"¡Que torta!" La cultura de los Ticos

In my Spanish class we’ve devoted a lot of time to idiomatic phrases of Costa Rica and other Latin American countries. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear the phrases “Gracias a Díos”, “¡Que torta!” and “Santo Díos” from my Spanish professor. Gracias a Díos of course means “Thanks to God”. Santo Díos is more equivalent to “oh my god” or “holy crap” (at least in my vernacular). Que torta is a phrase that means “how awful” or “how horrible” and is usually accompanied by a hand movement kind of like when you shake your hands to get the excess water off after washing them, but the Ticos have it down to such an art that their fingers hit together and make a snapping sound. I can’t make my fingers move like that at all!

The nickname “Tico” for the Costa Rican people comes from their penchant to add the diminutive suffix “-ito” or “-ita” on the end of all kinds of words. It can imply a tiny amount, like using pequeñito instead of pequeño. Sometimes when explaining an activity we’re about to do in class, our professor will say, “Momentito, momentito” which in English would translate as “hold on, wait a minute” or something along those lines. Alternatively, it also implies a caring attitude or something of a nickname. Hijito roughly means “dear little son” or “little son”. My professor has used the diminutive endings on our names as well. She has called me Reesita and I remember hearing her call another of my classmates Adamito.

While caring, Costa Ricans are also very polite. Anyone who has studied Spanish knows that there are five main ways to conjugate verbs (I, you informal, he/she/you formal, we, you all/them) except in Spain, where they also use vos and vosotros. Vos is a more formal version of tú (you informal) and is an intermediary step between tú and Usted (you formal). At first I was very worried that perhaps I had heard wrong all these years and that vosotros was in fact used outside of Spain. But I was just confusing myself. Ticos don’t conjugate verbs using vosotros, but they do use vos in place of tú in certain situations. For example, my host mom has used vos when speaking to me. I’ve also heard vos used by this older gentleman who has this nifty independent food cart right on the school grounds. He asks his customers what they want with “¿Y vos?”. (And you?) I think it’s cool.