{"id":11861,"date":"2015-12-01T17:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11861"},"modified":"2015-12-01T17:00:59","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T17:00:59","slug":"a-guide-to-paisa-spanish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11861","title":{"rendered":"A Guide to Paisa Spanish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is guest post written by Connor Grooms, who learned Spanish to a B1 conversational level in a month and made the film, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-RvhtpRnZWQ\">Spanish in a Month: A Documentary About Language Learning<\/a>\u201d about it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-RvhtpRnZWQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A few months ago, I learned Spanish to a B1 conversational level in a month while living in Medell\u00edn, Colombia. If you want to see the whole story and see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-RvhtpRnZWQ\">how to learn Spanish fast<\/a>, like I did, watch the documentary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-RvhtpRnZWQ\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But all Spanish is not the same, and I learned a specific breed &#8211; &#8220;<em>paisa<\/em>&#8221; Spanish. <em>Paisa<\/em> refers to people from Antioquia, the region where Medell\u00edn is. <\/p>\n<p>So, below I will explain how some things are said differently here. These are trends I&#8217;ve noticed, and by no means is the definite &#8220;how things are&#8221; &#8211; which doesn&#8217;t really exist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Basics<\/strong><br \/>\nYou will almost never hear &#8220;<em>de nada<\/em>&#8221; or &#8220;<em>adios<\/em>&#8221; &#8211; instead, your welcome is &#8220;<em>con gusto<\/em>&#8221; or &#8220;<em>con mucho gusto<\/em>&#8220;, or literally, with pleasure. This is also how you say nice to meet you. &#8220;<em>Adios<\/em>&#8221; is only really used for long periods of time &#8211; at least a few weeks. Instead, people use &#8220;<em>ciao<\/em>&#8220;, mostly, or &#8220;<em>hasta luego<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>The phrase &#8220;es que&#8221; is used a lot &#8211; literally meaning &#8220;it&#8217;s that&#8230;&#8221;, it starts most explanations.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s common to exchange several greetings before ever saying anything of real meaning. &#8220;Como estas&#8221; is still extremely common, but the &#8220;paisa&#8221; way is &#8220;bien o no&#8221;, or, &#8220;bien o que&#8221;, which literally means &#8220;good or not?&#8221;, &#8220;good or what?&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Between friends, another common greeting is &#8220;<em>\u00bfque mas?<\/em>&#8220;, which means &#8220;what more&#8221; &#8211; and outside of a greeting, it still means that &#8211; but as a greeting, it means &#8220;what&#8217;s up?&#8221;. &#8220;<em>\u00bfQue tal?<\/em>&#8220;, which is used elsewhere as well, is also used.<\/p>\n<p>If you bump into someone, need to excuse yourself in a crowd, make an error, or otherwise do something that would render an &#8220;sorry, excuse me&#8221; or a &#8220;oh! sorry&#8221;, use &#8220;<em>que pena<\/em>&#8220;, which literally means &#8220;what shame&#8221;. If something makes you embarrased, you&#8217;d use &#8220;<em>me da pena<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Affirmatives<\/strong><br \/>\nIf you come to Medell\u00edn and want to sound local, drop the &#8220;<em>si<\/em>&#8220;, and use one of three main affirmatives:<\/p>\n<p><em>Claro<\/em> = of course. This is used a LOT.<br \/>\n<em>Cierto<\/em> = right\/yes<br \/>\n<em>Eso<\/em> = literally means &#8220;that&#8221;, but it&#8217;s used as a general affirmative, in a wide variety of situations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Common filler words<\/strong><br \/>\nAnyone who has done some research on Paisa Spanish has probably heard of the heavy use of the word &#8220;<em>pues<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Pues<\/em>&#8221; literally means, &#8220;well&#8221;, and it&#8217;s still used as such, but it&#8217;s also used as a filler. You could add it to almost any part of any sentence and it would make sense &#8211; it&#8217;s almost meaningless. It&#8217;s like an &#8220;uhhhm&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>O que<\/em>&#8221; is another common one &#8211; it&#8217;s added to the end of lots of sentences to form a question. This is almost as common as <em>pues<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Paisas are also fond of throwing a &#8220;<em>que<\/em>&#8221; in front of adjectives to express a feeling. So instead of &#8220;<em>chevere<\/em>&#8221; (cool), they will say &#8220;<em>que chevere<\/em>&#8221; (how cool\/ a stronger &#8220;cool&#8221;). This is part of the culture of everything being great, and the common exaggeration of everything, good or bad. Speaking in a bland &#8220;it was kinda cool&#8221;, has the potential to leave Paisas bored.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Local slang<\/strong><br \/>\nSomething (generally) uneducated young women will do is transform many words to end in &#8220;<em>is<\/em>&#8220;. For example, instead of &#8220;<em>hola<\/em>&#8220;, they will say, &#8220;<em>holis<\/em>&#8220;, and instead of &#8220;<em>raro<\/em>&#8220;, they will say &#8220;<em>raris<\/em>&#8220;. It&#8217;s very improper and actually quite annoying to hear, but if you hear it, that&#8217;s whats going on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Amigo<\/em>&#8221; is rarely used between friends. Instead, people use &#8220;<em>parce \/ parcero<\/em>&#8220;, which basically means &#8220;dude\/mate\/bro&#8221; (use this and you&#8217;re instantly better friends with any guy, trust me). If you&#8217;re good friends, you&#8217;ll even use &#8220;<em>guevon<\/em>&#8220;, which is offensive if you don&#8217;t know someone. Worse than <em>guevon<\/em>, there is &#8220;<em>marica<\/em>&#8220;, which basically means fag, which is definitely offensive if you don&#8217;t know someone, but is sort of teasing if you&#8217;re good friends.<\/p>\n<p>There are few ways to say &#8220;awesome&#8221; &#8211; the most common would be &#8220;<em>bacano<\/em>&#8220;. If something is REALLY awesome, you use &#8220;<em>brutal<\/em>&#8220;, which is the equivalent of &#8220;sick&#8221; in American English.<\/p>\n<p>This should get you sounding paisa when you come to the amazing city of Medell\u00edn. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-RvhtpRnZWQ\">Click here to see the documentary<\/a> I made while learning Spanish in a month here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is guest post written by Connor Grooms, who learned Spanish to a B1 conversational level in a month and made the film, \u201cSpanish in a Month: A Documentary About Language Learning\u201d about it. A few months ago, I learned Spanish to a B1 conversational level in a month while living in Medell\u00edn, Colombia. If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,13,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-language-learning","category-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}