Monday, December 17, 2007

Costarricense vs. Costarriqueño

While I only use costarricense myself, a less common(yet still existent, term for Costa Rican is costarriqueño. This word likely comes from an erroneous association with the word puertorriqueño, the Spanish word for Puerto Rican.

Someone recently e-mailed the website about this issue because I put costarriqueño in the "tags*" section for the dictionary entry for tico, which also means Costa Rican. I put it with the tags because it is not the standard accepted usage, but it is used. So, if someone searched for costarriqueño, she will find my entry for costarricense and learn the proper way.

*-Tags are short bits of text separated by commas that list the words associated with a particular topic.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello an sorry but.

Your are completly wrong!!

In my Country: Costa Rica

The correct adj. is: COSTARRICENSE (oneword)

That's the way!

regards

Anonymous said...

http://dle.rae.es/?id=B6oWwOk

costarriqueño, ña
1. adj. p. us. costarricense. Apl. a pers., u. t. c. s.

Olive George said...

That's what the blog says...