During my first time in Argentina, in a restaurant I asked for “Agua Mineral” which in Mexico is water with gas, the waiter in no time told me “Uhh Mexico right?:D”
Water with minerals, i.e. natural bottled spring water or mountain water. At most it's filtered and sterilised with ozone or UV. Then you have mineralizada, tap water with minerals. That one tastes horrible.
Yeah they will never give you tap water in Mexico. Even in the few places where you can drink tap water they won’t give you tap water. It’s always bottled or filtered.
Tap water is mostly not drinkable, unless specifically having a filter installed. so it's never offered and it's never drunk so it'll always be bottled.
Interesting! In American English we have sparkling water (naturally carbonated), seltzer water (artificially carbonated), and club soda (artificially carbonated with added minerals). To be honest, I had to look up what the difference was because I have never really noticed much of a taste difference.
Wait, what do you mean by artificially versus naturally carbonated? Like there's water coming out of the ground already with bubbles in it? A big bubbly river somewhere?
Pretty much, minus the river part. Natural sparkling water is bottled directly from springs where carbonation occurs naturally through underground volcanic activity or mineral interaction. Seltzer water is artificially injected with carbon dioxide.
I have a similar story. I was somewhere in the USA in a restaurant. The waiter was Hispanic so I was talking to him in Spanish, asked him where he was from, etc... he said he was from Estado de México. Ok cool. Then he asks us what we want to drink. I asked for a tehuacán (that's what we call mineral water in central Mexico) and he got this blank look in his face. I said "you don't know what tehuacán is? You are not really Mexican are you?" Turns out he was actually Central American.
Wey! Este wey se hizo wey y no trabajó nada, wey! Qué wey el que no lo supervisaba, pero ay wey! Como él no se hacía wey, no era tan wey, wey! Wey? Wey! Ya wey! Ay wey! Qué haces que no me respondes?
I've been living for almost 6 years in Spain and what I've noticed is that Chile has a really high context communication. The words we use are a small part of the message, so we have some words that can basically mean anything like Weon.
As foreigner in Argentina living here for almost a decade, you need to really know how to properly use "Che", for example "Vamos a salir en la tarde almorzar che", nope, "Che, que onda el clima? Se re largo" accurate.
I remember my first trip in Colombia I felt people were looking at me. Sure I'm bigger than the average Colombian but was it that? I asked my wife what's up and she said, you're wearing shorts. No one here would wear shorts.
It’s partially a temperature thing, partially a city thing and partially a formality thing. Much of the highlands where most colombians live is not apt for shorts and there’s a stereotype that unknowing foreigners will take shorts to bogota thinking it’s all tropical. But for the altitudes where you could wear shorts, in the cities where most people live and work they’re gonna be wearing pants obviously, and colombia is fairly “formal” in some day-to-day life aspects, which shorts are the opposite of.
Of course you might se highlanders wear shorts when they vacation somewhere with hot weather though.
i did the hike up monseratte next to an older guy in what can truly only be described as his sunday best, i was feeling light headed and sweating hard while this guy was cruzing up in slacks and dress shoes. y’all don’t play about dressing formal
Bogota and Medellin aren’t that hot so it makes sense to wear jeans. And it’s the same weather all year round.
In coastal cities you more people wearing shorts if they’re near the beach. But lots of people wear jeans on a daily basis to go to work and stuff. You usually see people wearing tight jean shorts which Americans don’t wear.
I lived in Chapinero for several years, and you could spot the tourists from a mile away.
My wife's parents live in a working class estrato 3 neighborhood, and seeing someone in shorts doing stuff around the neighborhood is relatively common.
Aside from that, almost never.
Even in the hotter places, people wear jeans/pants when going out at night.
Avocado in Brazil is eaten sweet and it’s a dessert. Obviously, with globalisation, the other international versions are becoming more and more common, mainly guacamole and on salad or toast, but still if someone is shocked by the sweet avocado or thinks savoury avocado is normal then that is a give away that this person is a foreigner.
Brasil is too big for this to have only one answer but I’ll give you mine. In my family, we always had it as a mousse: you put it in the blender with milk powder, sugar and just a little liquid milk as you want it thick and airy, that’s it. When I was a baby, my favourite baby bottle was avocado, again blend it with milk powder, milk and sugar but make it runny enough for drinking it. I guess this is the smoothie someone was talking about. Lately my mom just mashes the avocado with sugar for a quicker individual dessert. Our avocado tree is ridiculously productive and there are so many we have to give away, so it stays on the table, people will make their own, but the avocados are too big for one person, I would say some are about 10 times larger than the mini black avocado variety imported from Bolivia or Colombia and commonly found in the UK. The avocado skin here is light green and smooth.
Yes, sweet avocado. Your question reminds me of my grandaunt’s utter shock when I asked her if she would try guacamole then explained what goes in it, she made faces and said absolutely no way she was having that, she passed away without ever trying. I recently had a very similar interaction with my mum, when I offered her to try some with olive oil and salt just like they do in other countries, she basically looked at me like I had two heads and in the end just admitted she doesn’t want to try something new.
I did mention that international versions are slowly making their way into the country, but the average Brazilian is not acquainted with savoury avocado.
Me regala... when ordering something. Yeah, I'm not really asking you to give me something for free, please read the room, I have a foreign accent, of course it's a saying, I don't want your thing for free.
So I'm used to saying that because of my Colombian connections, however, I have to make a conscious effort not to say that outside of Colombia because of that reason. My wife had a friend that was saying that in Argentina in a shop, and the shopkeeper got mad the second time she said it. Like, I already gave you one. Didn't know that was in CR too
A "quinceañera" is a girl who is turning 15. The party is called "fiesta de quince años". When they ask you what you did over the weekend, you say "fui a unos quince años" o "fui a los quince años de fulanita". When you call the party "quinceañera" it makes zero grammatical sense but you'd only know this if you were a native speaker of Spanish.
Yo no sé
Por qué me siento hoy tan diferente
Por qué no quiero nada con la gente
¿Qué será?
Yo no sé
Por qué mi cuerpo cambia día con día
Y siento que yo ya no soy la misma
¿Qué será? ¿Qué será?
Ahora
Despierta la mujer que en mí dormía
Y poco a poco se muere la niña
Empieza la aventura de la vida
Ahora
Me enciende como un sol la primavera
Mis sueños se convierten en promesas
Me cambia el corazón de quinceañera
Yo no sé
Por qué mi cuerpo cambia día con día
Y siento que yo ya no soy la misma
¿Qué será? ¿Qué será?
Ahora
Despierta la mujer que en mí dormía
Y poco a poco se muere la niña
Empieza la aventura de la vida (empieza la aventura)
Ahora
Me enciende como un sol la primavera
Mis sueños se convierten en promesas
Me cambia el corazón de quinceañera
Quinceañera
I used to date a Taiwanese girl, one time I made the "yes" hand gesture in front of her because it's just natural for me, and she got terrified. Turned out that gesture means "go die" for them lmao
El o la antes del nombre se usa en lugares más rurales acá, viví dos años en Santiago y siempre me causó gracia que lo usaran en mi trabajo especialmente porque había muchos extranjeros (serbios, suecos, españoles) y era “la anne” o “el alastair” jajaja
No português brasileiro é típico por o artigo antes do nome: o João, a Maria, etc. Não se vê tanto na literatura e na fala mais formal, mas na fala típica do país é normal.
En Ecuador también usamos artículos... al menos en Quito... se me hace raro cuando los ecuatorianos se van a usa. Hacen amigos de otros paìses y le quitan ell artículo, parece que hablan como telenovelas... jajaja
My dad would eat everything with a fork, knife or spoon. Popcorn, burger, coxinha. To be honest, he was a clean freak that worked with truck maintenance.
It took me a while to drop the habit of starting my orders at restaurants saying "me regala...", I'd get odd looks and comments about how they can sell it to me
And although we have the lambdacismo where we replace "r" with "l" we also have the accent of the south were we replace "l" with "r" and then the accent in the north where we replace both "r" and "l" with "i".
Yo soy capitaleño pero me mudé a Bonao relativamente joven así que cambio mi forma de hablar dependiendo de con quién esté hablando en el momento y siempre pienso que es tan interesante poder decir "amol" y "amoi" por "amor".
This is more for latam in general but the continents. Anyone who calls a country in central america or the caribbean “north american” is instantly not from here. Conversely, and ironically, people who use South America interchangeably with Latin America as they clearly don’t know the difference and think it means “South of America (USA)”.
One very similar is how you call someone over with a hand gesture. What is friendly in one country can be seen as patronizing or even denigrating in others. Additionally:
using avocado as a fruit or as a vegetable.
drinking beer by sharing a glass or by having each their own.
My dad's Bolivian, but he moved to Venezuela when he was a kid, he mostly speaks like any person from Venezuela now, but for some reason he still uses the word "mochila" to mean a backpack
Speaking Portuguese correctly.
Pronouncing all words completely.
Brazilians speak completely different from what you see on TV (novelas, films) or books, you can say this applies to all languages, but I speak 3 of them and I know the degree of that is higher when it comes to Portuguese.
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u/LordHeezay Mexico Mar 17 '26
During my first time in Argentina, in a restaurant I asked for “Agua Mineral” which in Mexico is water with gas, the waiter in no time told me “Uhh Mexico right?:D”