by Eileen | May 27, 2014 | chile, language
Manejas el cachai? Whether you like it or not, your Spanish, as compared to other people’s Spanish, whether or not they are present, is a frequent topic of conversation in Chile. I have a friend that says that when people tell you you speak Spanish well, it means you...
by Eileen | Jun 10, 2013 | bicycle, chile, feria, food, language, travel
Sometimes you will be walking around in the feria, and you will see bags of pale green something in a bag. it will be double-knotted on top, and flattened into a squared-off brick inside its bag, as though you were going to make sandbags out of it to stem an...
by Eileen | Mar 4, 2013 | chile, language, Uncategorized
The shoemaker’s kids go barefoot. En casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo. This second one, which is a non-literal translation, or equivalent of the second, actually means “in the house of the blacksmith, there’s a wooden knife,” which really, who...
by Eileen | Sep 20, 2012 | chile, language, santiago
I have been unfair. Often, I make fun of strange English I see here in Chile. There are apostrophes from space, misspellings-a-million, Starbucks name-writing fails, and this gorgeous set of errors contained in one word that still makes one of my (Chilean) friends...
by Eileen | Sep 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
In case you didn’t know, Chile is mourning the loss of a famous television personality, along with 20 other people who went down in a plane crash on their way to the Juan Fernandez archipelago, a small collection of islands (among them Robinson Crusoe, which I...
