Bogota Blogger

There are a couple of noises that I have heard a lot from Colombians–I will call them UFF and WHEESH.  They’re actually somewhat similar in meaning, and there’s not really a good spelling for either one, but I’m going to try to explain them.

First, UFF.  This is similar to a noise I’ve heard in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the US.  Maybe it should be more like OOF-F-F.  The important thing is to draw out the F-F-F-F-F part of it.  The word can show suprise or exasperation, but has a few other translations.  It can mean, “Oh yeah, I definitely agree!” So, when someone says, “I’m really sick of the pollution coming from these buses,” the appropriate response could be “Uff!”  It can also mean something like, “That’s unbelievable,” such as when your friend says, “I just ran 10 miles in the rain,” and you reply, “Uff!”

The other noise, WHEESH, has a lot of emphasis on the WH, so it’s sort of more like a whooooooo-eesh! sound.  This is used to give even more emphasis to the idea expressed by UFF.  If you’re walking down the street and a bus spews some black smoke near you, you say, “Uff!”  When it happens again and the smoke spews right into your face, you say, “Wheesh!”  Another appropriate time to use it is when you hear something really astounding that you agree with profoundly, like, “It sure is hard to get a taxi in Bogota when it rains.”

WHEESH!!!!!!!!!

 (Later–hand gestures of Colombians)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Colombian Personality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.