Words from Bocas del Toro
Bocas del Toro is an archipelago and a border, and you can hear it: Spanish there sits alongside English-based Caribbean creole and the Indigenous languages of the mainland. The result is speech that sounds like another country to the rest of Panama. These are the words the corpus records as Bocas’.
10 entries in this list
afroantillano
A descendant of the English- and French-speaking Caribbean laborers (mostly from Barbados, Jamaica, Martinique and Guadeloupe) brought in to build the…
arroz con coco
Rice cooked in coconut milk, a staple of Panama's Caribbean coast and of Bocas del Toro.
chácara
A bag hand-woven from plant fiber by Ngäbe women, an elastic mesh strong enough to carry a harvest.
guari-guari
An English-based creole spoken by the Afro-Antillean community of Bocas del Toro and parts of Colón.
jonicake
A dense round bread from Afro-Antillean cooking, baked or fried, eaten with coffee or alongside stew.
nagua
The long loose dress worn by Ngäbe women, in strong colors with bands of sewn triangles at the chest and hem.
ngäbere
The language of the Ngäbe people, the most widely spoken Indigenous language in Panama.
plantintá
A sweet baked turnover filled with red colored sweet plantain, typical of Afro-Antillean baking in Colón and Bocas del Toro.
rondón
A coconut-milk stew of fish or meat with root vegetables and plantain, cooked until everything falls apart.
sao
Pig's feet cured in lime with onion, cucumber and hot pepper, served cold.