Las boquitas del viernes
Friday evening in Zona 1 of Guatemala City: five friends, a table at doña Tere's, boquitas arriving in little plates, a car that has broken down again, a neighbour listening in, and nobody with any money until the fifteenth.
Reinforces vocabulary from Guatemalan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
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The Scene
A Friday at doña Tere’s does more for a learner’s Guatemalan than a chapter of grammar. In one evening the table runs through muchá, fíjese que, qué clavo, a saber, cabal, chilero, sho, shute, cerote, pisto, codo and ¿va? — and opens on usted before settling into vos, without anybody noticing the switch. Ale’s broken car supplies the plot; the boquitas supply everything else.
Vocabulary Highlights
- muchá — hey, everyone: muchá, from muchachos and addressed to any group.
- fíjese que — the cushion slipped under every piece of bad news in the country.
- el clavo — a problem, a jam: clavo. “Qué clavo” is the sympathetic groan.
- a saber — who knows, no idea. A shrug in two syllables.
- cabal — exactly, quite right. Emphatic agreement, shared with El Salvador.
- las boquitas — the little plates that come with the beer, and the reason nobody eats first.
- chilero — great: chilero. And canche for the fair-haired friend, used as a name.
- sho / shute — shh, and the nosy one: shute. Both carry the sh that Castilian lost and Guatemala kept.
- cerote — mate, or a serious insult: cerote. Tone and friendship do all the work.
- el pisto — money: pisto, shared with Honduras and El Salvador. And codo for the friend who never buys a round.
- ¿va? — the Guatemalan tag: right? all right? — closing an offer or checking you agree.
Read the Guatemalan Spanish survival guide for the three-pronoun system behind all of this, or the Guatemala hub for the country’s full linguistic map.
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.