This post is also available in: Spanish

Titua

Another week and we keep refining our Dominican vocabulary, our goal is to provide you, our dear readers something fun but also very necessary for better communication within this wonderland that is the Dominican Republic.

Our hope is to facilitate a better understanding between Dominicans and foreigners, which is why we’re bring you one Dominican word per week, to help you comprehend our unusual yet creative form of speech.

This time we decided to bring you one of the most popular Dominican onomatopoeia of all time; if at any time a Dominican friend has told you a story about a fight, you’ve probably heard this sound: “Titua!”.

Titua

1-“Titua” it is a very common onomatopoeia among Dominicans, it is mostly used when someone gets hit (usually a slap)

2- “Titua” it is also a way of mocking when a person is insulted in public.

Example 1:

Dominican 1:   Entonces, Pedro peleo en la escuela ayer/ So, Peter got into a fight at school yesterday?

Dominican 2   Si, pero le dieron una bofetada que sonó ¡titua!/ Yes, but the other one gave him a slap, bam!

Example 2:

A José le dieron una chapota que sonó ¡titua! / Joseph got a punch, bam!

[As you can see translating “titua” is not all that easy… but hopefully you now get the idea!]

[The definition of chapota next week]

So far we have learnt jumo, guayarse, deguabinao, jartura, yeyo, chepa, dique, empepillar, moriqueta, decricaje, motete, pinta, timbí, clavo, chapusero, manganzón therefore if you missed out on any of your classes you have time to catch up by clicking on any of these links.