I try to keep a list of new Spanish words I learn. Sometimes the way I learn them is more interesting (and funny) than the words themselves. Here are a few that may be unique to Puerto Rico or were just new to me. Many of them have false cognates or multiple meanings which confused me at first. While I consider myself to be fluent in Spanish I am constantly learning. I don’t think it will ever stop.
La mañosa changona sin postizos pero con pantallas de pluma
Mañosa – A picky or spoiled female person. When I won’t eat much of a certain food like fried foods, I sometimes get called this. But I thought at first it had something to do with my hands (manos).
Changa/Changona – Prideful woman who likes things a certain way. In the same vein as mañosa, this is another term of affection when vacilando y bromeando (having fun and joking) with each other. Chango/changa can also mean monkey, so I thought they were calling me a monkey!
Comelón – Glutton/pig. On the other hand, Britton eats just about anything and is called the comelón. Giving silly nicknames to each other is a fun game here.
Revolú – Puerto Rican word for a big mess. This is a very handy word for a literal mess or a figurative one. I think it probably comes from revolution. Which would probably cause a big mess at first.
Pantallas -Earrings. I had only heard of pantalla as a screen, but here they can also apparently be dangling earrings.
Coraje – Anger. I always thought it meant courage, but here in Puerto Rico almost always when it is used it is to describe when someone gets or got mad.
Botar – To throw out/throw away. When I first heard this I thought they were saying votar which means to vote. Perhaps nowadays in most elections voting is like throwing out the trash…haha
Echar – to pour or fill. Like when filling up with gas. Not etch like I initially thought.
Bochorno – syn: Vergüenza – Shame, guilt, embarrassment. I thought bochorno meant something about being drunk (borracho) which I supposed could happen if you get too drunk! Or buongiorno like good morning in Italy.
Dale – Go on, go ahead. This is a very useful term and often used, but when I first heard it I couldn’t help but think of someone in Spanish pronouncing the name Dale.
Menudo: This is about the funniest thing ever
Menudo – Change in your pocket. All the quarters, nickels and dimes, etc. Also the name of a famous Puerto Rican boy band that launched the career of Ricky Martin. Here menudo is not the tripe soup of Mexico like I initially thought it was! You may also hear “más a menudo” which means “more often than not.”
Chilla/chia – Woman on the side. Mistress. I was discussing how great semillas de chia (chia seeds) are for your health and my friend explained the alternative meaning of chia here in Puerto Rico! I assume it could also go for chio too. Though chillo is a type of common fish here -snapper to be exact.
Obsequio -Gift/present. I thought of the English word obsequious which has sort of a negative connotation of being submissive and servile to an extreme degree. But here the word obsequio is virtually interchangeable with regalo.
Postizo -false, fake. I had absolutely no idea what someone was talking about when they asked me in Spanish if I had fallen on my face and had to have postizos. I later learned they were asking about my teeth and saying that they looked too perfect to be real. haha.
See what I mean by how difficult learning a language like Spanish can be?! So many different meanings and cognates. Had you heard these? Did I translate and understand them correctly? Any other meanings or funny words I should be aware of? Language is yet another adventure here in Puerto Rico.
If you found this helpful, here’s a couple older posts about Puerto Rican Spanish and vocabulary.
Mamisonga-extremely good looking and sexy woman
Papisongo-extremely good looking and “hot” man
Yes. Spanish is very difficult for that same reason; funny enough, most times the wrong use of a word means something sexual in each country.
It took me a while to get used to the Spanish in Spain. And it´s not cause of how they pronounce Z and C as TH in English. Tha´s relative. There are places where they even pronunce as TH the S while on Andalucía (South of the country) and Canary Islands they speak almost the same way as in Puerto Rico.
Not only are new words for things but I had to change the way I speak since, depending on the use of the verb or how you structure the sentence it can mean that you just did that action or that it´s been a long time since that action took place.
For example:
“Te he dicho que salí de compras” /I told you I went shopping- means that I recently told you I went shopping.
“Te dije que salí de compras” (the way Puerto Ricans speak and most Latin American countries) means that it´s been a while since I went shopping.
Very subtle but makes all the difference.
Just some historical context. The early conquistadores, Columbus especially, drew most of their crews from the immediate area around the embarkation point (Andalusia). Once the riches of the new world were understood in Spain, the bulk of crews and colonists were drawn from Castile. Thus the earliest Spanish conquests (the Antilles) have pronunciation and grammatical constructions more akin to Andalusia than Castile. For example the use of “tu” rather than “vos” or the non use of irregular verb forms such as “vosotros soils”
I thought “echar” meant to throw, and couldn’t really understand “echar de menos” , a slangy “miss you” (?). I always liked the “aguas!” slang for watch out which supposedly referred to people throwing honey buckets out their upstairs windows and warning travelers below in the old daze. Many tourists got very embarrassed when they used “embarassada/o” for when they meant “tengo virguenza.”
Echar de menos just means I miss you. It´s the only way of saying it.
You can say “te extraño” or “me haces falta” also for I miss you. I wonder if echar de menos is sort of like hacer falta. Like I am filled up with less than usual when you are not around. I guess I did know that echar meant to throw also (though I use tirar mostly), but not to fill until recently.
For watch out you can also say “ojo” which is literally eye. I don’t hear “aguas” here though. Haha with embarrassado…a really good example of a false cognate.
Lester, that’s interesting about the slight changes in the sentence structure! I haven’t noticed that.
Deb, haha I love the papisongo/mamisonga words! I’m going to use those!
Chango is also the name of an endemic species of bird, called Mozambique de Puerto Rico (Quiscalus niger brachypterus) (Puerto Rican Grackle) . Everybody knows it here by the names “chango” or “pichón prieto”). “Pichón” means baby bird, but here in Puerto Rico we also use it to refer to any small bird; and “Prieto” means black. Here we don’t use “chango” to refer to a monkey. Monkey is ‘”mono” in Puerto Rico.
Puertorrican here to help out a bit. I’m from San Juan so my comment is based solely on what we use in the city. Changa is also VERY commonly used to refer to a whinny or extra sensitive person. Parranda is kinda like a party but it’s specifically a Christmas thing. People will go sing Christmas songs on your doorstep in the middle of the night and wake up so you can feed them and have a party. Crazy version of Christmas carolers I guess. Caco is basically a style. People who like reggaeton and like the urban scene dress, and act a different way. It’s like a street style if you must name it something. People who don’t like that type of scene/ music generally dislike cacos so they do think the suck. The rest is spot on!