Maybe you’ve been to Costa Rica before and are planning on going back. Or maybe you’ve seen how beautiful Costa Rica is on Insta. Either way, Costa Rica is on your bucket list.

You’ve decided to embrace the culture. Maybe you're already taking online Spanish classes or are seriously considering enrolling in a Spanish learning program. Either way to augment your learning curve, we’ve put some the of best Costa Rican expressions together.

Hopefully in your visit to ‘Tiquicia’ you can blend in using some local slang.
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“Que mae!” | Kā  mī

Mae (which sounds like the possessive pronoun ‘my’ in English) is the Costa Rican equivalent of dude.  Que mae! is very similar to saying, What’s up, dude! Mae can be used by some almost every other word … and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the most often said word in Costa Rica. Think of an LA Valley Girl inserting the word ‘like’ into every sentence or a guy who just can’t stop saying ‘dude’ ...dooood ...Maeee!
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Pura vida! | Po͞o-rah veeda

Pura Vida is without a doubt the most Tico saying in existence. It’s the country’s slogan. It’s a greeting and a dismissal. It’s a verb and an adjective. And it’s a way of life. Pura Vida directly translates to Pure Life … but as you can see above, it's so much more.It’s used for hello. It can be used for goodbye as well —though not as much as hello. It’s used as a verb or to describe emotion.

‍Question:Hola, Que tal? Como va todo?(Hey, what’s up? How’s everything going?)
‍Answer:Pura Vida (Everything’s good.) It can even be used to describe character. Ah, Si. El es muy pura vida (Ah, yeah … he’s a good guy).
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Buena nota! | Bwen-ah nōt-ah

This is another idiom that describes character. It has the idiomatic equivalence of “a good egg”. ‍

Mae, que buena nota is like saying, You’re a cool dude or You’re a good guy/girl.

‍Mala nota is the opposite, though not in a super serious way. It’s usually used when a favor is denied. For example, your friend asks you to give them a ride to run some errands and you don’t have time so you refuse. A likely Costa Rican response would be, Mae, mala nota kind of like saying, Not cool, man.
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Me agüevás | Meh ah-gweh-vas

No one seems sure where this expression came from, but it has something to do with eggs (huevos). Generally this saying is used to express being extremely tired of something or being quite annoyed with something. S

ea tonto, mae … Me aguevas (What the heck, man … I’m so tired of this). If a Tico uses this phrase, they are truly exasperated with whatever they are speaking of.
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Tuanis and Chiva | twäh-nēs and Chē-vah

These are two totally different words, but they are almost completely interchangeable in their meaning. An old gringo who has been living in Costa Rica for some 40-odd-years told me that tuanis comes from a misheard mispronunciation of "too nice". He told me that an American surfer back in the 80’s was asked how he liked Costa Rica and he responded, it’s too nice.

When they asked him about the beaches, he said, ‘too nice!’ When they asked him about the food or women, he would respond with, ‘too nice!’.

Apparently, it was this guy’s catchphrase.The locals grabbed on to this new saying for when something is awesome, fun, cool, or outstanding in any way...  but sorely mispronouncing the phrase, it evolved into tuanis. Que tuanis!(How cool!).

Chiva has almost the same usages, Que chiva! also means, How cool! But the word chiva is also used a lot to talk about material things. For example, though I could walk up and tell someone their tennis shoes are tuanis, I probably word use the word chiva instead. Me gusta tus tennis. Son super chiva (I like your shoes, they’re really cool).
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Al Chile | Al Chilē

This is still one of my favorite Costa Ricanisms!

Simply put, it means, ‘really’ or ‘seriously’ and can be used as both a question or a statement. I used to have a running joke with a tico friend of mine that would ask me what I was doing. I would respond nonchalantly, ‘I’m chillin’. And he’d immediately drop, Al Chile?

This particular interaction had much more to do with the sonic similarities between chillin’ and chile and became sort of a play on words for the two of us, pero, al chile … me entiendes (but seriously, you get what I’m saying).
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You’re Almost Ready for Costa Rica!

So now that you have a few tico idioms under your belt, you can start practicing and really rock your online Spanish lessons!