Do locals use CDMX?
November 1, 2022 3:36 PM   Subscribe

Do local Spanish-speaking residents actually call the capital of Mexico “CDMX”? If so, do they speak the letters out loud (“ce de eme equis”)? If not, what do locals call Mexico City colloquially? What terms do Spanish speakers who live in other parts of Mexico use? I’m asking because I thought DF (“de efe”) or just México was the norm, but I keep seeing CDMX and am curious how widespread it is. I see that the official designation is no longer DF, curious what people actually say 6 years later.
posted by vunder to Society & Culture (5 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
My Mexican colleagues who live there use CDMX.
posted by EllaEm at 4:05 PM on November 1, 2022


Best answer: Helpful conversation here about it. At least one of these replies chimes with how my colleagues pronounce it: "sedemecs"
posted by EllaEm at 4:09 PM on November 1, 2022 [7 favorites]


Best answer: People in Mexico City definitely sometimes use CDMX in writing. I've rarely heard it spoken. I think the most common way of referring to Mexico City verbally, if you're talking about the entire urban area, where more than half of the population lives outside DF, is just Mexico. You only need a different word if it's not clear from context that Mexico means Mexico City rather than the whole country.

DF is definitely a reference to the smaller entity, excluding Estado de Mexico. CDMX could be broader than DF, depending on the context. Some people will use CDMX to refer to the entire urban area or at least something broader than just DF, others will chafe at the idea that CDMX extends over the state border (you can guess which ones live where). It's kind of like how someone who lives in Estado de Mexico might claim to be a chilango, but definitely wouldn't claim to be a defeño.

This is a linguistic area that is actively evolving after the renaming of Mexico City and I imagine you can find a lot of different uses in different groups.
posted by ssg at 5:39 PM on November 1, 2022 [3 favorites]


I heard "distrito federál" or "ciudad de México" when I lived there.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 1:56 AM on November 2, 2022


I was told by several Mexicans that they don't really use DF anymore but who knows?
posted by tarvuz at 2:03 PM on November 2, 2022


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