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Calle te mierde!

If you know any french, you might think this is rude… but it means, just, “shut up”!

Discussing chilean slang last sunday after church, and in the churchyard, no less, we concluded that owing to a lack of alternative words, or, perhaps just a lack of innovation, chileans don’t have a lot of words to choose from when forming slang.

Amongst the higher classes, there are signs of more imagination… caballo, normally meaning horse, is used as a superlative. Is something better than brilliant? “Es caballo!”

Otherwise, just two words form a wide range of insults. These are:

  • huevon- apparently everything is derived from eggs. Use your imagination, add every insult every generated from american english and then say it affectionately to a “mate” (also a huevon), or, in despair, disgust or frustration to your enemy!
  • puta- ermm… a female dog. I say no more.

    • More on huevon another time… but for the moment, I hope that satisfies your desire for rude, crude chilean, Richard! Hey man… how about Chile for a honeymoon? Can get a good deal for you here or in the Sheraton.

    This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 11:16 am and is filed under Idiomaaaaaasssss!- learning Chilean spanish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

    One Response to “Calle te mierde!”

    1. Chilean Death Spider Says:
      January 27th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

      I wasn’t exactly after rude, crude Chilean stuff, so to speak, although I am happy to hear you are getting into the lingo….and it is hard to do, since they speak so very quickly. Anyway, try out your slang with this little number, to be tested on the next chic you meet in a bar (preferably without R in attendance…)

      you: Hola, soy douglas
      her: Hola, soy
      you:

      ps. Have you seen any of my eight-legged pals over there?

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