Spanish twist

Restaurant menu in Puerto Varas

To travel is to learn. At least if one wishes. Something I like to learn, sometimes temporarily, is the local language and expressions. In South America, the Spanish I knew from Europe got a twist and even this afternoon when arriving at a camp site, we got asked to install ourselves and then to go cancelar in the hut. For me cancelar would always be the same as the to cancel in English, but here in Chile it means something between to register and to pay.

The other day at the restaurant, I took this photo of the menu. Some nice Latin American words we learnt last few months appear:

Ave (Chile only) – chicken/pollo; Palta – avocado/aguacate; Morrón – peppers/pimiento

Other useful food words:

Frutilla – strawberries/fresas; Durazno – peach/mélocoton; Choclo – (type of) corn/maíz

If you plan to visit South America, I truly recommend to learn Spanish before, as it increases enormously the interaction and eases a lot the trip. We are often doing the translators to other tourists here and we feel a relief from locals when they see we speak their language.

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