Guatemalan Spanish is the national variant of Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 spoken in the Central America

Central America

Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

n republic of Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

. About 9 million of the 13 million population speak Spanish. It includes the use of the second person

Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...

 singular personal pronoun

Personal pronoun

Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...

 vos

Voseo

Voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos in many dialects of Spanish. In dialects that have it, it is used either instead of tú, or alongside it....

.

Vocabulary

Local words include

• caite - sandal
• chapín - Guatemalan
• chish - interjection signifying disgust
• chucho - dog (literally "choo-cho")
• mosh - oat porridge
• patojo - child
• shuco - dirty
• pisto - money
• ishto - kid (brat)
• cincho - belt
• canche - blonde
• pajilla - straw
• colocho - curly (usually when speaking of hair)
• bolo - drunk

There are also many words unique to Central America, for example, chunche or chochadas or babosadas means thing or stuff in some places. Also the words used to describe children (or kids) is different in various countries in Central America, in Guatemala they are called often called patojos. In Guatemala and Honduras the word güiros is also used. In Guatemala (also in Honduras and El Salvador) money is called pisto, a term originally used by Maya peoples

Maya peoples

The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...

in Guatemala.