Po
Chile's all-purpose sentence-ending particle — a worn-down 'pues' that adds emphasis, obviousness or resignation.
Related lesson: Chilean Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Sí po, obvio que voy.
Yeah of course, obviously I’m going.
Ya po, apúrate.
Come on then, hurry up.
No sé po, pregúntale a ella.
I dunno, ask her.
What It Actually Means
Po is what four centuries of fast talking did to pues. It carries no dictionary meaning of its own; it colors the sentence it ends — adding emphasis, stating the obvious, shrugging, or gently pushing. Learn to hear it and Chilean Spanish suddenly has punctuation.
Where It Comes From
Straight from pues, via pue’ and then po — the same erosion that Mexico stopped at pues/pos and Spain kept whole. Chile went furthest, and made it obligatory.
How Natives Use It
Only at the end of a phrase, never at the start, and above all in the fixed pairs: sí po, no po, ya po, claro po, obvio po. Combine it with the other national tags and you get the full sound of Santiago: “Ya po weón, ¿vamos o no vamos?”
Common Pitfall
It is unmistakably informal and unmistakably Chilean — charming in a bar, wrong in a job interview. And don’t confuse it with the Argentine or Spanish pues at the head of a sentence: in Chile it lands at the end, always, and it never means “because”.