuito (cerrado) + teléfono.

It’s normal to see signs on the doors of residential buildings that say something to the effect of, Todo visitante, sin excepción, será anunciado a través del citófono. All visitors must be buzzed in to gain access to the building.

Kids who grew up in cities had to play ding dong ditch (here called rin rin corre corre) with the citófono. More like buzz bozz ditch.

Probably best not to buzz this guy in

Of course, there are more phones (fonos) in Spanish, but they’re all phones in English as well. Megáfono (megaphone), dictáfono (Dictaphone, ie, voice recorder), micrófono (microphone), saxófono (saxophone, though saxofón is more common), and xilófono (xylophone). Also, I just learned during my nerdy virtual jaunt that homophone in Spanish is homófona.

And while we’re on the subject: French speakers get to be Francophones, and English speakers are Anglophones. And we Spanish speakers? What are we, chopped liver? Isn’t anybody going to give us a phone? Actually, there was one ringing for me this whole time, and I didn’t realize it: the Hispanophone. Rebuscado, yes, but it totally exists and I’m determined to use it at least once in this lifetime. And Lusophone exists for Portuguese speakers. Feel free to call me on any one of them.

So, with the addition of citófono and datáfono to your Spanish knowledge, it will now be that much harder to know which one they mean the next time someone yells at you, Pick up the phone! And your life gets decidedly more techy with these big words. I could almost imagine myself slipping them into my CV. Imagínate, TECHNICAL SKILLS: WELL-VERSED IN CITOPHONE AND DATAPHONE. Just remember, there is such a thing as being overqualified.

Last Thursday was a comedy of errors for me, but it also had some beautiful moments. For Semana Santa (Holy Week), I went to Huila, a neighboring department that Bogotá D.C. just barely nuzzles. We went to the Desierto de la Tatacoa on Wednesday, and that night we slept in hammocks under low trees with leaves like filigree beneath a noche estrellada. Around 1:30 in the morning, it started pouring and we had to make a run for it, and the rest of the night I slept in a rocking chair on a porch, two green parrots singing ditties overhead. Very memorable.

I found out on Saturday that Gabriel García Márquez had died on Thursday, making the day memorable for a much sadder reason. Everyone knew it would be any day now, of course, but I was caught off guard to learn that I’d been unaware of his passing for several days. When I found out from another tourist during a tour of the prehistoric sculptures of San Agustín, I couldn’t help but cry a little and mostly zone out for the rest of the tour, feeling off-kilter. It’s one of those times you want to call just the right person and nurse a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. What a loss for Colombia! García Márquez was 87.

I’ve blogged about García Márquez and his works several times–vocabulary in Cien años de soledad, the experience of rereading Cien años de soledad, and analyzing the marginalia of my copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera, among others. I haven’t come close to reading all of them (El otoño del patriarca seems to be my most serious lacuna), but the ones I have read have moved me deeply. The theme of solitude seems inescapable, and I can’t help but think of the loneliness of Colombia as a country, as well as its estranged departments. (Maybe Latin America as well, but I don’t know enough about its history to say.) As people, families, towns, and civilizations turn into themselves and lose touch with reality, they become eccentric, impenetrable even to themselves, cruelly selfish and self-defeating, and trapped in marshes of loneliness. This theme moves and fascinates me, but it’s also extremely depressing. Something constructive has to be taken away, because the books certainly aren’t how-tos. Are the books universal? I’m not sure how that could be as place is so critical in them, and some say that Colombia is fetishized and exoticized almost beyond recognition. But timeless, yes. The language is beautiful, concepts of time and lineage are rendered powerfully, and–their inherent solitude exposing their naked essences and longings–the characters are unforgettable.

So, how to best pay homage to García Márquez? By reading his works, of course. Any language will do. On Wednesday, there’s going to be a mass public reading of El colonel no tiene quien le escriba from 10 am – 3 pm in all of Colombia’s public libraries, and over 12,000 copies of the book will be given away. This falls on April 23, which is the International Day of the Book, Spanish Language Day (the day after Cervantes’ death), and the date recognized as when Shakespeare died (though, going by modern calendars, it was actually ten days later; England was still using the Julian calendar at the time). Whichever calendar you use, the day after tomorrow is as good a day as any to start reading the Colombian master. That book’s not amazing, in my opinion (it was clearly chosen for its brevity); try Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera), Del amor y otros demonios (Love and Other Demons), or Ojos de perro azul (Eyes of a Blue Dog).

I wish I could say that García Márquez’ books–Cien años de soledad, especially–brought me to Colombia, even before I had read them, but for all I know they did. It’s not like it would be a difficult thing for a magical realist to arrange. And in large part they brought me back and help keep me here. Gracias, Gabo. QEPD.

You know that famous acronym KISS? Keep it simple, stupid? Well, I feel that it could easily be Colombia’s slogan. Manténgalo sencillo, imbécil. MSI–no, it doesn’t have the same ring to it. Ring or no ring, this is a country where simple is the name of the game. Cash is king in the U.S.–or at least was in our grandparents’ day–and simple is king in Colombia. Ah, maybe you see where I’m going with this now. Flinging around simple like a noun, when I’m really referring to its Spanish counterpart: sencillo. In Colombia and many other countries, sencillo means small bills and change. A must-know word because I can almost guarantee that you’ll have to carry and pay with cash here far more than you’re used to in your home country for a plethora of reasons. Credit and debit cards aren’t yet the common, well, currency that they are in many other parts of the world, so you need to make sure to have bills and coins on you at all times. But not just any dirty money will do. No, it needs to be small. It needs to be sencillo.

Yesterday I bought some things at Éxito, a huge supermarket chain here. They came to 30.650 (around 15 dollars), and I handed the cashier a 50-thousand peso note (around 25 dollars). She then asked if I had the 650 pesos- the coins, that is. I could only find about 200 pesos, so I said no, all the while still rummaging around in my purse. I eventually found one more coin, and then another, and then another. But several of them were just tiny 50 peso coins—I really didn’t think I had 650 pesos, and in any case I just wanted to finish my transaction, get my change from her, and leave. She kept waiting, though, eyeing my accumulating pile of coins feverishly. When I finally rooted out all the metal from the bottom of my purse, I silently noted that the seven or eight coins did miraculously add up to 650. But you know what? I didn’t feel like giving her my every last coin and then remaining coinless in the sencillo-obsessed country I live in. It’s a free country, er, world, right? I’m not under any obligation to hand over my sencillo. That’s why she has a huge till full of money. I wasn’t going to be a pawn in her sencillo game.

I told her to go ahead and just give me the change from the 50,000 peso bill. How much do you have there? she asked n0sily. I don’t know; it doesn’t really matter, I answered, feeling flustered. What I was doing was so un-PC, practically against the social law. But, how much do you have? she insisted. To be honest, lady, I’d really just like to pay with the 50. She probably hated me, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t my finest moment. Lo and behold, she gave me my change with a heaping handful of coins. There was no shortage of sencillo on either of our ends, it turned out. I get it, though–it’s the principle. Better to get as much sencillo as you can and hoard it for a rainy day, a complicated sencillo drought. (A rainy day and a drought? Yes, in Colombia you need sencillo 24/7. As well as an umbrella and sunscreen.) In the morning’s sencillo battle, Vocabat: 1, World: 0. A KO.

I felt like a selfish jerk. How could I not give her sencillo when I had it right there? I’ll tell you why. Because I’m the customer and she represents the multibillion-dollar company. Hardly to be pitied. I always pay with sencillo and regularly make unnecessary purchases on the street or at the corner tienda just to break “large” bills and make sure I have sencillo for the bus driver, the taxi driver, and everyone else. But that’s because I’m nice, and I know how life works here. It’s not my problem (in theory) if you don’t have the right change and certainly not if you’re simply loathe to give up your change. Except . . . sigh . . . it inevitably always becomes the customer’s problem. Oh, why don’t you buy one of these cookies so I can then have the right change for you? Sorry, I’m just under, but it’s close, so please just consider it a small tip and skip off. ¡Te quedo debiendo! I’m X pesos in your debt! Yeah, like they’re going to track you down and repay those pesos later! The best way to prevent this from happening is by being armed to the teeth with–you guessed it–lots and lots of sencillo. Such a misnomer! Simple, my foot.

¡Eso!                                                                       ¡Jamás!

I wasn’t trying to lie to her or even hacerme la pendeja–play dumb–but who’s brave enough to say, yes, I have sencillo, but I don’t want to give it to you? I have just as much of a right to it as you do. Read: you ain’t gettin’ any. The social contract here basically requires that you fork over your sencillo if you have any, though. All right, cough it up, mister! If you choose to slyly omit the fact that you’re in possession of sencillo, you may find that the establishment really doesn’t have change. And then you’re in the awkward position of magically “finding” the sencillo you were so sure wasn’t there just a few seconds ago. It’s really uncomfortable, trust me. Or maybe both sides will act tough, and then it’s just a matter of who calls whose bluff first. What would they do if they found out about those little Take a Penny, Leave a Penny change trays that are so common in the U.S.? You mean . . . they leave sencillo there for anyone to just take?! In broad daylight?! But in Colombia’s defense, you can often fiar things at your little neighborhood store (pay on credit, or they’ll let you bring the money by later if you’re short a few pesos). Why doesn’t the government make things genuinely simple for everyone and stop producing non-sencillo denominations? All I can think of when I get stuck with a 20,000 bill is when and how I can break it; a 50,000 bill feels like a curse.

Who tells that story about the kid who had a fifty-dollar bill, but he exchanged it for two twenties, and then three tens, then four fives, five ones, then six quarters, seven dimes, eight nickels, nine pennies, all because he thought he was getting richer with each transaction as the number of units increased? Sometimes it feels like that here! I feel like a king, the cock of the walk, when I have a pocket full of jangling coins, and practically a pauper with large bills. What good do they do me?

Another common way of saying sencillo is suelto. Which means loose. We talk about loose change in English, but not so much loose bills. It works for both in Spanish, though. (There appears to be a rapper named Loose Bills. I’m sure he’s a favorite of taxi drivers.)

I did some research, and here are different ways of saying small change and bills in Spanish.

Monedas (just coins), menudo, cambio, calderilla (Spain, just coins), chatarra (Spain, just coins), morralla (Mexico, just coins), feria (Mexico), chauchas (Chile, just coins)

For my money, I’d stick to sencillo or suelto when traveling around.

This Actualidad Panamericana article (a Colombian The Onion) exposes a bar where Bogotá taxi drivers go to indulge in their peculiar fetish: massages with small bills sensually rubbed all over their bodies. It would explain a lot.

How do you ask for sencillo? How do you beg someone to break a bill? This was one of my very first questions when tagging along with Spanish goddess Eva my first week in Colombia. Well, you don’t say romper. Let’s just get that out of the way. What you do say is cambiar.

¿Me puedes dar cambio para un billete de cinco?

¿Me podrías cambiar un billete de mil?

¿Tienes cambio de cien pesos?

¿Me cambias este billete?

¿Tienes sencillo para (un billete de) 20 mil?

As you can see, you have lots of wiggle room to play around with the word order.

Now, what about the change you get after a transaction? Or telling someone to keep the change? Ay ay ay, this book–I mean, post–is getting long. I’ll write about that in the next post.

Also, I gave the KISS acronym a few vueltas, and I came up with an equivalent for the Spanish BESO that fits the topic.

BESO: Billetes En Sencillo, ¡Obtuso!

Keep it BESO, keep it sencillo, and carry on!

In the last real post we covered change as in small bills and change (change for a 20, for example), and in this one we’ll look at the change you get back after paying for something. Or not–the accuracy of your change not infrequently depends on the “size” of the bills you paid with, at least in Colombia. Here’s some vocabulary so that if you have to be short-changed, at least you can be sure it has nothing to do with you speaking unfluent Spanish.

Far and away, the most all-purpose and universal word for this kind of change is cambio. Super easy.

Then there’s vuelta and vuelto. Vuelta is said in Spain; vuelto is said in most of Latin America.

As I read about vuelta and vuelto, beads of sweat started forming on my forehead, and I felt mildly ill. Vuelta? Vuelto? I’d never heard the words before. How could I be a Spanish blogger and be utterly unfamiliar with these basic words? Because, me? I’ve always said vueltas. I was starting to feel like a crock.

And then I confirmed that vueltas is how you say change in Colombia. Whew! Just one more reminder of how Colombian my Spanish is. Here, we say vueltas, even devueltas. Also devuelta. As well as vueltos. (They obviously delight in being contrarians.) I’ll do my best to drop the s in other countries, but I can’t make any promises. I just don’t see decolombianization in my cards.

If you want to tell someone to keep the change, the most common verb to use is quedarse, followed by guardar.

Quédese con la vuelta. Quédate con el cambio.

Guardá el cambio. Guarda el vuelto.

While researching this, I learned that, at least in Spain, the preposition in the phrase quedarse con algo is often dropped. So, quédate con la vuelta can become quédate la vuelta, or quédatela. Is this construction used anywhere else? (For all I know, it’s used everywhere, and I’ve simply never noticed.) I’m on the case.

Quédate con tus monedas, quiero cambio.

As I wrote about in the last post on change, it can be somewhat problematic here in Colombia. An article in yesterday’s El Tiempo stated that Colombians prefer cash as much as they did 70 years ago, at a rate of 48%. Plastic just hasn’t caught on like it has in other developed countries. From the article, I learned the phrase dinero contante (y sonante), which means cold hard cash.

The article mentions piggy banks as a common mode of saving money, and my experience bears that one out. They’re a rather common sight here in homes, so alcancía is a surprisingly useful word to know. If someone doesn’t have enough money for something, they might half-joke about having to romper el alcancía or romper el chanchito. Like many Spanish words that begin with al-, alcancía comes from Arabic. From what I read, the word alcancía has disappeared in most parts of Spain, replaced by hucha. (Hucha means butt crack in many countries, and se te ve la hucha or even se te ve la alcancía means, I can see your crack. Daily parlance for plomeros.) Alcancía is the only word used in Latin America, though. The piggy banks here, at least the ones I’ve seen, tend to be made of clay. I’ve never been so indiscreet so as to turn one over and contemplate its underbelly, but my impression is that they don’t have a plug; you have to smash them to access your money, so it doesn’t make sense to do so before you’ve got a nice little stockpile of funds accumulated. Poor piggies.

I have an update on the last post’s story about me going head to head with an Éxito cashier about my change. Last week, I had another run-in with her. I think I paid in sencillo, but not with exact change. She asked if I had the 400 pesos or whatever, and I said that I didn’t. (I’m kind of fuzzy, but I think I genuinely didn’t have it this time.) And, then, what do you know, she actually gave me my vueltas in such a way that I was given 110 pesos or so above what I was owed. It’s common knowledge that it’s always the customer who gets the short end of the stick in these complicated sencillo situations, but now I see that it’s tit for tat in the larger stores. At least with steely-eyed Lady of the long braids. (Lady is her name–common here.)

Change or no change, at least Colombian money is relatively pretty to look at. I’ll blog about it at some point. And, rich or impecunious, at least you’re now loaded with Spanish vocabulary for talking about change. Don’t forget: BESO! (Billetes en sencillo, ¡obtuso!) That is, don’t forget your change at home. Hell hath no fury like a Colombian taxi driver scorned, i.e., paid with a large bill.

Colombia has won all four of its first four games at the World Cup (Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan, Uruguay), and the excitement here is extreme, to say the least. Led by Argentinian coach José Pékerman, the national team has impressed big time. The midfielder James Rodríguez (pronounced HAH-mez, not James)–the so-called breakout star of the World Cup–has scored five goals in the four games and had two assists. His first goal in the game against Uruguay has been lauded worldwide as a thing of sheer beauty and genius. Oh, and Costa Rica has also made it to the quarterfinals under Colombian coach Jorge Luis Pinto, the first Colombian coach to make it that far. If your team is out or never quite made it to the drawing board, I respectfully suggest Colombia as a great team to follow. And I’m not the only one: here are some excellent reasons via photos and video to convince you to pull for Los Cafeteros.

Post-goal team happy dance

I’ve watched so many games recently–not just Colombia, but many others as well–that I need a break this week. Just like the players need to rest before they face Brazil on Friday, I’m sure that many fans also need a hiatus so that we can recharge our batteries for the big match. The drama, nail biting, and jubilation are getting to be a bit exhausting! So, in lieu of watching soccer, I’ll do some blogging on World Cup vocabulary. If you don’t know what’s going on, here’s the best way to fake it. Brought to you by an expert faker, the best of the best: Vocabat.

A deft, well-timed question is really all you need so that it appears that you have a clue. If nothing else, you know what questions one’s supposed to ask, and you’ll likely then be politely left alone. Additional commentary is not only unnecessary, it also requires that you have at least a slight understanding of what’s going on. And that’s easy to screw up, believe me.

What’s the score? - ¿Cómo van?

I’d say that this is far and away the most useful, all-purpose, and colloquial way of asking who’s winning and who’s losing. I hesitate to even share any other options, just because this is the one you really should reach for. But, in case you ever feel the need to switch things up or need to be able to recognize a variant on ¿Cómo van?, here are equally acceptable ways of asking the score. As always, mileage may vary depending on the country.

During the game: ¿Cómo va el partido? ¿Quién va ganando? ¿Cómo va el marcador? ¿Quién gana? ¿Cuánto van? ¿A cuánto van? 

After the game: ¿Cómo terminó el partido? ¿Cómo quedó el partido? ¿Cómo quedaron? ¿Cuál fue el marcador? ¿Cómo fue el resultado?

Confession time: With my tail between my legs, I have to admit that I didn’t know the word marcador for score before the World Cup. Now I’m hearing it left and right, but it just wasn’t on my radar before. In fact, if pressed, I would have fumbled and offered up puntuación, but it turns out that that’s usually not the word you want for the score of sports events. It’s more like the score on a test. So, puntuación OUT, marcador IN. I’m clearly a fair-weather sports fan.

To answer this question, you can say something like:

Colombia le va ganando a Brasil, van 4-0.

Gana Costa Rica 2 a 1.

Va ganando Estados Unidos 1 a 0.

Van 5 a 1 para Holanda.

And now you know where my sympathies lie, roughly in that order, too!

James Rodríguez

Time for the next crucial question.

Who are you rooting for? Who do you want to win? – ¿Por quién vas?

Again, I think ¿Por quién vas? is the only one you really need to know, but there are little tweaks to this construction that you might hear.

¿Con quién vas? ¿A quién le vas? ¿A quién le haces fuerza? 

To answer:

Voy por Colombia, ni más faltaba.

¡¡¡Vamos con Holanda!!!

Él le iba a Camerún, ahora a Francia.

No sé a quién le voy a hacer fuerza, estoy entre Estados Unidos y Alemania.

Any more questions? Practice these, and I’ll have some more vocabulary soon so you can make astute, spot-on comments in Spanish while watching the World Cup. Go USA! ¡Y vamos Colombia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This post is going to be all about the goal. The goal area, goalie, net, posts, and, well, goals. It’s always important to have goals in life, and it’s especially important to have goals in a soccer game, seeing as they’re kind of the point. So, let’s give that region of the soccer field some love.

Tim Howard, American goalie

A goalie or goalkeeper is usually an arquero or a portero. Guardameta is also used with semi-regularity. Here in Colombia, I mostly hear arquero. Arquero seems to be the norm in most of South America; portero is more common in Spain and Mexico. Central America? The Caribbean? Equatorial Guinea? I don’t know. Words that also exist but that aren’t nearly as common include guardavallas, guardapalos, cuidapalos, golero, cancerbero, and meta. Cancerbero has nothing to do with cancer; it’s actually the combination of can- (dog, as in canine) + Cerbero (Cerberus, the mythological 3-headed hellhound that guards the entrance to the underworld). I like to imagine goalies giving themselves that pep talk as they step into position: I am Cerberus; I will guard this space like 3-headed ferocious dog guarding the gates of Hades; if anyone tries to enter I’ll bite their freaking head off! If Luis Suárez was a goalie, maybe he could have used this as his defense last week. Hey, I thought I was Cerberus! You guys don’t want me to bite, maybe you should think twice before you call me a 3-headed fanged beast. Except he’s a forward, so yeah. No excuses.

Those are nine ways of saying goalie, but what do you call the actual goal area? Well, you can find the many ways in the words above. The goal can be the arco, arquería, puerta, portería, meta, valla, los tres palos, or the casamata. Portería is what I hear most.

The posts or bars? I mostly know them as the palos, but they can also be called los postes or la madera. The horizontal crossbar can be called the travesaño, larguero, or horizontal (with the vertical bars being verticales).

Do you know how to say to bounce off something? It’s rebotar en algo. So, if the ball bounces off the posts, you say rebotó en los palos. Whenever this happens, there is sure to be cursing on one side and sighs of relief on the other.

Chile’s Mauricio Pinilla tattooed his near-goal rebote on his back

The net is la red, sometimes la malla. 

To score a goal is marcar un gol. You can also say hacer un gol, meter un gol, or anotar un gol. If you’re a journalist, you might write golear, though this doesn’t mean to score an individual goal per se, but rather for a team to score a lot of goals, for them to win handily. Colombia goleó a Brasil 4 a 1. Look for this one tonight!!! (This is actually the score I’m betting on for my polla- sports bet.)

And how about when a goalie blocks a goal or performs a save? The most common and colloquial ways of saying this seem to be tapar, parar, and atajar un gol. Atajar was a brand new one for me, but I’ve heard it several times lately; WordReference says to stop, intercept; to catch, catch in flight. ¡Qué atajada! What a save! Or, ¡Qué parada! Feel free to also bandy about verbs like detener, impedir, evitar, rechazar, bloquear, and blocar. Apparently, salvar un gol is used in some countries, but rejected in others as an overly literal translation from English. Despejar would be like to clear the ball, getting it the heck out of there by whatever means necessary.

David Ospina, arquero colombiano

Any more goal vocab? Oh, I just thought of one. In journalism, goals are often referred to as tantos. Supplement me, correct me, pillory me, love me in the comments. And tune in tomorrow at 4 p.m. U.S. Eastern time to watch the Colombia-Brazil game and cheer us on! It’s going to be epic, and we need your support! ¡Vamos Colombia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rodney’s latest post has lots of soccer vocab as well, so be sure to check it out. I didn’t know the Mexican phrase, ¿Quién es tu gallo? Pues, ¡mi gallo es Colombia! ¿Quién lo iba a pensar?

Well, waaah. Colombia’s out of the World Cup, and I was feeling quite glum for a while. What was the point of continuing with World Cup Spanish vocabulary? What got me out of that funk? Colombians, of course! I know it can be dangerous to generalize, but by and large I find Colombians to be extremely alegres (happy), agradecidos (grateful), and celebratory for any little reason at all. We lost 2-1 to Brazil, and, yes, we were all crying along with James, but people were immediately applauding the team’s excellent overall performance, thanking them for bringing the country such positive attention, and celebrating that we got as far as we did. I just wanted to go home and sulk because that’s my nature, but, uh-uh, no one was having any of it. I was forced to go to a party, and, what do you know, I felt a million times better right away. In the end it’s just a game, and Colombia played and ultimately lost with honor and dignity. Can a heart be heavy and happy at the same time? I think so.

Who to root for now? Hmm, Costa Rica, because they’re the little engine that could, and their coach is Colombian. Then, Holland? Or Argentina? My enthusiasm is waning, truncated just like Colombia’s sparkling trajectory. ¡Pero la vida sigue! May the best team win.

A controversial figure in the Colombia-Brazil game was the ref. Not that that’s anything new. How do you say referee in Spanish? El árbitro. We have the word arbiter in English, but it’s very rare. Arbitrator isn’t too common, either. I think the first English word that you unconsciously associate with árbitro is arbitrary and, sigh, many of their calls and silences seem to be just that. Refereeing in general is el arbitraje, so blame it on the mal arbitraje if the ref had it in for your team. Sometimes the ref is called el juez. What if it’s a lady ref? La árbitra? El árbitra? La árbitro? The internet can’t decide. Juez becomes la juez or la jueza. Oh, English, how I long for your simplicity sometimes!

Everyone was complaining that the Colombia-Brazil ref was an árbitro comprado, or that he’d been bought off or bribed. That he was crooked and in the FIFA’s pocket. But at the end of the day, Colombia didn’t play well and didn’t score the goals it needed. While most of the fouls were against Colombia and it seemed that they especially ganged up on James, there was leniency (or blindness) toward Colombia as well. Seeing as one player’s knee to Neymar’s back fractured the Brazilian star’s vertebra, and he’ll now be out for the rest of the tournament.

The linesmen are los jueces de línea.

Fouls? Faltas.

Yes, some people are still crying foul and saying the biased ref this, the disallowed goal that, but overall Colombians accept the loss. We’re not sore losers or poor sports. A sore loser is a mal perdedor, or someone who no sabe perder. But, actually, I think that losing is what Colombia knows how to do best, soccer-wise. The series of wins and beautiful plays were a little dizzying, but I’m certain that there will be many more in the years to come.

Finally, something weird but cool. This beautiful giant grasshopper flew onto James Rodríguez’ arm and then stayed there for a good while as he took a penalty shot and scored Colombia’s only legitimate goal. Click on the picture to see it with greater detail. A grasshopper is a saltamontes or chapulín, though it’s not uncommon for it to be called a grillo (cricket) out of insect ignorance. Some are even saying the bug was a locust (which just sounds too messianic). Smart little critter, whatever he was.

¡Súper orgullosa! And now . . . back to normal life, back to reality. I really don’t even care about soccer, but I’m grateful for this surge of unity, hope, and cheer that my adopted patria inspired in me and so many people. I also love that the coach, José Pékerman, is Argentinian and that he has done so much for Colombia. He’s truly revered here, and he deserves it. Apparently, when Colombia qualified for the 2014 World Cup, Pékerman requested Colombian citizenship and received it the next day. I confess that I like to fantasize about what I could possibly do to one day receive Colombian citizenship on the spot! I’d love to do some great, heroic deed for Colombia, but I’ll probably just end up putting in the requisite number of years here plus the mountain of paperwork. If only those citizenship issuers were blog readers . . . I need a rosca . . . who can help me out here?

There’s a new English-language newspaper in town called The Bogotá Post, and I have the honor and pleasure of writing a column for them on all things Spanish. It’s the same beat that I have here on the blog, so I plan to share some old posts and also write new material. I’ll share the columns here as I write them, and even if one is an old post the material will be expanded upon, improved, and double and triple checked with an expert. As always, I welcome feedback. What did I miss in this revamped version of this old post on Colombian greetings? I wanted to write about ¿Entonces, qué? and ¿Vientos o maletines?/¿Vientos o mareas? (though M., my Colombian proofreader, had never heard of that second set of greetings), but, you know. Word limits. And while these greetings are heard all over Colombia, I’m admittedly and inevitably Bogotá-centric, and I know there are some different greetings in Nariño, the Atlantic coast, and everywhere in between. Do share. My first issue (their sixth) came out today, so enjoy!

Bogotá Greetings

What’s one of the most useful things to learn in order to maneuver more smoothly in Spanish interactions? If I were to organize something with a large flag saying START HERE, where would I begin? I guess we’d have to start with greetings. Botch the greeting, and you’ve gotten your whole exchange off to a pitiful, clumsy start (not that these things can’t be recovered); ace the greeting, and that confidence will carry you quite far.

When you read, you begin with ABC; when you sing, you begin with do re mi; and when you run into a friend in Colombia you start with Hola, ¿qué más? Well, that’s certainly one of the most common ways. Let’s break it down.

You start with Hola. Easy. You probably also know Oye or Oiga for “hey,” but this is used to draw someone’s attention to something (as in, “Hey, did I give you my new number?”), not as a greeting.

Then you’re more or less socially obligated to ask the person how they’re doing, usually by stringing a few of these phrases together. In a very unscientific order of usefulness in Colombia, here’s a list of how to ask people how goes it:

1. ¿Qué más? VERY Colombian and incredibly useful. Illogically, you absolutely can say this first. 
2. ¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo está? How are you? The most neutral, universal, and “safe,” so good for exchanges with people you don’t know or to whom you have to show respect. Certainly whenever you have to shake someone’s hand.
3. ¿Cómo vas? ¿Cómo has estado? How’s it going?
4. ¿Cómo te va? ¿Cómo te ha ido? How’s it going? How’s it been going?
5. ¿Cómo va todo? ¿Cómo va tu vida? ¿Cómo van las cosas? How is everything? How are things?
6. ¿Qué haces? ¿Qué has hecho? ¿En qué andas? What have you been up to?
7. ¿Qué cuentas? ¿Qué me cuentas? How are you doing? What’s been going on?
8. ¿Qué tal? What’s up? How’s it going?
9. ¿Qué hay de nuevo? ¿Qué hay? ¿Qué hay de tu vida? What’s new? What’s happening?
10. ¿Cómo me le va? Very polite, always hear this either from or directed to older people out of respect. This construction is called the ethical dative, and it basically expresses that I care about you so much that however you’re doing affects me and thus influences how I’m doing. 
11. ¿Cómo estamos? How are we today? Like in English, this can have patronizing, paternalistic overtones. 

What you won’t hear in Colombia: ¿Qué pasa? ¿Qué pasó? ¿Qué onda?

All of the above essentially mean the same thing. Don’t get tripped up trying to translate them or come up with the perfect answer; just learn to let them slide out of your mouth fluidly. They’re all answered the same way: Bien. Todo bien. (If things are so-so, you can say Ahí vamos or Ahí, más o menos.) And then you return the volley.

-¡Hola nena! ¿Qué más? ¿Cómo estás? ¿Qué has hecho? ¿Juiciosa?

-Hola. Bien, gracias a Dios. Juiciosa como siempre. ¿Y tú, qué? ¿Cómo vas?

Then they’ll talk for a bit, and when there’s a pause, a lull in the conversation, it’ll start again.

-Ah, bueno . . . ¿Y qué más? ¿Tu familia, qué?

In this mid-conversation example, you can see that ¿Qué más? isn’t really used to greet so much as it’s filler to help move the conversation along.

Of course, Buenos días, Buenas tardes, and Buenas noches are used depending on the time of day, but these are more formal greetings. As in many countries, Buenas is often used instead of these phrases, a sort of catch-all. (Yes, even in the morning; you don’t say Buenos.) Very typical when you enter shops, as greeting the shopkeeper is just common courtesy here.

But no column on Colombian greetings would be complete without the ever-present ¡Quiubo! This greeting is special enough to not include in the list above, and it comes from ¿Qué hubo? It’s usually followed by another greeting, and it’s very informal.

Quiubo mija, ¿cómo estás?

Quiubo parce, ¿bien o qué?

Once you’ve already greeted someone, you can say ¡Quiubo! each time you run into them afterward, say, at the office. That way, you don’t have to go through the whole merry-go-round of greetings over and over again. You can also say ¡Quiubo! when someone knocks on your door: a casual way of saying, “Who’s there? What is it?”

As you could easily use a different greeting every day and almost never repeat a salutation in an entire month, there’s no excuse for letting yourself fall into a greeting rut. And if you don’t know what to say next, just keep adding more greetings to buy yourself time.