12 Things New Mexicans Say That Leave Out-of-Staters Lost

Order dinner in New Mexico, and you might get asked a question you don’t know how to answer.

Here’s what New Mexicans mean, from the dinner table to the irrigation ditch.

1. Burque

The city’s public library lists Burque as a nickname for Albuquerque, next to Duke City.

Many out-of-staters can hear Burque and not connect it to Albuquerque.

It’s an easy miss.

If you look up the original spelling, Alburquerque, the library’s entry shows an extra r.

The most likely reason the first r dropped is that English-speaking newcomers found the name hard to pronounce.

2. Ratón Volador

Ratón volador is Spanish for flying mouse, and in traditional New Mexican Spanish it means a bat.

No mouse is involved.

The University of New Mexico included it in a 2023 profile of professor Damián Vergara Wilson, coordinator of its Spanish as a Heritage Language Program.

If you know the word murciélago, traditional New Mexican Spanish uses ratón volador instead.

3. Chile

The National Park Service says the word chile is a variation of chil, derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) dialect.

It’s an old word.

If you see chile with an e, the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University says it means the Capsicum plant or its fruit.

Chili with an i is a dish of chile powder, beans, tomato and ground beef.

The Legislature named chile and frijoles, which are pinto beans, the state’s official vegetables in 1965.

4. Christmas

The Legislature made “Red or green?” the official state question in 1996.

The state tourism office says the question is usually answered Christmas, meaning red and green chile together.

You don’t have to choose.

Some out-of-staters might hear Christmas as the answer and wonder where the holiday fits.

5. Luminaria or Farolito

The National Park Service says luminaria means different things north and south of Santa Fe.

North of Santa Fe, a farolito is the paper lantern, and a luminaria is a small stack of firewood.

South of Santa Fe, the paper lanterns are luminarias.

Same lantern, different name.

If you ask for luminarias in Taos, which sits north of Santa Fe, by that rule you would be asking for firewood.

Albuquerque sits south of Santa Fe, so by that rule its paper lanterns would be luminarias.

6. Biscochito

The Legislature adopted the biscochito, also spelled bizcochito, as the official state cookie in 1989.

If you order a biscochito, the Secretary of State’s office describes it as a small anise-flavored cookie that early Spaniards brought to New Mexico.

That’s a long tradition.

New Mexico was the first state to have an official state cookie.

7. Ristra

The Royal Spanish Academy’s dictionary defines ristra as a braid made from garlic or onion stalks and, more broadly, as a group of things placed one after another.

The Chile Pepper Institute defines a ristra as a long string of New Mexican chiles used for storage and decoration.

Chile was traditionally sun-dried on roofs or on the ground, the National Park Service says.

That left it exposed.

Birds and rodents contaminated the fruit, so people began tying it into strings, or ristras, and hanging them on a wall.

You can see ristras hanging along fences, on patios and on portals.

8. Acequia

If you’re wondering what an acequia is, a 2020 report from New Mexico State University (NMSU) calls it a hand-dug, farmer-managed irrigation ditch.

The New Mexico Acequia Association has documented 547 acequia associations, with an estimated 700 systems operating in the state.

The word began as Arabic.

It traces to al-sāqiyah, which means irrigation channel, and Spanish adopted a form of it during the Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.

9. Mayordomo

A mayordomo is a ditch boss, according to the NMSU report.

If you’re one of the member irrigators, you’re a parciante.

Each year, parciantes elect a mayordomo and three commissioners who oversee ditch management and governance.

Allocating water, supervising communal labor and resolving disputes are among a mayordomo’s duties.

That’s a big job.

10. Troca

Troca, or troque, is the traditional New Mexican Spanish word for truck.

Troca sounds like truck.

The same University of New Mexico story lists lonche for lunch, an English-influenced word.

If you say lonche aloud, you can hear lunch in it.

Professor Damián Vergara Wilson sees traditional New Mexican Spanish as a variety worth preserving.

11. Dichos

A dicho, also called a refrán, is a traditional Spanish folk saying.

New Mexico Magazine reports that writer Don J. Usner's mother kept a list of nearly 300 of these sayings, which she had been writing down since the early 1950s.

That's a long list.

One dicho, "Con hambre no hay mal pan," translates to when you're hungry, there's no bad-tasting food.

12. Nuevomexicano

Nuevomexicano, also written Nuevo Mexicano, names the Hispanos of the Upper Rio Grande, according to a Library of Congress essay.

It's a mouthful.

Enrique R. Lamadrid of the University of New Mexico wrote the essay, and the community calls itself Nuevo Mexicanos or Hispanos.

English speakers called the community Spanish-Americans before World War II.

You may see it spelled as one word or two.