Chama
A kid, a young person — Cuba's entry in the great Latin American competition to rename the young.
Related lesson: Cuban Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ese chama tiene quince años y ya resuelve más que yo.
That kid is fifteen and already gets hold of more than I do.
Los chamas están en el parque conectándose.
The kids are in the park getting online.
¿Y tu chama? —En la escuela hasta las cuatro.
'And your little one?' 'At school till four.'
What It Actually Means
A chama is a kid or a young person, roughly from primary school to the early twenties, and mi chama from a parent is simply “my child”. The fuller forms chamaco and chamaquito are equally Cuban and lean younger. Like most words in this slot it is warm rather than precise: un chama can be a nine-year-old or a twenty-year-old who is behaving like one.
Where It Comes From
Cuba’s chama belongs to a family that runs across the Caribbean and up into Mexico — Venezuela’s chamo, Mexico’s chamaco — and the family is usually traced to Nahuatl chamahua, “to fill out, to grow”. That derivation is comfortable for Mexico and harder to argue for an island Nahuatl never reached; the likeliest route is that the Mexican word travelled and Cuba clipped it. As with much Caribbean slang, the shortening is documented and the ultimate source is not.
How Natives Use It
Informally, constantly, and without condescension between adults: calling a twenty-five-year-old un chama is a comment on their inexperience, not an insult. It sits at the young end of a scale whose other end is temba, the Cuban middle-aged. Around the region the same slot is filled by Peru’s chibolo, Argentina’s pibe and Spain’s chaval — four words, one job, no overlap in territory.
Common Pitfall
Do not use it upward. Calling a colleague of thirty-five chama is a way of saying they do not count yet, which is occasionally the intention and rarely the effect you wanted. In writing, and to anyone’s parents, use muchacho, muchacha or niño — Cuban Spanish has all three and reaches for them the moment the register lifts.