ONCE/ Chistes y Errores (Jokes and Mistakes)

In Chile, I find myself making up corny jokes in Spanish, maybe because everything about the language is still fresh and surprising. So, for example, after watching cattle grazing on the ocean beaches north of Niebla:

“Porque la carne sabe más salteado en Chile que en los Estados Unidos? Porque en Chile las vacunas pasten en la playa.” (“Why does meat taste more salty in Chile than in the United States? Because in Chile the cattle graze on the beach.”)

The small cattle herd next to Huequecura, the cabañas on Lago Ranco, having their daily, late afternoon drink from the lake, sometimes followed by an hour-long stroll on the beach with the cowherd, his little grandson, and their dog. On the ocean beaches, it was also common to see cattle grazing on the beach, though mostly without anyone tending to them. Photo by Lucy Engle.

And noticing horse manure on a bridge named “Descarga” over the Río Calcurrupe just before it spills into Lago Ranco: “En la Puente Descarga, los caballos descargan.” (“On the Discharge Bridge, the horses discharge”—slightly funnier in Spanish than in English.)

Here are a couple of mistakes we made in Spanish (obviously there are many more we don’t know about, and polite Chileans have refrained from sharing): Michael went to the grocery store for a bit of beef to go into a soup I was making with zapallo y habas (winter squash and fresh fava beans), and he asked for “cuatro kilo de lomo.” Even in large grocery stores in Chile, meat is cut on the spot in the amount requested. So, Michael watched as the butcher pulled out a slab of beef and started stripping off the fat, then prepared to cut off a huge chunk, which cued Michael to quickly re-state the request as “un cuarto kilo”—a quarter of a kilo rather than four kilos! The butcher looked crestfallen but complied. This is a mistake compounded by the fact that Chileans regularly drop the final “s” from most words in spoken Spanish. So, “cuatro kilos,” the correct way to say “four kilos,” would still be pronounced kwa´tro ki´lo, with no “s” sound. It’s taken me a long time to begin to hear this not-quite-silent “s” in spoken Chilean. I say not quite silent because a tiny space is left for the unspoken “s.” An air “s,” a tiny breath. A fraction of the space a sound would take up if it were spoken. Silent letters in English, which take up no aural space at all, must be even more difficult to learn.

Tiny Café Hausmann to the left, here, of La Sombrería 'La Capital', a great hat store.

On our last visit to Café Hausmann in Valdivia for crudos, I ordered “tres por dos,” gesturing to Michael and then back to myself, intending to ask for three crudos for the two of us. I always try to add body language to reinforce my stumbling Spanish, and it fits in with the more expressive culture. The waitress, who was new to me, gestured back and repeated, “tres por dos,” nodding, so I thought I had done rather well. But when she returned again, after delivering the beers, and dropped a plate piled high with six crudos in the center of our table, I realized the misunderstanding. She heard “three for each of us,” reinforced by my gesture. I should have asked for “tres por todos,” “three, total,” with the gesture. I’d eaten two crudos at a sitting before but never three. We decided to eat the mistake this time, however, as it was our last chance to taste such excellent raw beef for a while.

—Jane