El colmado de la esquina
Seven in the evening on a Santo Domingo corner: plastic chairs, a game of dominoes, bachata at full volume, credit written in a notebook, a bag of víveres for Sunday's sancocho — and everybody talking at once.
Reinforces vocabulary from Dominican Spanish: A Survival Guide.
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The Scene
A colmado at seven in the evening is Dominican Spanish in its natural habitat, and this one runs through most of it: klk, un chin, funda, ahorita, fiar, tato, carajito, mai, dique, quillao, concho, tíguere, víveres, habichuelas and pariguayo — plus a domino game loud enough to be heard two corners away. Nothing happens in it, which is precisely the point: the colmado is where the neighbourhood keeps its evening.
Vocabulary Highlights
- el colmado — the corner shop that runs the neighbourhood: colmado, including the credit book.
- ¿qué lo que? / klk — the greeting, spoken and typed: ¿qué lo que?.
- un chin — a little, a drop: un chin.
- ahorita — later, in a while. Not now. Not in this country.
- la funda — the plastic bag. “Bolsa” is somebody else’s word.
- tato — all good, agreed, done.
- dique — supposedly, allegedly: dique, with the eyebrow built in.
- quillao — annoyed, in a strop.
- el concho — the shared taxi on a fixed route: concho.
- el tíguere / el pariguayo — the operator and the wallflower: tíguere, pariguayo. Between them they cover most of the men on the street.
- los víveres / las habichuelas — the root vegetables and the beans, and Sunday’s sancocho.
Read the Dominican Spanish survival guide for the deletion rules behind all of this, or the Dominican Republic hub for how the three regions divide the island.
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.