The Words

147 so far, and one more tomorrow morning. Each one is a full page rather than a dictionary line — meaning, literal translation, origin, examples, a dialogue, and a note on who you can safely say it to. Nothing gets taken down, so the archive just keeps growing.

A quick answer at the top, then what the word means, its literal meaning, how Mexicans actually use it, a tone and safety note, the mistake foreigners reliably make, examples in both languages, a two-person dialogue, and an FAQ. Long, yes. But the goal is that you leave knowing when to use it, and that part never fits in one line.

Güey, ahorita, and no manches. Güey is the all-purpose dude that punctuates half of casual Mexican speech, ahorita is the flexible now that has ruined more foreigners' schedules than traffic, and no manches is what you say when someone tells you something outrageous. Those three will carry you through a surprising number of conversations.

Güey, and it isn't close. It works as dude, mate, or man, and between friends it can turn up three times in one sentence — sometimes meaning something, sometimes just holding the sentence together like a comma. Casual rather than polite, so keep it away from the job interview.

Slang is one informal word, like chido for cool. An expression is a fixed phrase that doesn't add up from its parts, like no manches. A dicho is a proverb with a lesson in it, the cousin of it's raining cats and dogs. Every word here is tagged, mostly so you know whether you can change the wording or have to say it exactly as-is.

Because Nahuatl never stopped being spoken. It was the language of the Aztec empire, it survived the conquest in central Mexico, and Spanish absorbed it instead of replacing it. That's where chocolate, tomate, aguacate, and elote come from — plus everyday words like escuincle for kid and popote for straw. It's the clearest single thing separating Mexican Spanish from the rest.

Yes — that's the filter for what gets published at all. Words are checked against how people talk in Mexico City now, not against a slang list from 2011, and anything that's aged badly either gets flagged or doesn't go up. If a word would make you sound like somebody's uncle, the page tells you so.

Anything built on chingar, and most albures, until you can read the room. Not because they're forbidden — Mexicans use them constantly — but because they're register-sensitive, and a foreigner deploying them in week two sounds like they're auditioning. Every page carries a tone note telling you exactly who it's safe with.

Ask, and expect it to go well. Most teachers enjoy the question because it means you've been listening to real speech instead of just the textbook, and a Mexican teacher can tell you in one sentence whether a word suits you. Just maybe don't open with the spiciest one you found.

Every word page has the phonetic pronunciation, and the sounds themselves are the easy part — Spanish spelling does what it says. What actually trips people up is rhythm. Órale changes meaning depending on how you land on it, which is why there's a dialogue on every page rather than just a pronunciation guide.

No, they're different things. Spanglish mixes English and Spanish, mostly along the border and in the US. Mexican slang is Spanish — built from Nahuatl, old Spanish, and a great deal of local invention. English loanwords do show up in CDMX speech, but what's on this site is Mexican Spanish, not a hybrid.