Pura Vida and Other Tico Greetings
By Guillermo Jimenez
TicoSpeak Blog: http://ticospeak.blogspot.com/
Courtesy Costa Rica Living

Greetings in Costa Rica are always backed by a smile. If a Tico doesn't feel like smiling he/she will tell you something other than a greeting, maybe equally dignifying. In the worst of cases and forced to say something a Tico will use a greeting but qualify it somehow to avoid coming across as a liar, for instance a: "Diay, pues estoy Pura Vida [hey, I'm kinda of Pura Vida] is not by any means a unqualified "Pura Vida, mae, y vos? [Pura Vida, buddy, and you?]. Greetings are that important in the Tico language.

You should know however that the ability of a Costa Rican to smile has very little to do with his or her personal situation. Even in the worst of moments a Tico usually smiles and is eager to say `hi' but that doesn't really mean he is happy, only that he still keeps his hopes up and thinks he still can come up on top of the situation.

When a Tico is indeed happy however you can bet his greeting will be contagious and and all of the features of his expression will tell you so. In fact when a Tico is happy he purposely abandons all semblances of education and resorts to slang to express his mood. Of course, for the non-Spanish speaker this may be a problem, but don't worry this is why I am writing this TicoSpeak to begin with.

So you have heard of "Pura Vida," but have you heard of "Pura Davi?." A common technique of people in the street is to flip syllables in well known greetings so that they come out funny. "Davi" is of course Vida. You may have also heard `Tacuen' or `Cuenta' [tell] which we also use to start conversations as in "¿Que mae, que me tacuen/cuenta?" [What's up?].

Along side this more `proper' greetings you will also hear variations on `Pura Vida,' like `Pura Carnita' and `Puros Dieces,' these two phrases always bring a big smile to the receiver because they are also intended to bring forward the reason why a word like Carnita [diminutive of meat] and Dieces [plural for 10] have any relevance in a greeting.

In my case `Carnita' always remind me of Tica moms telling their kids to look for meat that has more meat than fat, or in the meat tortas [beef patties] they put in hamburgers. I know it sounds weird but that means that the higher the ratio ˆto say it in gringo-speak˜ of meat to straw/fat the better, hence `Pura Carnita,' in a circuitous kind of way comes to have a similar meaning than Pura Vida ˆthat is I'm full of life, 100% pure meat.

This is also true of `Dieces' or 10s. You see Pepito˜one of our favorite characters in jokes˜came back home to his mom really happy one day to tell her that he had scored "puros dieces" [straight 10s] in all of the subjects in school. Her mother got really happy, jumped up from the chair to hug her baby and congratulate him, then Pepito said: "..and that's nothing mom, many of my friends scored `Puros Cienes' [straight 100s]". Get it?

Back in the old days grades in schools were based on a 10 scale, where 10 was the equivalent of A+, but that was in Pepito's mom youth, the new scale is based on 100 points and Pepito was supposed to score at least 65 to pass∑in the end he came up with a clever way to break that news to his mom.

`Pura Galleta' is another one of these strange word plays Ticos like to play a lot. Galleta means `Cookie' but it is not used as in English `smart cookie' however. Some 20 years ago POZUELO, the big cookie making company here in CR came up with a new slogan: `Pozuelo es Muuuchaaaa Galleta' [Pozuelo is A lot of Cookie] referring to their great assortment of products, soon `Mucha Galleta' became synonymous with `Top of my game,' which then yielded sentences like "Es que vos sos mucha galleta" [That's cause you are a lot of cookie (figuratively)], it didn't take long for the `Pura Galleta' phrase to be coined and equiparated with `Pura Vida.'

Think of all the variations as slang of slang. Pura Vida is still the official Tico greeting and it is in fact a bit more formal than the rest. The other are considered `pachuco' [vulgar] and therefore their use is more restricted.