Caló: A Borderland Dialect
Caló is the latest addition to Marfa Public Radio's programming. Created by Oscar Rodriguez, who sometimes goes by the name "El Marfa," the series honors the Texas borderlands patois commonly called Caló.
Oscar grew up speaking this language in Ojinaga and Odessa. He remembers the unique dialect filling the barrios and countryside of his childhood in West Texas. Each week on Caló, Oscar will feature words and phrases from Caló then explore their meaning with a personal anecdote.
Oscar was born and raised in Ojinaga, West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. He has lived in and out of Texas since he graduated from Ector High School in Odessa in the late-1970s, including a couple of years in the 1990s when he lived in Marfa and taught at Sul Ross State University. Oscar is also an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe and an avid researcher of Native history in Texas and New Mexico — specifically in the La Junta region.
He hopes by sharing his knowledge of this colorful language, he can help keep it alive.
Latest Episodes
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Órale, the onda this week is La Llorona (the female crier), a scary mythical character that evolved from Spanish colonial times. There are many versions of the myth. All of them center on a woman who cries by the river for her children. There are many different stories about who she really is, why she’s crying and whether it’s a tale or a real story. La Llorona is alternatively crying because her children have been drowned by their father or because she drowned them. There’s also an interpretation that La Llorona’s a metaphor for La Malinche, a famous Aztec historical figure who married a Spanish conquistador in 1492 and divulged her country’s strategic weaknesses and divisions. In this version of the myth, the children for whom La Llorona cries are really her kin and countrymen who’d been metaphorically drowned by the conquistadors. The myth is retold from Chile to Colorado. -
Órale, the onda of this week is the word, tutú. It means a diminutive religious character or idol. It’s shorthand for the name, Jesús, but it’s not specific to any religion or creed. It’s also non-value laden. It simply means junior or baby idol. What’s intended to be conveyed with tutú is the image of a miniature statue of a religious character, like a saint or other religious icon. Perhaps the best example of a tutú is the statuette you’ll often find on the dashboard of a lowrider, typically the image of San Martin de Porres, a 1600th century Afro-Peruvian saint.
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is churchillo. It means someone with holier-than-thou or moralizing personality. It comes from the English word, church. Every culture has churchillos. Caló is no exception. Their main strength is persistence. You see, they wanna save you whether you need it or not.
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is Praire. It means someone with a priest-like personality or otherwise very given to praying and moralizing. It’s a word made up of two other words, prayor (supplicant) and friar, which in Spanish is pronounced fraile. A praire does not necessarily have to be Christian or, for that matter, a follower of any particular religion. They’re not unique to any culture, class or geographic region. They’re people who simply see it necessary and obvious to invoke the spirits to resolve worldly problems. While some people see gravity and the laws of physics controlling reality, they see providential intervention in everything. So why not go ahead and ask the spirits to intervene when you can’t solve a problem or predict an outcome?
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is Huisa. It means a committed girlfriend. It comes from (is a mispronunciation of) the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for woman, cihua. There’s a comparable Caló word, ruca, but it speaks to the general category of women, not any particular social role, like sister, mother, wife or girlfriend. In other words, a huisa is a ruca in a courtship relationship.
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Órale, the word of the week is papas. In modern Spanish is means potatoes. In Caló, it means lies. The grandfather put his hand on his grandson’s should and said, “that onda about landing on the moon? Puras pinches papas”
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Órale, the word of the week is totacha. It means scant knowledge, as in a dab of a given language or subject. Totacha is at the opposite end of the scale from full command of a subject. It can’t be said you’re totally ignorant if you know totacha, but know totacha sometimes gets you in more trouble than total ignorance.
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Órale, the word of the week is catchar. It comes from the English verb, catch. In Caló, it means more that catch. It also means to be enchanted by a spell, as in captivated by someone attractive or devilish. “I was walking by, and you me catchaste.”
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Órale, the Caló word of the week is soca. In modern Spanish, it means a bud or sprout, as in the first sprouts of a rice planting. In Caló, it means nothing, empty, or scant, as in what you would see on a desert floor after many months of no rain. It’s usually used to say someone knows nothing or has nothing. Someone who speaks no Caló is said to not know even soca of it. Likewise someone who is penniless is said to have not even soca of feria.
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Órale, the Caló word of this week is trujir. It’s a verb that means to grab or drag. It comes from the Romani word for the same, trujirpar. Apart from dropping the last syllable of the original word, Caló has turned it into a regular verb that competes with the modern Spanish, traer (to bring).