El almuerzo en Quito
Three weeks into Quito, Sara goes down for the three-dollar set lunch with her flatmate and her flatmate's ñaño, learns that a favour is asked with "dame trayendo", and finds out what the city does at six in the evening.
Reinforces vocabulary from Ecuadorian Spanish: A Survival Guide.
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The Scene
Sara has been in Quito three weeks — long enough to stop apologising for the stairs, not long enough to follow a family lunch. One three-dollar almuerzo teaches her the fixed grammar of sopa, segundo, jugo, postre, the two Quichua interjections her body will learn before her brain does, and the construction that no course had mentioned: dame trayendo, the Ecuadorian way of asking for a favour. By the time the fog comes down off Pichincha at six, she has the right word ready.
Vocabulary Highlights
- el almuerzo — the fixed-price set lunch: soup, main, juice, pudding, usually two or three dollars. Ecuador has used the US dollar since 2000.
- dame trayendo — “bring me, would you”. Dar + gerund, calqued from Quichua, is how favours are asked in Ecuador; the guide unpacks it in full.
- nomás / -ito — the highland softeners. Siga nomás, un ratito, ahisito, un poquito. Not about size — about not imposing.
- ñaño / ñaña — brother, sister, or the friend who counts as one: ñaño / ñaña.
- achachay / arrarray — the Quichua interjections for cold and for heat: achachay, arrarray.
- chuta — the safe, everyday “damn”: chuta.
- full — loads of, very, and never inflected: full.
- chuchaqui / chumarse / chiro — hangover, to get drunk, broke: chuchaqui, chumado, chiro.
- el man / la man — that guy, that woman, gender carried entirely by the article: el man / la man.
Read the Ecuadorian Spanish survival guide for the grammar behind dame trayendo, or the Ecuador hub for how the sierra and the coast split the country in two.
This scene only scratches the surface — the full chapter is in Daily Life and Culture, part of our Speak Spanish Like a Native book series.