Learn the answer to the question 'How do I use TO and TA?'
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| Ask a teacher, lesson 19 - What are some examples of the slang tío and tía? |
| Hi everybody! Rosa here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Spanish questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| What are some examples of the slang tío and tía? |
| In this lesson we’re going to focus on one of the most habitual words used in colloquial Spanish;-- the slang tío, which is masculine and tía, which is feminine. |
| You can hear tío and tía every day and almost anywhere if you’re in Spain. |
| The most standard use of tío is "uncle" and for tía it’s "aunt.” For example-- Mi tío es de Barcelona, meaning "My uncle is from Barcelona." |
| However, this lesson is going to talk about how tío and tía are used in slang. |
| Let's look some examples-- |
| If you greet someone, you can say ¡Hola tío! meaning "Hey dude!" or ¿Cómo estás tío? Literally, "How are you dude?" |
| These words also can be used when you talk about an unknown person. For example, Ayer vino un tío simpático a verte, meaning "Yesterday a nice guy came to meet you." |
| It’s also common to address your friends using the word tíos. For example, ¿Qué pasa tíos? meaning "What’s up guys?" |
| There are also some other words in Spanish that can be used like tío and tía. For example, pavo and pava. These words literally mean "turkey," but you can replace tío with pavo in a sentence like this-- ¿Qué quiere ese pavo? "What's up with that man?" |
| Two other words would be chaval and chavala. These words usually mean "kid," but many times they can be used as tío and tía. For example-- ¿Todo bien chaval? "Is it all okay, dude?" |
| Please note that the slang use of tío and tía is limited to Spain. The rest of the Spanish speaking countries only use tío and tía to mean "uncle" and "aunt." |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them! |
| ¡Hasta luego! “See you later!” |
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