Annoyance with the “CH” sound in Mexican Spanish

I confess it. For whatever reason, I can’t help but be a little bit annoyed with the amount I’ve heard the “CH” phoneme (pronounced tch) in Mexican Spanish.

In case you need a refresher, a phoneme is a building block of sound we use to make up a language. The amount of phonemes in any given language is related to its alphabet, but doesn’t map directly onto it, since there are typically more phonemes than there are letters in the alphabet. For example, the sound symbolized by the letters “Th” in English is a perceptually distinct sound that cannot be encapsulated by just the “T” or the letter “H”. English is comprised of 26 letters, but 44 different phonemes.

Yes, I’m annoyed by the frequency with which the “CH” phoneme features in modern Mexican Spanish and the Mexican slang repertoire, especially the slang words originating in and around Mexico City, the densely populated capital of the country. To start, a slang term for people from the capital is “chilango/a.” There it is! Notice the “CH” sound at the beginning of the word! Aargh!

Why have I become fixated on a specific, innocuous sound in the language? After all, it’s just one sound among many. Shouldn’t it be totally neutral to me? MUWAHAHA – oh you uninitiated simpleton. Captain Ahab had Moby Dick, but my white whale is the “CH” phoneme. Welcome to my slow, obsessive decent into madness.

Ok. Ok. I’m kidding about the madness part. It’s fun to be dramatic sometimes. This post is actually going to be a half-serious attempt to try to dissect what it is about the “CH” phoneme and it’s prevalence in Mexican Spanish that fascinates and irks me so. Let’s begin.

To start, let me defensively point out that I am not the first person to note the prevalence of the “CH” phoneme in Mexican Spanish. Any Mexicans or people already familiar with Mexican Spanish who are reading this post might very likely be bored and think, “duh!”

But even when considering other non-native Spanish speakers looking in from the outside, I’m far from the first foreigner to write about the “CH” phoneme in Mexican Spanish. A quick google search will yield links to message boards where dozens of amateur linguists and puzzled language learners have asked questions to the general effect of: “what’s up with all this “CH” in Mexican Spanish?” Daniel Nappo, in his paper at the University of Tennessee at Martin, titled “The Frequency of ch /ʧ / in Contemporary Mexican Highland Spanish” also notices the same phenomenon as me. He discusses the prevalence of the “CH” phoneme (which is officially denoted by the symbol /ʧ / in linguistics), and explains that the increased usage of the phoneme “CH” in Mexican Spanish can be attributed to the fact that the historical peoples in the center of the country spoke Nahuatl, and Nahuatl is exceptional in providing many words to Spanish that either have the “CH” sound, or have a sound that evolved into the “CH” when they were adopted into Spanish. It should also be noted that the Mayan language, spoken in what is now the Southeast of Mexico, (as well as parts of modern-day Belize and Guatemala) provided more than a few “CH” words. And so, since modern Mexicans have all the “CH” words that were already in Spanish, AND they have the new American sources of “CH” words, they ended up with a fuller bag and a wider arsenal of “CH” slang. I haven’t looked into the prevalence of the “CH” phoneme in other countries in Latin America, but if there is, as I would imagine to be the case, less “CH” in those countries than there is in Mexico (it is hard for me to imagine a more “CH”-heavy language-culture than Mexico City) it is likely because the the originally-existing languages that Spanish came to sit on top of in those areas didn’t have quite as much of the “CH” phoneme to begin with. Fewer “CH” sounds in the language, or fewer sounds that would eventually morph into the “CH” sound, means less “CH” donation words influencing in how the people in those areas speak Spanish today.

But so far I haven’t really demonstrated my point. I haven’t given you any meat to chew on. Let’s dive into the Mexican culture a bit and give you a taste of what I’m talking about with all this “CH”. Let’s start with the near-obligatory example of the Mexico City band Cafe Tacuba and their song “Chilanga Banda”. The opening stanza of this song is the following: “ya chole chango chilango, que chafa chamba te chutas, no checa andar de tacuche, y chale con la charola!”….even for a native Spanish speaker, if they aren’t from Mexico, their reaction to this might likely be “huh!?” Now you start to see what I’m talking about! Link to the full song below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjkZye-Ebik&ab_channel=EliasMagallanesantuna

Incidentally, according to the Youtube comments of the video, many students are actually assigned this song as a teaching example of Mexican Slang, and are asked to translate the lyrics into “non-Chilango” Spanish.

But in the interest of efficiency, rather than running through every word with an example, let me go ahead and give you a list of some of the “CH” words I’ve noticed in my 5 months and change here in Mexico. I’ll start with the Mexican slang version, then the normal Spanish version, then give the definition, or my interpretation of the definition, in English. These translations may be slightly off in places. After all, I’m not Mexican and have only been living here about half a year. What follows is merely my best attempt at a translation according to what I know. Without further ado, down the rabbit hole of “CH” we go.

• Apapachar = (abrazar) – to hug, or to give an especially affectionate hug. Some would add that it carries an additional, less tangible, connotation. i.e. something loosely to the affect of “to hug your soul” or “to accept you as you are.”
• Chutar = (patear) – to hit or kick with one’s foot.
• Chale = (que mál) – typically a disparaging exclamation towards something.
• Chichí = (abuela) – from Southeast Mexico – grandmother.
• Chichi = (seno) – breast/boob.
• Chuchu = also boob? I haven’t quite figured this one out yet
• Chaquetearse = (masturbarse) – to masturbate.
• Chillar = (llorar) – to cry
• Chillón = (llorón) – cry-baby
• Chingón = (de buena calidad) – bad-ass or awesome when referring to a person. Of good quality or awesome when talking about an item.
• Chingo = (mucho) – a lot / a fuck-ton
• Pinche = (maldito) – fucking/damned/cursed/lousy – also seems to be used as an all-purpose modifier before any word or phrase to add some emphasis or spice to it.
• Chango = (mono) – monkey / ape
• Chamba = (trabajo) – work
• Chambear = (trabajar) – to work
• Chilango/a = (capitalino/a) – someone from the capital. May carry a negative connotation. Don’t use with strangers. Please note that when I have used it in this post I have not meant it with a negative connotation.
• Chamaco/a = (niño/a) – young boy or girl. Viewers of the movie Coco will be familiar with this one.
• Chancla = (sandalia) – sandal; a.k.a what a Mexican mom uses to discipline her children.
• Chaparro/a = (bajito/a) – shorty, a short person. Actually derives from Basque (a.k.a Euskera), but I’m going to include it because I hear everyone and their mother playfully calling each other chaparros here. (I refrain from joining in. Who wants to be known the taller gringo jerk calling everyone shorties? Not me.)
• Chapulín = (saltamontes) – from Nahuatl. Grasshopper
• Chela = (cerveza) – from Maya. Slang for beer
• Chavo/a = (joven) – a young person. My sense is that a chavo/a is slightly older than a chamaco/a. More often used to refer to an adolescent or teen.
• Chicle = (goma de masticar) – gum. The U.S.-based product Chiclets got its name from this Nahuatl-ism.
• Chido/a = (genial, increíble) – cool, awesome, nice – an all-purpose positive modifier.
• Chimuelo/a = (desdentado/a) – edentulous, lacking some teeth, a person or animal missing teeth. A kid who has a gap in their teeth because a baby tooth fell out could be accurately described as a chaparro chimuelo chamaco.
• Metiche = (entromedito/a) – meddling, nosy, busybody. Example: at my friend’s house, when someone is washing the dishes at the sink, one of her cats likes to jump onto the counter and push his head through the gap between your arm and body to see what you’re doing. My friend playfully calls her cat a metiche when he does this.
• Chingar = (joder) – to literally fuck, or to figuratively fuck over, as in to bother someone or to mess us a situation.
• No manches (the softer more kid-friendly version of “no mames”) = (no jodas) – roughly equivalent to Elaine’s “get out!” from Seinfeld – a general expression of incredulity.
• Pachanga = (fiesta) – party

There are many words I left out from the above list, mainly because I only came across them when researching for this article. It felt a bit artificial and disingenuous to include words that I haven’t really heard or used myself in day-to-day speech. But, for the sake of completeness, here are some more words with “CH” that have come into Mexican usage from Nahuatl or are otherwise most-dominantly used in Mexico.

achichincle (brown-noser) / acuachatle (adhesive made from sugar cane) / achicalar (to prepare dry seed for animal feed) / achicopalarse (to get sad, or to wuss out of something) / cempasúchil (marigold) / chachalaca (chatterbox) / chamuco (devil)/ changarro (small store) / chapopote (asphalt) / charamusca (candy twist) / charola (tray to serve food) / chayote (a native fruit) / chícharos (peas) / chichicuilote (sandpiper) / chípil (spoiled person) / chones (underwear) / chuchuluco (bean tamale) / enchilar (to add spice to a food or to irritate) / guarache (leather sandal) / jarocho (person from Veracruz) / malinchista (pejorative term for someone who favors foreign things) / titipuchal (a crowd) / tlachique (liquid taken from the maguey cactus) / tlacuache (oppossum)

And all of the above doesn’t even take into account the default pet names or nicknames, technically called hypocorisms by linguists, that are associated with common Spanish names. Examples of this in English would be Dick being the default nickname for someone named Richard, Bill for William or Billy, or Liz for Elizabeth. In Spanish, and especially Mexican Spanish, the “CH” sound seems to be a go-to starting point for name shortenings. For example, for some reason Chucho is the default nickname, or hypocorism, for someone named Jesús. The other day while waiting for the combi (a public transport van thingy), an old man walked by with a shirt on that said – “my friends call me chucho.” Other default hypocorisms in Spanish include: Chayo/Charo (Rosario), Chela (Graciela), Chente (Vicente), Nacho (Ignacio), Chavela (Isabel), Chema (José María), etc. While many of these hypocorisms are the same in both Mexico and Spain, a few featuring the “CH” phoneme are predominantly Mexican, for example Chepa instead of Pepa or Pepita (Josefina), or Lucha instead of Mariluz (María de la Luz).

Oh, and let’s not forget arguably two of the most universal and far-reaching donations from Mexico to basically all the other languages and peoples of the world – “Chocolate” (which comes from the Nahutal word xocolatl) and “Mariachi” – both spelled the same in Spanish as they are in English. Guess what? They both feature a “CH” sound! Now you’re beginning to see. Now we’ve taken the red pill! Muwahahahahah.

Tired of “CH” yet? Ok, now that you have a better idea of the seeming ubiquity of “CH” words in Mexican Spanish, and some of what it is that I’ve been noticing the past 6 months, let’s begin to get down to a psychological examination of what about it seems to irk me, or why I should have any emotional reaction to “CH” in the first place.

First off, I totally understand that this annoyance is irrational – that in reality a certain phoneme, whether it be the “CH” in the English word “chomp”, or the “Th” in the English word “think”, doesn’t have any intrinsic elegance or ugliness. Sure, there can be certain sounds, like the proverbial “nails on the chalkboard” or the shriek of the Nasgul in the Lord of the Rings, that are actually dissonant and upsetting, but I don’t think that type of extreme case has to do at all with the way the sounds “CH” and “TH” evoke different connotations in my brain. In the latter cases, I think it’s probably a combination of my personal perspectives, cultural conditioning, current environment, relationships, etc., which all come together and result in me projecting a certain connotation to the phoneme or sound.

As Shakespeare famously wrote: “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Reason 1 for my annoyance: the 20,000-foot view of things – One large consideration, as I’ve previously mentioned, is that I’m currently living in Mexico and actively working on improving my Spanish. So all of this is very salient in my life right now. I’m navigating what seems to be a very long dry stretch between B2 and C1 competency (between upper-intermediate and low-advanced). And, in my impatience and frustration with the language-learning process, I’ve somehow projected my annoyance onto what I perceive to be an overabundance of the “CH” phoneme in Mexican Spanish. Said another way, my annoyance with the “CH” phoneme is just one of those funny artifacts that pop up from time to time as our irrational self navigates through the world, like having an aversion towards a certain style of shoe because the jerk who bullied you in high school used to wear that style. Basically, I’m struggling with Spanish right now so my mind can’t help but pick on something about it.

By the way, as would be expected, the more fluent and proficient I become at Mexican Spanish, the less the “CH” or any specific idiosyncrasies of the language bother me. (Sorry if this admission has taken some dramatic charm away from this post, hah). As my proficiency increases, the phenomenology of the language becomes less novel and fades into the background. It begins to become more and more like English, where I’m focused more on the meaning than on the surface features. But, for now, as I struggle to rise through the levels of fluency, these little idiosyncrasies of the language are still relatively novel and stick out to me. And, as such, my emotional reactions towards phenomenologies have not yet entirely disappeared.

Reason 2: could the physical intensity of the “CH” phoneme actually play a role? – I’m going to momentarily contradict what I wrote above regarding “CH” being totally different from nails on a chalkboard and Nasgul shrieks, because it’s possible that the physical impact of the sound on the ear cannot be totally discounted. According to the Daniel Nappo article I introduced earlier (and which I’ve leaned on heavily for this post): “the “CH” phoneme “is the second most intense phoneme in Spanish with a normal articulation producing approximately 26.2 dbs.” So maybe there really is something to be said for the purely physical way the “CH” sound impacts my ear after all. I doubt it, because there’s plenty of “CH” in English too, and I’ve never really noticed it or had a particular reaction to it before. But still, I wanted to throw this possible contributing factor in here.

Reason 3: good old cultural/racial/national bias – Let’s face it, we live in a very politicized time, and the first thought some of you might have had when I introduced any sort of qualm with Mexican Spanish in particular, versus say, Spanish from Spain is: “Well, what about cultural/racial/national bias? Aren’t you projecting your prejudice of Mexico and Mexicans onto the way they speak?” It’s a fair point, and I’d be remiss to gloss over this. Growing up in the U.S., one is typically exposed to at least some negative stereotypes and propaganda against Mexicans. I’m from the heartland of the country, and admittedly, most of the Mexicans I had met in my life prior to moving to Mexico were poor, uneducated, and working class, and I was raised thinking of Mexico basically as a poor and dangerous place. I mean, of course it’s not totally untrue that Mexico is poor and dangerous (the same statement could be applied to various degrees to every country on Earth), but it’s very far from the whole story. In short, I had an unfairly one-dimensional and negatively-skewed picture of an incredibly diverse country and people.

To be clear, I’d like to add that many things about Mexico and its culture are quite lovely. If you have never been, then I’d strongly consider visiting. The Mexican people, it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), are on the whole a delightful addition to any existence on this planet. But of course, anyone who is broadly educated and/or has traveled widely already knows all this.

To continue, I cannot discount the possibility that even though, through education and experience, I have grown and widened my perspective of Mexico, that there still exists some subconscious bias with how I view Mexico and things related to it, including the language. In short, it could be one of those situations we all have to deal with as flawed humans where: “I no longer believe it, but it’s still in there.” And to be clear, I don’t mean any of this in a self-flagellating, white guilt sort of way. I mean it in a realistic, humanistic sort of way, where we’re all probably a little prejudiced.

Reason 4: The humble origins and usage of “CH” in English – English has been influenced by many languages over the years, notably Latin, Greek, and French, but at its root it’s a Germanic language. I’d like to turn my attention now to some “CH” words that stem from Old English and are therefore of Old Germanic origin. My sense is that there are many humble Old English words at the core of our language that carry the “CH” phoneme.

An interesting factoid: English words that contain the spelling “CH” but are pronounced sh [such as charade] tend to derive from French. And English words that contain the spelling “CH” but are pronounced with the k sound [such as school] tend to come from Greek.

A few illustrative examples of words that carry the “CH” phoneme and come from Old English/Germanic origin are the following:

-chunk / -cheese / -batch / -child / -witch / -choose / -chew

Forget for a moment about the creepy Hansel and Grettle associations that my choice of those specific words in that specific order may have conjured. That was accidental. Notice instead that these are all very meat-and-potatoey sorts of words. Short, commonplace, humble, utilitarian words. So maybe it could be argued that already, due to speaking English, I have developed this unconscious bias or association with the “CH” phoneme as a very plain, humble, undistinguished sort of sound. And therefore, when I hear all of the “CH”ing going on in Mexican Spanish I am projecting that association of plainness or lack-of-prettiness outward unto the new vocabulary?

Reason 5: a lack of “CH” in languages I have been conditioned to think of as fancy or high-class – I am a massive fan of Lord of the Rings, and it so happens that in said series there are several artificial languages, constructed by J.R.R. Tolkein himself, on display. One of those languages is High Elvish. Those elves, especially to my younger self, were very elegant, stylish, and graceful. I even went through a phase of wanting to be an elf myself. Needless to say, the portrayal of elves and their language left an impression on me, and it is therefore worth considering that the sensibilities and phenomenology portrayed in their language have bled over into how I hear real-world languages. Now, Tolkein apparently based High Elvish very heavily on Finnish and Welsh, in both of which the presence of the “CH” phoneme is minimal. And, as far as I can tell, there is little to no “CH” present in High Elvish itself. So there you have it. Another element of cultural conditioning that has taught me that the “CH” phoneme in the word “chunky” is only for commonplace or silly things, and not for “high” or “fancy” languages.

To drive the point home I would be remiss to leave out the example of French. Contemporary standard French (according to the internet) does not utilize the “CH” phoneme either. In modern French the letters “ch” always make a sh or k sound instead, and the tch phoneme is not used. Apparently in older french the “CH” phoneme used to be present, but gradually along the path of its evolution French left that phoneme behind. Any French speakers out there are welcome to confirm or expand on this point. Again, as with Elves and Elvish culture, France and French culture was thought of by young me to be the epitome of style and class. This is therefore yet another hit against the “CH” phoneme, another subtle association that has informed my subconscious that the “CH” phoneme is not for fancy things.

So what? So, in the end, have I drawn any conclusions? No, not really. I suppose I’d like to emphasize that my annoyance with the “CH” phoneme is a passing trifle. I merely decided to use my annoyance as a hook to pull me into a deeper exploration of some of the adornments and features of Spanish and other languages. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed this digging, and I hope you too also got something out of my musings. Cheers!

P.S. Amazingly, despite the seeming ubiquity of “CH” in modern Mexican Spanish, it is one of the less common Spanish phonemes. Perhaps it is the lack of “CH” generally in the language that makes it stand out so much when I do hear it. “CH” is not particularly common in English either, but it is more common in English than it is in Spanish. Huh. Oh well, I suppose when the mind wants to find something to pick on, it does.