Pardon? — the Mexican way to answer when you did not hear.
What you say when someone calls your name or you missed what they said. Mexicans use it where other Spanish speakers say ¿qué? or ¿cómo?, and it is considered more polite — children are taught to answer mande rather than qué.
From mandar, to command — literally "command me". A colonial-era courtesy that survived only in Mexico.
Almost uniquely Mexican. Elsewhere it sounds strange or stiff, and some Mexicans avoid it because of its deferential origins.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Mexican Spanish — it uses mande the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Mexican Spanish.
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