Eloy Alfaro and the word Chuta.

"¡Chuta!" is a common expression in Ecuador. It´s widely used in the Coast and in the Highlands. We can find the same word in Perú and Chile but always with a different meaning. In Ecuador it means something like "¡Vaya!" or even "¡Caramba!", and it´s believed to be a Quechua word originally. But perhaps it is not: curiously it´s used in the same cases as the English "Shoot!". Here is a hypothesis that may deserve exploration and it´s all mine: when Eloy Alfaro began the construction of the train that would connect Quito and Guayaquil at the beginning of the 20th century, many British experts came to lend their expertise and because of the magnitude of the project they had to remain in Ecuador and as a result some English expressions and terms (most about technicalitites that didn´t exist in Spanish) remained and were assimilated with "Shoot!" being one of them. "Shoot!" is too similar to "¡Chuta!" not to at least consider the possibility.

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