Having been
in Honduras for just over 5 months now, I am starting to get the hang of Caliche -Honduras’ particular brand of Spanish.
First of
all, Hondurans refer to themselves as Catrachos.
The term Catracho comes from the mid-19th century Honduran General
Florencio Xatruch whose army defeated American William Walker, whose purpose
was to conquer Central America. Over time, Xatruch turned into Catracho.
This being
a machista society, many words that
are commonly used in Caliche focus on
the male member, body parts, or the act of copulating or other sexual meanings.
For
instance, both the words pija and verga are slang terms that would
literally translate into di*k or co*k. However, here, a normal conversation
would go like this:
¿Por dónde queda el
supermercado? Where is the
supermarket?
¡Es muy lejos! Esta hasta
la pija! It’s so far, it’s di*k far. (Doesn’t really
work in English)
Or
Que gran vergeo anoche. Can be negative or positive depending on the context – could mean, what
a great party last night, or what a co*k-up last night.
Similarily,
pijin means to get drunk and pijinear means to go out and get drunk
Paja means to masturbate or to lie
Chupar means to suck or to drink alcohol.
Una chupa which would literally translate as “a suck” can
mean a party.
Words that
are synonyms for the male member.
Pija,
Pito,
Paloma (literally means dove, have no idea
how this word came to be)
Verga
Palo (stick)
Pepino (Cucumber),
and basically any phallic shaped fruit or vegetable
Words that refer to your bottom:
Culo: A*s
Culero: A*shole or gay man
Culito (little a*s): good looking
Que pedos: what's up? (a pedo literally is a
fart)
Enculado: To be in love
Cagar: To poop, but can also mean to mess
something up (Lo cagaste)
The literal meaning of the work coger in Castellano means to take, but
here it means to fu*k.
There are also some complicated ones like hacer el mandado which literally means to
run an errand, but depending on the context can mean to have sex.
Here I am referred to as a gringa or more commonly, a chelita
which refers to someone with blonde hair, but could also mean “small beer”.
Hondurans also love to use words that start
with CH, similarly to Guatemala and El Salvador. There are so many that I can’t
even list them all, but here are some examples that you won’t find in a regular
Spanish dictionary:
- Chance: Permission, real Spanish word - permiso
- Chamba: Work, real Spanish word -trabajo
- Chepa: Police, real Spanish word - policia
- Cheque: Everything is good, everything is ok , real Spanish word - bien
- Cheto: beautiful woman or a woman’s
butt, real Spanish words - bonita and nalgas
- Chichi: Recently born baby, or a
woman’s breasts (I may be wrong on this one), real Spanish words - bebe, infante and cenos or tetas
- Chucho: Dog (usually referring to a street
dog), real Spanish word - perro
I could go on and on, but I just wanted to give
you all a taste of how confusing it can be to think you speak Spanish, and upon
arrival in a new country not understand a word anyone is saying!
I haven’t even mentioned all the hand gestures
that people use, but here’s a decent video in English explaining some of them: https://youtu.be/3_BcwtHIqPI
Another difference in Honduran body language –
people point with their lips here, not with their hands. If they want to point something out, they
will purse their lips in the general direction of the thing they are pointing
out.
So, that’s all for now folks – hope you feel as
confused as I did when I first arrived here!
