Chilenismos

Many of these words will inevitably be vocab I just happened to pick up while in Chile rather than actual chilenismos, but the intent of this post is to document the words and phrases that add flavor to the Chile experience. My favorite example is the verb 'plancharse.' By itself, planchar means 'to iron', but in the reflexive, it means something along the lines of 'to make bank.' Some examples: 

'yo me planché hoy' 

'¡que te planches hoy!' 

'vamos a Puerto Aysén para plancharnos' 

linaza – flax

onda – (literally, acoustic or electromagnetic wave) vibe e.g. ‘qué onda?’

tirar onda – 

-       Chile, Brazil: to mock, to make fun of

-       elsewhere: to hit on

weón – (informal, vulgar?) positive: friend/bro, negative: guy/jerk

bacán – cool

¿cómo estai? – informal, 'how are you?' (see below for detailed explanation of this conjugation) 

¿cachai? – ‘do you understand?’ ‘you hear?’ (has been suggested that this is from Mapuche or perhaps from English: 'you catch?') 

sipo -- 'sí, pues' statement of affirmation, 'yes, clearly' 

palta – avocado

tranqui – chill

sendero – trail

cerro – ridge

cochayuyo – a Chilean seaweed

cholga – a type of mussel, Aulacomya atra

chorito – another type of mussel, Mytilus chilensis

mejillón – mussel

jurel – a Chilean mackerel, Trachurus trachurus

burbuja – bubble, e.g. 'la burbuja de contaminación alrededor de Coyhaique' 
miti-miti – half and half, e.g. 'quieres compartir la empanada miti-miti?' 
crudo – raw 
arco iris – rainbow 
fome – boring, dull
congelar – literally 'to freeze', but also 'to put on hold'

el voseo: 

Upon arriving in Chile, I quickly started hearing unfamiliar conjugations of verbs in informal situations, e.g. ¿cómo estai?. To complicate matters, I am living with some Argentinians who use this type of Spanish in a subtly different way. After much discussion with housemates, I think I've gotten to the bottom of these variations. I don't plan to use them, but I am curious and want to understand what I hear...Here is my personal guide to vos (Latin America), 'vos' (Chile), and vosotros (Spain only?): 

vos (Latin America, e.g. Argentina) - second person singular informal, replaces tú

     - Present tense: replace last letter of infinitive with 's', add an accent to the last vowel, examples: vos hablás, vos creés, vos vivís, (irregular: ser=>sos ir=> vais)

     - Imperative (informal directions): drop the last letter of infinitive, add accent to last vowel, examples: vos pasá, vos vé, vos decí, (irregular: ir=>andá) 

     - Other tenses: same as tú conjugation 

'vos' (Chile) - Chilean informal Spanish has its own conjugations for second person singular informal verbs used in the present tense. These are sometimes conjugated like vos and other times like the Spanish vosotros. These conjugations are used with the pronoun tú, not with vos!  

     - AR-verbs: conjugated like Spanish vosotros, dropping the 's' e.g. ¿como estai tú? 

     - ER-verbs and IR-verbs: conjugated like -IR verbs in traditional vos, e.g. tú comís, tú vivís 

     - Irregular: ser=>erís 
vosotros (Spain) - second person plural informal

     - Indicative tenses: 

     - Subjunctive tenses: 

     - Imperative (informal commands): drop last letter of infinitive, add d, examples: pasad, comed, decid