I’ve found that most people in Tamarindo speak a practical form of Spanglish. The locals know the basics of conversational English because they have to offer the tourists the bare essential staples: bread, water, access to the bathroom, two-for-one beers at happy hour, and gram bags of 100% pure Columbian boogie sugar. Those who come to visit on vacation, ghostly pale and wearing ridiculous safari hats for no discernable reason, dust off their limited vocabulary from tenth grade Espanol classes. The language is butchered mercilessly on a daily basis on both sides. The French and Italians who live in town pick up Spanish very quickly, the Canadians and German do a serviceable job, and the Argentinians only have to tweak their dialect. But the Gringos who relocate down here are shamefully unmotivated to learn. There are plenty of salty dog ex-pats who came down here 5 years ago to evade the IRS or because they couldn’t get laid in the states, and still only know a few basic phrases, which I find ridiculous. Only a few Americans in Tama speak English well, like Rusty who owns Donna’s Kitchen restaurant. When asked he’ll attribute his competence to the fact that he married a Tica, so if he wanted to understand when the girl’s family bad-mouthed him, or needed to keep up when he was being yelled at in rapid-fire Espanol by his wife, he was forced to learn quickly.
I just stumble my way through it. Every day I practice the basic Spanish phrases I know on the street, in the restaurants, or when visiting the jail, and write a few new words in my Mario Brothers notebook that I bought at the Italian’s grocery store. I’m pretty sure I offend everyone within earshot with my linguistic massacre, but I figure in another 6 months I’ll be pretty damn conversationally fluent. For now, if in doubt, I just make up a new word with an -0 on the end and assume it must be correct. I also find it helps to speak very quickly, displaying ultimate confidence. Gringos speak slowly and with much thought, like a motorcycle sputtering up a steep hill, so by speaking super fast, even when my pronunciation and grammar are awful, I hope they’ll think I’m from some lost Costa Rican indigenous tribe that live deep in the jungle and look like blonde Albinos with bald spots and big butts. Maybe I’m not fooling anyone, but I get points for trying, and that’s the key thing.
The locals want to practice their English too, or show off when they speak it well, so my conversations are often a ping-pong match of two or even three languages. The funniest thing is when I pass someone on the street and want to be friendly and say hi, but we both have no idea which language the other person speaks. Are they French? A Tico? Argentinian? A gringo from California? Maybe an Italian? Or even an Israeli? No one knows. So of course the default language is to say hi and speak in Spanish. I’ve had whole awkward bumbling conversations back and forth in terrible Spanish before we realized that we’re both Americans. I avoid speaking English whenever possible with the tourists because I’m trying to permeate this whole “local surfer dude” thing, and I’m sick of them asking me directions to the beach (here’s a hint – turn left and look up and down for 100 miles – you can’t miss it) so I’ll keep talking Spanish until they get confused enough to say fuck it and walk off.
After a few weeks in town I decided it was time to seek out local help with learning the language correctly. When looking for a Spanish instructor one would think I’d visit the Wyra language academy, or maybe look for ads for private tutors on Costa Rica’s Craigs List, but I chose to enlist the services of the street hustlers who patrol in front of the Voodoo bar. They alternate between bringing tourists into the hostels and getting a kickback, signing them up for fishing trips or surf lessons, directing them to the right taxi driver, selling empanadas on the beach that their mother made, or peddling cocaine at the bars at night. They speak bits and pieces and slang of about five different languages, but probably can’t read or write. Their vocation of hustling and scamming tourists requires them to have silver tongues that could charm the panties off of a Pastor’s wife. It’s impossible not to befriend these guys if you’re in town for longer than 3 hours, or more accurately they latch onto you, though I’d trust them about as much as I’d trust Bernie Madoff. Every time you walk by they ask you where you are going, and you have to craft your answers carefully. If you flat-out lie you’ll surely get caught, because it’s such a small town and they seem to be in ten places simultaneously at any given time. Telling the truth is definitely not an option because you’ll end up with one of these scrubs tagging along for the rest of the day or sleeping on your couch and milking you for every dollar you have. So I attempt to confuse them when they ask what I’m up to. I look frustrated and wave my arms vigorously in four different directions while telling them I have to “go to Huacas to feed the dogs at Carla’s house because the truck needs to get fixed in Liberia this weekend and I have to pay my rent but she’s not at the office.” Huh? That probably won’t shake ‘em - they’ll just look at me quizzitively for a second as they calculate their prospects of getting a free beer out of the whole operation, then announce that they want to come along. So I resort to my Plan B: I tell them that I have to work. That will get ‘em backpedaling, because one thing I’ve learned is that Ticos are allergic to work. But this particular day I wandered through the middle of town and told them that I was looking to take Spanish lessons. “No problem, my friend!” they responded. They sat me down at Junior’s Cocktails, an outdoor tikki bar, and started my formal classes. Instead of conjugating verbs and speaking of the past tense they drilled me on curse words and common Tico sayings. We studied hard deep into the night, and for only the price of twelve Imperial beers I got schooled on all of the important Spanish street sayings, or Pachuco, as their slang is called.
It became apparent that learning the Tico language is all about understanding their everyday profanities and exclamations. So I walk around cursing and yapping like a pot-peddling surfer. Mostly I still don’t know what the hell I’m saying, but I’m living proof that you could teach a gringo some choice curse words and colloquialisms and he’ll be able to make his way around everyday life seamlessly. “Mi escuela es la calle,” as they say; my school is the street.
For instance, someone may call something “bueno” (good), but the Tico will call it “Super bueno”. They can add “super” to anything to demonstrate their passion for a subject. It goes so far as to deny common sense – a common phrase is “Super tipico,” or literally “super typical.” Now admittedly I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but how the hell can something be super typical? That’s like saying something is “amazingly average.” But somehow Ticos find a way to add their passion to even the mundane.
The true Pachuco includes a healthy does of “mop’s” (pronounced ‘mope’) when addressing a young guy or a good friend. “Mop” is short for “mopri” which is supposedly “primo,” or “cousin” backwards. I’ve been told that there was a phase in the 90’s when everyone was saying words backwards as slang. I wrote it down one day and it doesn’t match up, but regardless if you call someone mop then you gain a little bit of Pachuco local cred. There is no female version like “mopette,” I found out quickly when the girl I was talking to thought I wanted to rent a moped.
I think I overdid it with the whole “mop” thing a little, including calling it to the cleaning lady at my apartment and the seventy year old mail carrier, and in doing so inadvertently neglected my “mae’s,” a slang term most similar to our “dude.” I’ve started working on balancing out my “mop’s” to “mae’s” so I could achieve the optimal ratio soon, approximately 347:296 on a daily basis.
Of course “Pura Vida” is the national saying, which means “Pure Life.” They’ll say it all the time, as a greeting, a goodbye, or if someone asks you how you’re doing. They love this saying so much, and what it stands for, that they’ll even say it after they rob you blind and stab you in the gizzard with a rusty sugar spoon. Pura vida!
I found out very quickly that “Sarlpe” is a saying for the last drink of the night, sort of like saying “ah hell, let’s have one more before we leave – why not?” Unfortunately the “Sarlpe” can extend the night from 6:30 pm to quarter after four in the morning. The next day you will say “Estoy de Goma,” to let everyone know you have a hangover. “Tuanis” means cool, or “too nice,” and “Chisme” means gossip, which is by far the favorite recreational activity of everyone in Tamarindo.
On the street you might hear “cabron” (bastard) or “joder” (fuck) or “mierda” (shit), but the true magic is how they combine them. For instance, one of the best curses I’ve ever heard is “Me cago en la leche,” or “I shit in the milk,” which means something along the lines of “damn I have bad luck.” I’d say that’s accurate if you have shit in your milk. “Besame el culo,” means “kiss my ass”, and to call someone “carapicha” means they’re a dick-face.
By far the most popular expletive is “puta,” which means “whore” or bitch.” But ‘puta’ is almost always used in conjunction with other expletives, like “ray-puta” pronounced with a huge rolling W for the R like you are letting all of you life’s frustrations out on that poor little letter, or “hijo-de-puta.” You hear this constantly on the street and in everyday life, and whenever possible it’s best to also bring someone’s mom into the equation. Women may pronounce “jue pucha” because they think it sounds a little bit classier, though the jury is still out on that one.
But whatever you do don’t call someone “estupido” or an “idota”– the record will scratch to a stop and everyone will stare at you in disbelief; even drunk farmers carrying machetes will hold a hand to their mouths in shock like debutantes clutching their pearls. For some reason calling someone dumb in Spanish is a very very bad thing, but it’s ok to call everyone and everything a bastard or a son of a bitch or say that their mother serves chocolate milk. Go figure.
I was told not to say “Que tal,” too much – which means “what’s up,” because it has somewhat of a feminine or even gay connotation here in Guanacaste. They told me not to appear too friendly when meeting another guy at a bar or club – keep your cool and only nod at him slightly with indifference. So anytime I meet a guy in town I squish up my face and try to look mean, though mostly it just looks like I’m perpetually constipated. They usually feel sorry for me and advise me to try more fruit in my diet.
I’ve heard that you’re really getting to know a language when you dream in it. Most of my dreams don’t have dialogue in them anyways, just a lot of grunts and some bad 70’s music, but I did stub my toe really bad once and surprise myself by unleashing a sting of curses in Spanish that would make a Nicaraguan freedom fighter blush. I was infinitely proud of myself as I hopped up and down in pain.
There are lots of similar words and it can get very confusing to keep up. For instance, the word “Casado,” means married, the word “Cansado,” means tired, and a “Casada,” is a typical Costa Rican dish of rice, beans, salad, and chicken or fish. Damn that’s frustrating. I could understand why being married would make you really tired, but I don’t think there’s a formal correlation. I still get it all jumbled up and order a plate of fish only to have the waitress think I just proposed to her and then tell me to go take a nap.
No matter how much I struggle to learn the language it still can’t be as bad as my first visit to Costa Rica years ago. I was staying in an apartment just outside of San Jose, the capitol city, and every day I played basketball at the local park. The pleasant mornings always turned to steamy tropical afternoons, and I sweated bullets from running up and down the court. It was pure heaven to buy some pineapple or coconut water from the lady who pushed a cart into the park every day. She set up shop under a tree in the shade and sliced fresh pineapple right there and handed it to me in a plastic baggie. Biting into it gave instant sweet relief from the heat. I was so excited to jump feet first into the Spanish language that I listened to others saying the word for ‘pineapple’ and repeated it every day when I ordered from her.
“Por favor, una pinga.” I would say, slowly and carefully, while holding up one finger and keeping a big cheesy smile on my face. This was so great – I was learning Spanish! I was living the dream! The lady did a double take and looked at me really funny. I repeated my request again, slower and LOUDER, enunciating every letter in case she was partially deaf from a horrific childhood tetherball accident. I pointed my one finger in her face and wiggled it around so there would be mistake that I wanted exactly one pinga – one pineapple. The cherubic senorita gave me a look of disbelief like I had just bitch-slapped a nun. What was her deal? I thought people were supposed to be friendly in Costa Rica. But eventually she reached down and bagged up my pineapple slices and handed them to me, keeping one suspicious eye on me at all times. She must be so impressed with an American like me that she was intimidated, I thought. Poor thing. I winked at her, bit into the succulent fruit, and went on my way.
The next day I played basketball again and asked her for “una pinga,” one pineapple, with the same schoolboy enthusiasm. For some unknown reason she never warmed up to me; she just looked at me funny and handed me the baggie like she didn’t want to get too close in case I infect her with something. I was determined to win her over, so every day I would smile bigger and speak louder as I shoved my one finger in the air and asked for my snack.
About a week later a local guy who I played ball with, nicknamed Tony the Tico, was with me when I ordered. He jumped back with a look of horror on his face when I ordered my usual “una pinga.” Tony ushered me aside and in soft tones, so the other guys wouldn’t hear, explained to me that the Spanish word for pineapple was “pina” not “pinga.” Oh, ok. Gracias, I told him, but still wondered why it was such a big deal that he needed to pull me aside. Pina. I could remember that – easy enough. Out of curiosity I asked if pinga meant anything, which was what I had been ordering. Sure Tony said, looking concerned that I might be a tad bit touched in the head - pinga means penis, he demonstrated by grabbing his man junk. Uh oh. I guess I was ordering penis – one penis – from the poor lady all those times. Oops. Thank God she only gave me pineapple!
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