Like totally. We haven’t done one of these in such a long time that it was only fitting to start back up with an ¡Ay aja! I first heard this term while Juan was watching one of his novelas. The young chica fresa in the scene was expressing her disbelief for what she was hearing and she did so by uttering an ¡ay aja! Ever since then, those two words seemed to have captured a lot of momentum. I hear them all of the time now. Not only on television, but even at home when Juan and I take turns answering each other with the phrase.
And that’s precisely what it means. Although chances are if you Google ay aja right now you’ll come up with a lot of random findings that will leave you with more questions than answers. We did do that ourselves just for kicks. Surprisingly enough there aren’t really a lot of videos out there with just that expression. That kind of sounds like a job for Los Metiches, jajaja! There were, however, some memes out there to help get the point across.
Here are just a few.
But that still leaves us with the question we started out with. What does ¡ay aja! mean. It’s quite simple really. By definition, aja is an affirmation that implies either approval, satisfaction or surprise, depending on the inflection and tone used. Adding the ay at the beginning gives it a more sarcastic tone, sort of like an oh really! or an oh, really? You can use it playfully to respond to somebody when you don’t really believe what they are saying, or when you just want them to know you’re kind of excited about what you’re hearing.
You can use an ¡ay aja! too when you completely disagree with what you are being told.
So there you have it. Try it out for size. And tell us how you like or dislike this particular word.
For more fun words check out our Mexi-Vocabulario.