Me duele la cabeza: Whose head hurts you?

Whose hair is that on your head? Whose throbbing molar is making you suffer? Whose aching back has put you out of commission for the weekend? Mastering a new language involves far more than memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations. It also means adapting to unexpected combinations of words and ideas that can put some very basic notions of how the world works to the test. For example, what is uniquely yours and what is not.

In contrast to my last post (Ya mi niña, Who do YOU belong to? ), which pondered certain possessive idiosyncrasies of spoken Spanish (mi niña, mi reina, mi mamá), today I flip to the polar extreme and wonder why it is that Spanish speakers seem to disown body parts, which could not possibly be more uniquely personal.

For example, want to get your hair cut? Go ahead and tell someone “Necesito cortar mi pelo” (I need to cut my hair)… chuckle, chortle, ha-ha-ha… no you don’t… what you need to say is:

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Ya mi niña: who do YOU belong to?

Mi, mi, mi… A few thoughts on linguistic ownership today.

Ya mi niña, nos vemos…

¿Mi niña? I thought, there it is again… Mi niña—my girl—an oddly common expression in Chilean vernacular. I had really tried not be drawn into the cell phone conversation going on next to me in the crowded waiting room yesterday and was pretty successful until the blah-blah-blah, ha-ha-ha, turned to “ya mi niña.” It’s one of those expressions that often seems to signal the end of a conversation and always grabs my attention. I knew she was not talking to her daughter.

Mi niña, mi hija, mi reina, mi general, mi mamá…. who do YOU belong to?

Piñerisms 1: Marepoto & Tusunami

Chile’s new president, Sebastian Piñera, not only leans to the right like George Bush, but it seems he went to the same school of public speaking. Much to the glee of news buffs, language hawks, and yes, even T-shirt makers, Piñera delighted us all with a bit of unintended levity, not once, but twice, in the aftermath of the recent earthquake.

Santiago Cabbie Stories: Blessed by a Taxi Driver

I got blessed by a taxi driver yesterday. First time that’s ever happened to me.
I’ve been cursed (ok, cursed at) by a cabbie—although in truth, I was actually just a convenient proxy for a certain former US president he seemed to have issues with. I’ve also been lectured to, lied to, sweet-talked, and ripped off; I’ve heard sob stories, tall tales, bad jokes, and tirades, but blessings? This was a first. And I think this particular cabbie is concerned for my eternal soul.

Fuente de Soda: Schop, Cortado, Completo, Cueca Brava & Buddy Richard…

Quick: where was this picture taken?

It’s a pretty safe bet that there’s only one country on Earth that this picture could have been taken. Do you know?

Speaking Chilensis: beware the Fake False Cognates

It’s time for another lesson in Chilensis, in Chilean Spanish, and in those sneaky little false cognates that can trick you into saying things you really had no intention of saying at all.  And as every language learner discovers, just when you least expect it, you’re bound to stumble—or even dive headlong—into the quirky linguistic pitfalls of new language acquisition. And since I’ve probably fallen into and crawled red-faced out of most of them, I thought I’d pass along a little more advice on staying out of linguistic trouble.

Once again from the “boy was my face red” school of learning Spanish by experience, I bring you yet another chapter of dumb stuff the gringa said:

Cachando Chile: a Year in Review

Writing the landmark 100th post is a bit of a daunting task. I had intended to post this on December 1, which I had declared Cachando Chile’s 1-year blogiversary, but with all the hoopla over the Alienating Chileans post (which hit and passed the 100 comments mark that day), followed by an enormous amount of real-life events—you know the kind—all those things that get in the way of blogging, but that end up becoming “blog fodder*’ anyway. (*Eileen gets credit for coining this extremely apropos term).

In honor of this landmark, I wanted to look back over my first year of blogging.

Finding your way into Chile

Today is Cachando Chile’s 1st “blogiversary,” and I had hoped to put up my 100th post today, but I didn’t quite make it. This is number 99, but that’s fine. I was absolutely stunned by the amount and types of response that my recent post “Ways to Alienate a Chilean” received. And now, with a few days to reflect upon it all, it seems only fitting that that post, which details our many and often humorous failed attempts to fit in, be followed by its more positive counterpart…

There are different ways to experience a new culture. I divide them into 3 categories: tourist, missionary, and participant-observer.