Want to get to know the locals in Mexico? Brush up on your slang.
Mexico has its own language untaught by Spanish schools and phrase books. It’s a language whose meanings shift in a heartbeat from insults to compliments, a language Mexican people manipulate deftly and instinctively in all sorts of contexts.
It’s, in a word, cabrón.
Here’s a primer of your essential Mexican slang:
Cabrón.
Photo: Jorge Santiago
This sounds like a cliché. Sure, a cabrón is a guy who’s a sort of badass, right?
Sure, that’s one interpretation. But this guy can be a real jerk, someone you talk about with disgust or fear, or this guy could be, say, an internationally renowned artist who’s just completed a photo exhibition about indigenous cultures.
Either one is a cabrón. And don’t forget about the feminine version, cabróna. Same standards apply: there are the bitchy, detested cabrónas and the revered, awe-inducing ones.
Then there’s que cabrón, which is used to describe a thing or situation as opposed to a person. This, too, can be positive or negative, but it’s gotta have a particular edge to it. Real life examples:
a) Narcos entered a popular restaurant and collected the cell phones of all the customers, warning them not to make any phone calls or act out of the ordinary. The narcos ate peacefully, returned the cell phones, paid everyone’s bills, and continued on their way. Que cabron.
b) You ran out of water, and the government isn’t sending more water to the Centro Historico for three days. You just had a party and now have a sink full of beer glasses, skillets full of chipotle sausage residue, and greasy plates. Que cabrón.
Insider tip: For added flair, add an “ay” before cabrón when used for people, and mix it up with an “esta cabrón” instead of “que cabrón” in the case of situations.
Destinations
Madre
In the quintessential Mexican read, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz has a great passage about the significance of la madre (the mother) in Mexican slang and culture.
The madre is identified with all things negative, the padre with all things positive. This, argues Paz, is a reflection of two historical and cultural factors in Mexico.
The first is the idea of the “long-suffering mother,” the passive recipient of pain and burden who is, to use another classic Mexican slang term, chingada (screwed, for a polite interpretation).
Photo: descamarado
The second is the historical resentment and resignation towards the woman whom Paz claims is the mother of modern Mexico—La Malinche. La Malinche was a Nahuatl woman who aided Cortéz in the colonization of Mexico, translating for him, offering insider information, and…giving him a son, one of Mexico’s first mestizos.
So la madre is not treated kindly by Mexican slang. Whether you feel squeamish about it or not, be prepared to hear at least one of these expressions on a daily basis:
Que madres: what the hell? As in, the sudden explosion of firecrackers on any random street corner, the drunken antics of your friend after so much mezcal, the thing floating in your soup.
Que poca madre: literally, how little mother, as if mother was a quantity added with an eye dropper to a particular experience. The less mother, the better. So if Mexico kills in soccer with a 5-0 victory, it’s definitely poca madre.
Or, on the flip side, it’s padre—meaning cool, awesome, interesting.
Hasta la madre: utterly sick of something. Your boyfriend’s behavior could drive you to feeling hasta la madre, and so could consistent rain every afternoon or the incessant barking of the dog next door. You’re at the end of your rope, the breaking point—you’re literally, to translate the phrase directly, almost to the point of motherhood.
Huevos.
Photo: procsilas
There’s a whole linguistic universe surrounding huevos here, so I’ll just stick to my personal favorites.
Que huevon/huevona: What a lazy egg. This expression is one of the principal reasons for my deep affection for Mexico. The mental image rocks, and the insult rocks. It is soft and prodding and so accurate in so many situations (particularly for describing the morning after 10 peso beers and a night of salsa).
Similarly, there’s the expression que hueva, which translates literally as “what egginess.” Eggs here have the same association with laziness with an additional component of boredom. For example, you could toss out a que hueva at the suggestion of starting up a soccer game, and you could toss out a que hueva at the suggestion of watching one on T.V.
Que huevos! A brilliant expression that translates most accurately as “what balls” but really, contextually, means so much more. In the most literal “what balls” sense que huevos can be used to express admiration for some great courageous act; for example, throwing your half-eaten mango at that guy who whistled at you in the street.
It can also be used, however, to express repulsion for rude behavior, such as tearing around a corner in your SUV and nearly killing a couple of pedestrians.
And finally, it can be used without the “que” to lament a minor tragedy—spilling beer all over yourself, tripping over the sidewalk, forgetting to buy the one thing you went to the supermarket to buy.
You can’t really go wrong with these three overarching expressions—cabron, madre, huevos—used in one variation or another. (Obviously, when you’re having a chat with the polite grandmotherly señora on the corner you don’t want to bust out with “ay, cabrón!”….common slang sense applies in Mexico as in most places).
So the next time you find yourself grappling with the differences between ser and estar, why not sprinkle some huevos into the conversation and save yourself the effort?
Community Connection
Planning a trip to Mexico? Check out the three part series on Mexican cantinas: Wrestling, Pig Skin, and Beer, Life is Worth Nothing, and Tequila and a Song. Also, take Matador editor and Mex-pat Teresa Ponikvar’s advice about spending summer in Baja California Sur. And if urban life is your thing, read up on the top 10 nightlife spots in Mexico City.
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36 Comments... join the discussion!
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So many uses for “huevos.” I love it!
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que chido
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Huevón (said weón) is a major staple in Chile, but like your description of cabrón, it could take several paragraphs (or pages) to explain.
I was glad to see this, and will file it away for any future trips to Mexico. For now I’ll just pasarlo chancho (fig: have a great time) in Chile.
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Mastering a few pieces of humorous slang is a great way to start learning a language – imagine a beginning English speaker who could only say “right on!” – they would probably do just fine.
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Great post Sarah! está de huevos!
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Oh, the mother-with-an-eyedropper thing made me laugh…great article!
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Absolutely loved the opportunity to expand my knowledge of Mexican slang. Now, I need to plan a trip to use it!
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I can’t wait to get to Oaxaca….someday.
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“Madre” and “huevos” are two words I make every effort to avoid when speaking Spanish. I just choose not to go there.
When I overhear “Madre” I feel the hair stand on the back of my neck. It might as well mean “danger” or “peligro.” While the phrase is tossed around a lot, I suspect that there are a few people out there who are pretty sensitive about it.
With huevos, if it means looking around a little bit longer for some eggs in the super mercado so be it.
When I first saw your blog I thought “Huevos ala Mexicana” was a play on words. But I actually ordered some in Guadalajara. Not bad, but a tad spicy for first thing in the morning. That’s one of the things that Mexico and Spanish have in common: spice! Muy picante!
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Ay, que cabrona! Esta guía está de poca madre. De veras que hay que tener huevos para tratar de racionalizar tanta pendejada que decimos los Mexicanos. Nomás te faltó entrar en el territorio de lo “chingón”.
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Gracias Juan! Iba empezar con lo de chingón, pero no mames, estaría otro articulo! Y tambien quisé incluir cosas como “Ah poco!” y “Orale!” pero simplemente hay demasiadas expresiones chidas…
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“Cabrón” isn’t Mexican slang, they use it in Spain as well. Besides, it’s “cabrona”, without an accent.
Also, you forgot accents on several other words, like “qué” (“que” has a different meaning) and exclamation marks. For example: it’s not “que madres” but “¡qué madres!”.
Sure be sure to put up something that’s correct
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Sure be sure?
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Hey Ramses,
Perhaps it’s different in Spain, but here “que” doesn’t have an accent mark when you use it to say “que madres” or “que poca madre,” for example. Also, the exclamation marks are optional.
And they might say cabrón in Spain, but I’d be interested to know if it’s used in the same way. My point here was that cabrón can be used in Mexico in a wide variety of contexts…is it used similarly in Spain?
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Well, officially it’s with an accent, but it’s not the first time I see errors in Mexican Spanish. And yes, they use it in the same way in Spain, but it’s mostly just an insult.
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Actually, this isn’t an “error”–it’s a particularity of Mexican Spanish in the same way that the spelling of “centre” is a particularity of British English. You might be learning Spanish from Spain, and as a non-native speaker I’d be careful making condescending statements about seeing “errors in Mexican Spanish.” There are whole courses devoted to Latin American Spanish because it differs in many ways from Spanish from Spain.
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Well not being a native speaker doesn’t matter, because my level sure is high enough to be near native. But you’re right, I don’t know that much about Mexican Spanish because I don’t care that much. But officially it looks like an error. But still, it’s slang so it might be different (I know slang in Spain is somethimes spelt different).
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All accents aside, it’s funny to note that what cabrón actually means is “big goat” (or something along those lines). Here in Argentina, you don’t hear that a lot – everything is “hijo de puta”
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i just wanted to say that your wrong about the “madre” statement the more madre the better…it would be “que atoda madre” if mexico would win..and “que poca madre” if they would loose..
or if someone does you wrong you would say..”que poca madre tienes guey, ahora ten los huevos para agarrarnos a chingasos cabron”..lol
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I imagine any colloquialism in Spanish with ‘mother’ in it developed from the reverence for Mother Mary.
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the mother is such a loaded, rich & diverse symbol in mexico.. from la virgencita, la llorona, la malinche, to la chingada.. que madres confusas
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Hey chela! Actually, I said that the less madre, the better!
And thanks for bringing up another essential Mexican slang term–guey. Maybe I need to do a Part 2 of this article!
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¡¿Guey?! I think you mean güey. Or did you want to say gay?
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No, actually Ramses, I meant guey. As you’ll see, chela above spelled it without the accent, and there are two acceptable spellings–guey and güey. Again, since you’re not a native speaker and you don’t seem to have much understanding of Latin American Spanish (which you condescendingly and often ignorantly assume is full of “errors”) than I’d be careful leaving presumptuous comments.
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Heh. It’s the same obnoxious dynamic with European French speakers. I had a Belgian prof in university, and when a student of Acadian descent asked if we would be studying any Acadian literature (since our college was, after all, in one-time Acadian country), the professor answered: “Acadian literature? Isn’t that an oxymoron?” I’ve been told in France that my Quebecois French is “vulgar,” too. It’s a shame that so often their minds are so closed to regional variations that they can only see errors.
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Sorry. I should say it’s the same obnoxious dynamic with SOME European French speakers.
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Being a native or not says nothing. I achieved a near-native level the last two-three years, and my university professors (who actually are natives) say that my writing is native. Heck, many natives often ask me to correct their writing because they make silly orthographical mistakes, so I know what I’m talking about.
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How do you say “modesty” in Spanish?
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Awesome article Sarah! I can’t wait for part two.
I was hanging out with a friend in Oaxaca this afternoon and he used the phrase “echar la hueva” to mean “chilling out” (in Colombia they say hacer locha).
Intrigued and slightly confused I asked him to elaborate on the phrase. If I understand correctly, and I believe I do, the phrase translates to “let your balls hang out”.
Comments?
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jajajaja Hijo de puta !
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Its the same everywhere:
British English vs American English
Iberian Spanish vs Latin American Spanish
Quebec French vs Franco Frenchand on and on…
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Then there’s being so conflicted about ordering eggs in a restaurant….”quiero unos huevos, por favor”….and then I burst out laughing. I resort to saying “blanquillos”.
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Ramses enough with your pompous lecturing on your exquisite command of Spanish and the accolades you receive from your professors. We are all very happy that you speak Spanish like a native speaker and are using your new found skill in such a humble and selfless manner.
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cabron is a male goat
cabra is the female. great post here, and these comment threads are hilarious
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