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, this week’s feature is the word, mandado. It means to be cast to hell or, worse yet, to be sent to the one who’s awaiting you there, La Muerte, who goes by many pseudonyms, like the bald one (la pelona), the one who’s flesh has been rubbed off (la fregada), the boney one (la huesuda), or the toothless one (la mocha). Now, having been mandado to la pelona doesn’t mean you’re already in hell. You’re only on the way there. This is what’s emphasized because, while you’re mandado, you languish, your impending arrival in hell ever present and predominating. Puro hangdog life. Nothing that’s good in life will ever happened to you, no love or empathy for you, no joy, nada. Everybody stops counting on you. Why? Cuz you’re mandado to the fregada. -
Órale, this week’s feature is the word, chiflado. It means to be carried away or assume too much about what somebody else is thinking or intending, usually in romantic situations. It comes from the Spanish verb for whistle, chiflar. The term is often simply stated as a telling whistle.
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Órale, the Caló word of the week is birria. It means beer. Although likely from the English, it’s lingua franca (common tongue), not Spanglish because the English word and, for that matter, the Italian word for the same, birra, both come from the Germanic word, beir. The Spanish word for birria is cerveza, a very different sounding word and root. And if you’re offered birria in Mexico, what’s meant is barbecue, not beer. So watchale. Don’t order birria in Spanglish if what you want is beer.
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Órale, the feature of this week is the word pistear. It means to drink inebriant or become inebriated. There are close-sounding words in both Spanish and Nahuatl, pisto and pizoh, which mean a frittata and flooring respectively. But neither come close to the Caló meaning. There’s also the related noun in Caló, pisto, which means a drink or sip of something or hard alcohol itself, as in, he bought of bottle of pisto for himself and a caguama (quart) of beer for his ruca. While pistear usually refers to alcohol, Caló-speakers will understand what you mean if you use it in reference to non-alcoholic drinks, but they’ll take it as an off-handed reference, as if you’re saying the pisto is a substitute for alcohol. "You pisteando, ese? Simón, but just tea."
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Órale, this week’s feature is the word, güiliado. It means to be enchanted. It comes from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for dove, huilotl. There’s a near-synonym, chiflado, that’s often expressed as a simple whistle, for it comes from the Spanish verb for whistle, but it means to be presumptuous, carried away, or obsessed. Somebody who’s said to be güiliado, is said to be in love.
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Órale, this week we’re gonna talk about the word jambar. It means to steal. Unlike another words in Caló that speak to similar acts, trinquetear and remangar, to cheat or trick somebody out of something and to piler or cuff something, Jambar is straight ahead graceless, guileless theft. Jambones are sura. They take other people’s valuables. Don’t expect them to give anything back, only that they eventually get what they deserve.
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Órale, this episode is about the word güirigüiri. It means gossip, the act of spreading it, and the mob or network behind it — as in people engaging in guiriguiri to spread guiriguiri.
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Órale, this is the second to the last episode focused on Caló words that are related to dances in the Southside. After this, the focus will turn away from specific words and toward conversations carried out entirely in Caló.Meanwhile, we’ll continue with words heard in dances in the Southside. The featured word this week is coyote. In Spanish, of course, it means the wild canine predator native to the Americas. It comes from the Nahuatl or Aztec word for the same. In Caló, however, coyote means mixed-blood, where one of the breeds is White.
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Órale, this is the second to the last episode focused on Caló words that are related to dances in the Southside. After this, the focus will turn away from specific words and toward conversations carried out entirely in Caló.Meanwhile, we’ll continue with words heard in dances in the Southside. The featured word this week is coyote. In Spanish, of course, it means the wild canine predator native to the Americas. It comes from the Nahuatl or Aztec word for the same. In Caló, however, coyote means mixed-blood, where one of the breeds is White.
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Órale, the feature this week is the word trinquetear. It’s a verb that means to cheat or steal by tricking or scamming somebody. In modern Spanish, a trinquete is the cross beam on the main mast of a sailing ship. But if used as an analogy, it refers to the constriction that occurs if you wind the cross beam like a tourniquet. In Caló, there’s triqueteada, not trinquete, and it means the scam the victim is woven into. The person doing it is the trinquetero(a), always a skilled and creative person. If you know a trinquetero(a), you can’t help but appreciate their art.
