Wapurú

One day, Beni, one of the women of the village stopped by for a little visit with her girls.  We always enjoy their visits as they are very expressive and funny.  We always learn new words with them and they stretch our knowledge of the language in trying to understand them and talk with them.

As they were leaving, Katie gave the girls a red and white round peppermint.  The oldest one popped it into her mouth and said, “It tastes like wapurú!”  I grabbed my notebook and wrote, “wapurú.”

I thought, “This is great!  I was going to learn how to describe tastes and smells.  Here’s a word!”

So, in Nahuat, I asked, “What is wapurú?”  The girl answered, “Who knows!”

So, I asked, “Is it a fruit?”  The girl said, “Who knows!”

Then I said, “Is it sweet?”  The girl said, “Who knows!”

Getting nowhere with the daughter, I asked the mother.  She could not explain anything about what wapurú was, either.  So, I made a note to check it with my language helper the following day.

The next time I met with my language helper, I started by reviewing words or phrases that I had heard but hadn’t understood.  At the end of the list was “wapurú.”

I said, “Katie gave a candy to a girl yesterday and she said it tasted like ‘wapurú.’  What is that?”

She said, with slightly better pronunciation than the previous day’s visitors, “Vapurub?”

No more explanation needed!

Who knew?  Peppermints taste like VapoRub!