Español de Chile o quizas, la falta de español en Chile.

Side note: So first off, let me apologize for being an absentee blogger as of late. I moved into my new apartment last weekend that is a bit lacking on the Internet factor (aka my lifeline). So my online activity has been mostly composed of quick e-mail checks at friends’ places and an occasional wifi session at Starbucks when I have time…like now. Never thought I would say this, but Gracias a Dios para Starbucks.

Back to the subject at hand...Español. My main motivation for coming to a place like Santiago is my desire to learn the language. Sure, I’ve studied it since I was in 3rd grade back at good ol’ St. Mary’s grade school all the way through high school and even majored in it at UW, but classroom Spanish can only teach you so much. In order to truly learn a language, you need to be fully immersed. No one can expect to spend an hour or two a day studying a foreign language only to spend the rest of his/her everyday life speaking his/her native tongue.

I can read and write Spanish a lot better than I can speak it, mostly because I find it to be very intimidating. Knowing I don’t speak well makes me more embarrassed than anything to make mistakes and sound stupid. Seeing as how I have to use Spanish everyday, I have quickly gotten over that. The only way I am going to learn and get better is to practice, right?

However, what you may not realize is that Chilean Spanish is a completely different language in and of itself. Most Chileans would not consider their language Spanish at all…just Chilean. They drop a lot of their endings, especially with words ending in ‘s.’ For example, there is a stop on the Metro called “Los Leones,” but when the conductor announces it on the speaker, it sounds like, “Lo Leone.”

Not sure how familiar you all are with Spanish conjugations, but the tú (you) present tense form always ends in an ‘s.’ Not only do they not pronounce the ‘s,’ but they change it so that the ending sounds like “ay.” For example, to say “How are you?” in Spanish, you would normally say, “¿Cómo estás?” but in Chilean you would say, “¿Cómo estái?”

Another interesting aspect to this language is its use of modismos or idioms. Words or phrases used here don’t even translate to other dialects of Spanish spoken elsewhere. The funniest one I’ve encountered is the use of the word “puta.” Puta, in any other sense of the word, means whore in Spanish. In Chile, however, puta is used much in the way that Americans use the word like…(in the Valley girl sense). When my friend first moved in with her Chilean roommate and he kept saying puta all the time, she wondered why he kept calling her a whore when he didn’t even know her! That issue quickly resolved itself as she discovered he was not, in fact, insinuating such a thing.

The jury is out on whether this is the best place to learn Spanish or quite possibly the worst, but I have been assured by multiple Chileans that if you can master the Chilean dialect, you can understand Spanish anywhere. Here’s hoping…