Na guará
Wow, blimey, good grief — the all-purpose exclamation of Lara state, now national.
Related lesson: Venezuelan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
¡Na guará, qué grande está tu hijo!
Blimey, your son has got big!
Na guará, se me olvidó la cita del médico.
Oh no, I forgot the doctor's appointment.
¿Na guará, y ese carro nuevo?
Well, well — where did that new car come from?
What It Actually Means
Na guará (written na’guará, naguará or na guará — nobody has agreed) is an exclamation covering surprise, admiration, dismay and mock outrage, with intonation doing all the sorting. It is to Barquisimeto what ¡órale! is to Mexico City and ¡hostia! is to Madrid: a noise that means whatever the face making it means.
Where It Comes From
It is the signature of Lara state and its capital Barquisimeto, and the “na” is generally taken to be a worn-down nada. What guará is doing there is genuinely unresolved — proposals range from an indigenous word to a euphemistic swerve away from a coarser one, and none has been demonstrated. If you are told the definitive origin, you are being told a theory.
How Natives Use It
Regionally first and nationally second. A larense uses it several times a day; the rest of Venezuela uses it deliberately, often with a smile, the way an Englishman drops a “by ’eck” — the regional flavour is part of the point. It stands alone (¡na guará!), opens a sentence (na guará, qué calor) and stretches for emphasis (naaa guará). Length is meaning: the longer the vowel, the bigger the reaction.
Common Pitfall
Do not treat it as neutral national slang. Used by a foreigner in Caracas it reads as a party trick — an enjoyable one, but a trick — and in Lara it reads as a compliment, so know which effect you are after. It is clean enough for any company, though the delivery is emphatic by nature, so it belongs to conversation rather than to writing of any kind.