Cachái
You know? / Get it? — the tag Chileans hang on the end of half their sentences.
Related lesson: Chilean Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Es que no me gusta ese ambiente, ¿cachái?
It's just that I don't like that vibe, you know?
¿Cachái lo que te digo?
Do you get what I mean?
No cacho nada de computadores.
I don't understand a thing about computers.
What It Actually Means
¿Cachái? is the single most Chilean noise in the language: a tag meaning you know?, get it?, following me? that Chileans attach to the end of sentences with a frequency that startles outsiders. It comes from the verb cachar — to get, to catch on — conjugated in Chilean voseo.
Where It Comes From
From English to catch, borrowed and Hispanicized. The -ái ending is the giveaway: Chilean voseo turns -as endings into -ái (tú cachas → tú cachái, ¿estás? → ¿estái?), which is why the country sounds different to anyone who learned their voseo in Buenos Aires.
How Natives Use It
Constantly, and mostly as punctuation rather than a real question — nobody expects an answer to “…y llegué tarde, ¿cachái?”. It stacks happily with the other national particles: “Oye weón, ¿cachái que al final no fuimos, po?” Used sincerely, with rising intonation, it does ask whether you followed.
Common Pitfall
Don’t reach for it outside Chile: cachar is understood elsewhere, but in parts of the Southern Cone and the Caribbean it carries crude sexual meanings, and in Mexico it will simply confuse. Inside Chile, note that it is informal — you would not tag ¿cachái? onto a sentence addressed to a judge.