How to speak like a real Uruguayan
*Disclaimer* I am not Uruguayan and I don’t pretend to know everything about the language. I just want to share my love for the “castellano rioplatense” and some things I learned about it as I’ve now been living in Uruguay for 4 months :)
In Uruguay, “Y” and “LL” is pronounced “ch/sh”. Like for example, “playa” -> placha, “tortilla” -> torticha, “calle” -> cache, “yo” -> cho. It’s a bit difficult to understand at first, but after a few weeks I got used to it and I even started to speak like that!
Uruguayans often end their sentences with “ta”, it basically means “that’s it”, like the French “voilà” or can also mean “OK”
They use “che” a lot to call someone, to get their attention
In Uruguay, like in most South American countries, people don’t use “tu” and “vosotros”. Instead of “tu”, they use “vos”, and instead of “vosotros”, they use “ustedes”
As they use vos and ustedes, the conjugations are a bit different too, it’s called being “voseantes”. For example, you may have learnt in Spanish class that “you can” is said “tu puedes”. But in Uruguay, they would say “vos podés”. It’s the same for you say: “tu dices” becomes “vos decís”. And it goes like this for every verb with a diphthong. Also “tu eres” would be “vos sos”.
Re is a prefix Uruguayans use to put an emphasis on the world and to show that something is great, for example I heard a lot of times “relindo”, “recool”, “rebien”, “reloco”…
Uruguayans often greet people with a friendly “Holiiii”. It’s a casual way to say hello, like when English speakers say “hey” instead of hello.
Uruguayans also tend to “eat” the end of the words, for instance instead of saying “para”, they would say “pa’” and they sometimes don’t say the s at the end of the words, like “vamo’” instead of “vamos”
At first I thought they only said it for football (vamos arriba la Celeste) but in reality they say it all the time, for example when a teacher wants to motivate us he would say “vamo’ arriba”, it’s a bit like “let’s keep going”
“Everything’s alright”, “it’s cool”, it’s a little idiom they say all the time
Short for “tranquilo”, which means cool/chill. “Como estas?” “Tranqui y tu?”
Literally, “me mataste” means “you killed me” and “me muero” means “I’m dying”. As I’m French it seems normal to me because I often say stuff like “tu m’a tué”, “mort de rire” etc but for people from other countries: don’t worry your friend is not dying it’s just a way to exagerate in conversations.
It’s one of the Uruguayan idiom I love the most, it basically mean “it’s a lovely day”, they say it all the time and it’s super cute :)
Championes- Zapatos deportivos (sneakers)
La Celeste - The national football team
La Garra charrua - Their way of playing football
Mantequa - Mantequilla (butter)
Frutilla - Fresa (strawberry)
Guri - Chico (Kid)
Pila - Mucho (a lot)
Bondi - Autobús (bus)
Un bolazo - Una mentira (a lie/an exageration)
Como andas? - Como estas? (How are you?)
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