el crispito

One of the first things I noticed here was that when you ask someone how they're doing:

¿Cómo está?

The standard reply that I always expected to be a simple "Bien," is actually doubled, like:

¡Bien, bien!

This is not to say that if someone's having a rough day, you won't hear them say it just once. Yet I seriously think that 95% of the time, they will say it twice.

When you go to the store and you need something, I would have thought you'd say:

Necesito unos clavos de 20 milimetros.

You don't. Instead, they use the ver ocupar, which usually means, "to take up," "to hold, fill," "to occupy," or "to squat (in a place, as in squatter)."

Ocupo unos clavos de 20 milimetros.

An "elevator" is usually called un ascendedor, but not here in Mexico. Instead it's un elevador.

And when we were looking for apartments, I expected to see at least one sign that used the typical Spanish verb for "rent," which is alquilar. Still, I saw not a single one. Instead they all say, se renta (for sale), using rentar as the verb.

It could be argued that these two things are examples of English encroaching on Spanish as Mexico borders the United States, and I suspect this is true. Yet while some regard this as a shame, I think it's kind of nice to see some sharing between the two cultures - as long as it's not unidirectional, and we all know how much Taco Bell has contributed in bringing Spanish to English-speaking cultures.

The most popular word for "cool" down here (as in "That's really cool!") is chido. I would expect that this is chida for a cool feminine object, but I have not been able to confirm this.

For those of you who want to know all those phrases they don't cover in textbooks, check out the Alternative Mexican Spanish Dictionary. But I warn you. It's naughty.