The beauty that comes with being Latinx is the diversity in the way we all look and speak. Something that might be oblivious to someone who isn’t a native Spanish speaker is the fact that every country has its own slang.
Usually, Spanish from Spain is deemed as the “formal” version of Spanish, the same way that people from England speak the “formal” version of English. Even classifying this as “formal” is kind of like walking on thin ice, however, it is the simplest comparison that could be made. One version of Spanish that is extremely unique comes from Colombia. Colombian Spanish is really beautiful to me because there is a certain rhythm that goes into it, the words flow nicely together. They use words like “bacano” and “ché vere” which both mean “cool”. These words are also widely used in Dominican culture and they mean the exact same thing. In Dominican culture, the most widely used word is “vaina”, which means any object or thing. This concept is extremely confusing to other countries since it is so general and encompasses any object that is being referenced to.
Something really interesting about certain meanings of words in one country, is that they can have the complete opposite definition in another. An example of this can be seen with the word “ahorita”. In Mexico, ahorita means now. However, in Dominican culture, it means later. If a person from Mexico and the Dominican Republic begin to communicate and forget the fact that these words have opposing meanings in both cultures, things can start to get really confusing.
Aside from creating slight confusion, the varieties of these slang terms show the immense amount of variety and culture amongst Latin America.
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