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I used to have a running joke with a tico friend of mine that would ask me what I was doing. Simply put, it means, ‘really’ or ‘seriously’ and can be used as both a question or a statement. This is still one of my favorite Costa Ricanisms! Son super chiva (I like your shoes, they’re really cool). For example, though I could walk up and tell someone their tennis shoes are tuanis, I probably word use the word chiva instead. Que tuanis!(How cool!).Ĭhiva has almost the same usages, Que chiva! also means, How cool! But the word chiva is also used a lot to talk about material things. but sorely mispronouncing the phrase, it evolved into tuanis. When they asked him about the beaches, he said, ‘too nice!’ When they asked him about the food or women, he would respond with, ‘too nice!’.Īpparently, it was this guy’s catchphrase.The locals grabbed on to this new saying for when something is awesome, fun, cool, or outstanding in any way. He told me that an American surfer back in the 80’s was asked how he liked Costa Rica and he responded, it’s too nice. An old gringo who has been living in Costa Rica for some 40-odd-years told me that tuanis comes from a misheard mispronunciation of "too nice". These are two totally different words, but they are almost completely interchangeable in their meaning. ‍ Tuanis and Chiva | twäh-nēs and Chē-vah If a Tico uses this phrase, they are truly exasperated with whatever they are speaking of. SĮa tonto, mae … Me aguevas (What the heck, man … I’m so tired of this). Generally this saying is used to express being extremely tired of something or being quite annoyed with something. No one seems sure where this expression came from, but it has something to do with eggs ( huevos). A likely Costa Rican response would be, Mae, mala nota kind of like saying, Not cool, man. For example, your friend asks you to give them a ride to run some errands and you don’t have time so you refuse. It’s usually used when a favor is denied. ‍ Mala nota is the opposite, though not in a super serious way. Mae, que buena nota is like saying, You’re a cool dude or You’re a good guy/girl.

It has the idiomatic equivalence of “a good egg”. This is another idiom that describes character. El es muy pura vida (Ah, yeah … he’s a good guy). ‍ Question: Hola, Que tal? Como va todo?(Hey, what’s up? How’s everything going?) ‍ Answer: Pura Vida (Everything’s good.) It can even be used to describe character. It’s used as a verb or to describe emotion. It can be used for goodbye as well -though not as much as hello. Pura Vida directly translates to Pure Life … but as you can see above, it's so much more.It’s used for hello. Pura Vida is without a doubt the most Tico saying in existence.

Think of an LA Valley Girl inserting the word ‘like’ into every sentence or a guy who just can’t stop saying ‘dude’. Que mae! is very similar to saying, What’s up, dude! Mae can be used by some almost every other word … and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the most often said word in Costa Rica. Mae (which sounds like the possessive pronoun ‘my’ in English) is the Costa Rican equivalent of dude. Hopefully in your visit to ‘Tiquicia’ you can blend in using some local slang. Either way to augment your learning curve, we’ve put some the of best Costa Rican expressions together. Maybe you're already taking online Spanish classes or are seriously considering enrolling in a Spanish learning program. Either way, Costa Rica is on your bucket list. Or maybe you’ve seen how beautiful Costa Rica is on Insta. Limita al norte con Nicaragua y al sur con Panamá.Maybe you’ve been to Costa Rica before and are planning on going back. Relacionada o relacionado con Costa Rica, estado de Centro América. Limita al norte con Nicaragua y al sur con Panamá. Nacida o nacido en Costa Rica, estado de Centro América. Referido a la república centroamericana de Costa Rica. Spanish Synonyms of "tico": costarriqueño, costarricenseĭefine meaning of "tico": Nacido/a en la república centroamericana de Costa Rica.