Acaso

After trying for hours to come up with a word to write about, I said to myself:

 - ¿Acaso no se me puede ocurrir nada?"

which is a way of translating the following:

 - How is that I can't think of anything?

Of course, you can translate that into a more obvious sentence like: "¿Cómo es que no se me ocurre nada?" But the "acaso" gives the phrase quite a different flavor, it adds something else, and that might be because of its varying (but related) possible meanings. Let's dig into that, shall we?

This is another one of those words with no translation whatsoever, so please bear with me because it may be a little bit hard to grasp the idea at the beginning, I'll do my best here...

Acaso - The sort of disbelief particle.

This "acaso" works specially great for those kind of questions where you are implying the opposite of what's being stated to be true.... ok that gave me a bit of a headache, let's see some examples:

 - "¿Qué vas a cocinar hoy?"
 - "¿Acaso seré tu sirviente?"

- "What are you cooking today?"
- Am I actually your maid?

"Acaso" is perfect for those situations where you would answer with another question, those "Do you actually believe that...?" or "How would I...?" questions. Here's another one:

- "Entonces... ¿Como se llamaba tu hermana?"
- "¿Acaso te lo tengo que repetir?

- "So... What was your sister's name?"
- "Do I actually have to repeat it to you?

People normally say this when they're getting a bit pissed off, just like in English I'd say.
Another common one is when something goes wrong at the workplace, and someone is trying to blame you for it. This would be kind of like:

- Se ha perdido mi reloj, apenas me lo compré hace una semana...
- ¿Acaso yo voy a saber donde dejas tus cosas?

- My new watch is lost, I just bought it a week ago...
- How can I/do I actually know where do you put your stuff?

This is in fact a bit of a rude answer... I would say it just if this person is implying that I took his watch, but there are ways of saying it... a playful voice tonality would make it a casual reply to a friend. I believe is pretty much like a very well emphasized "actually" in English.

- ¿Te lo tengo que repetir?
- Do I have to repeat it (to you)?

- ¿Acaso te lo tengo que repetir?
- Do I ACTUALLY have to repeat it (to you)?

So we could say that "actually" shares a lot of with "acaso" in this particular case. But we know that both words are much broader in meaning, depending a lot on context and stuff... I hope you can see the whole "disbelief" idea in it, a "I can't believe you're saying/thinking/implying that" message.

Another super common usage of  "acaso" comes part of a everyday phrase, and guess what, you have it in English too!

Por si acaso - Just in case

I can't think of a situation where this two couldn't be translated into one another. It's plain and simple, they're perfectly interchangeable. You can even use them both as part of a sentence, or as a single phrase.

- Te guardé algo de comida por si acaso querrías probar lo que cociné.

- I saved you some food just in case you wanted to try what I cooked.


- Siempre pongo el freno de mano, tú sabes, por si acaso.

- I always put on the handbrake on, you know, just in case.

-¿Por qué te pusiste botas de goma?
- Por si acaso llueve.

- Why did you put gumboots on?
- Just in case it rains.

Is that easy, believe me :D

I think this word would definitely help your Spanish to be more fluent, specially because of the way it resumes the whole disbelief idea in a sentence. In terms of word economy, Spanish wins this time, which is, in fact quite surprising.

Now, according to Wordreference, there's a couple more definitions for "acaso", but honestly, I've never heard them in my life, not even from other Latin Americans, so whether they are very formal usages for this word, or that's how they speak in Spain, or I just have no idea of what I'm talking about :D If you speak Spanish and this is how you talk in everyday life, please let me know in a comment. At least be sure that if you ever go to Peru, you won't need this.

So, to wrap up, "acaso" has a couple of very common definitions. One of them is used only in rhetoric questions, which are those kind of questions where you actually don't expect any answer. The other one is part of the super ultra common "por si acaso" phrase, which we use almost everyday. That was it for today, thanks for reading!