Apparently, a bunch of sluts were running around my city recently.
I’m talking, of course, about the SlutWalk movement, which began earlier this year when a Toronto cop implied that women who dressed like “sluts” deserved to get raped. Outraged at the cop’s statement, women all over North America hit the streets both to protest the Neanderthal mindset that afflicts so many males, and to repurpose the word “slut.”
When I was in college, my editor at the student newspaper called me with an assignment: I was to cover a speech by a radical professor who, my editor breathlessly said, was brilliant “and so PC!”
I asked what that meant, and she said, with some amazement at my naivety, that it indicated “politically correct.”
I had never heard this term before. Of course, it wasn’t long before those juxtaposed letters entered the language and, in the process, went from leftist praise to conservative insult.
It’s difficult to find an American who doesn’t know what “amigo” or “gracias” means. Eventually, those words will be considered part of English, in the same way that nobody thinks “patio,” “rodeo,” or “coyote” are solely Spanish.
However, there is still one area in which American culture hasn’t embraced the allure of Spanish. I’m talking about vulgarity, obscenity, and indecency — basically, the naughty words.
I’m not sure why Spanish curse words haven’t crossed over. It’s not that we don’t like to swear in this country. And the dreaded bleep on television has now become a badge of honor.
Indeed, as the LA Times points out, “Once largely relegated to slips of the tongue during live events, censored cursing has evolved into a pre-planned, or at least largely expected, punch line that’s network-approved and no longer lowbrow.”
But will Spanish words ever be bleeped out? It’s not just an academic question.
It stands to reason that as America grows more multilingual — and it’s doing just that, regardless of your feelings on the matter — we’ll hear more Spanish on the airwaves. And some of that Spanish will be of the naughty variety.
Now, the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcast indecency, says that it doesn’t matter what language the offending words are in. The FCC is always poised to bring the hammer down on those who sully our culture — well, in theory, anyway.
The truth, according to many annoyed English-language broadcasters, is that the commission frequently gives a pass to Spanish indecency because “the Spanish-speaking staff at the FCC has traditionally been undermanned.”
Yes, there just aren’t enough bilingual bureaucrats available to translate the filth flying around on TV and radio. Until recently, the FCC could get away with this. They assumed all that vulgarity came from Univision shows or radio stations that blared ranchera music — you know, the stuff that mainstream America ignores.
For the most part, the only time one hears Spanish on hit shows is for effect. It pops up when the tough cop or caring doctor is in a rundown barrio, and the natives are running wild. You also might hear it when an extra is portraying a maid or gardener. And for real diversity, they might throw a janitor in there too.
But it’s just a matter of time before a middle-America show features a character who speaks Spanish frequently. Already, we have the first truly bilingual television series.
So what happens when a lovable character on a top show mutters, “pinche”? Will the FCC take initiative and bleep “culero” or just let it go, hoping against hope that millions of viewers don’t know that it means “assfucker”?
Well, there’s only one way to find out. I challenge all those television writers who take pride in their edginess to put up or shut up. Have one of your white, urbane characters learn some Spanish and then casually throw in some obscenities. After all, who is going to complain if Liz Lemon or Sue Sylvester tells someone to go chinga themselves?
Trust me, the FCC won’t even notice.
One of the best movies of last year was the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit. Among the film’s many charms is the archaic, bizarrely formal speech of the characters. I have no idea if real people of the era said things like, “You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements” and “I do not entertain hypotheticals.” But it’s cool to imagine that they did.
Of course, Americans don’t speak like that anymore. A century later, in fact, we’re considered articulate if we keep it down to three uses of “you know” and a pair of double negatives per conversation.
It’s good to be bi.
Wait, let’s try that intro again. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not sufficiently bilingual to be dazzling all the time and avoid slip-ups, malapropisms, and brain freezes. In fact, if I spoke Spanish better, I would be a lot more confident of fighting off Alzheimer’s as I get older.
At least that’s the conclusion of “neuroscience researchers [who] are increasingly coming to a consensus that bilingualism has many positive consequences for the brain.”
Although I’m a writer, I’m not in the habit of coining new words. I think the half-million English ones that we have are sufficient for most occasions.
However, modern life sometimes introduces a fresh grotesquerie to our society. In such cases, it’s acceptable to mix and match syllables – and even languages – to make the new concept clear.
For example, I’ve noticed that in my neighborhood, there is a small cadre of homeless people. But they are different from the homeless I saw in New York or the Midwest. Those individuals, for reasons I cannot explain, tended to be deranged or blackly comedic, and they instigated confrontations regularly.
These West Coast unfortunates, on the other hand, are more likely to be quiet and to avoid panhandling altogether. In fact, I usually see them engaged in some isolated, odious task to scrap out a living. Most often, they’re digging through trashcans or recycling bins in search of aluminum cans or glass bottles. I then see them pushing grocery carts overflowing with their clanging treasures.
Our neighborhood is hilly, so it’s tough work lugging the carts up steep inclines. These are individuals who labor hard for their pittance.
Recently I passed by a guy who had hit a motherload of empty bottles. Evidently, one of our neighbors is rich and/or had something big to celebrate, because the bin was overflowing with spent champagne bottles and high-end wine vintages. The irony of seeing a man stockpile empty containers of Dom Perignon, in the hopes of scoring a few cents, was inescapable.
Perhaps it is just my neighborhood, but these foragers are overwhelmingly Hispanic. They don’t snag the day jobs like the trabajadores, but like them, they strain mightily for chump change.
To call them homeless or street people is inaccurate, and even a disservice. In honor of their hard-working brethren, I think of them as the aluminumadores.
We’ll see if the word catches on. But to be honest, I hope the term becomes irrelevant long before then.
My wife has warned me, for my own sanity, to stop torturing myself. But I can’t help it.
Whenever I read a news article about immigration or the dismal economy or some other political topic, I scroll down to the Comments section to see what the theoretical average American thinks about the situation.
This is always a mistake. The ratio of insightful comment to shrill diatribe is about one in ten.
I’m going to make a bold, even confrontational, assertion: My English is better than yours.
I’m not saying that it’s perfect. If you dig through my posts, I’m sure you’ll find a grammatical error or two. In general, however, I have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Considering that I make my living as a writer, editor, and copyeditor, I should know my independent clauses from my subjunctive tenses.
In any case, I bring this up to make clear that I have a deep love of English. Having said that, I don’t see why we need to make it our national language.
Now at this point, many readers may object and sputter, “But English is already our official language!”
I want to thank Susan A for her recent comments on my post. I’ll also thank DSewell, even though his comment consisted of calling me “nothing but a racist” and launching into an angry diatribe about Los Angeles and Hispanics in general. Why so tense, Mr. DSewell?
Let’s all lighten up. I’ll return to a topic I’ve addressed in the past – namely, my fumbling attempts to relearn Spanish. As I’ve written before, I was semi-fluent at one point, but lack of practice has dropped me to intermediate level at best.
Like every language, Spanish has its fair share of untranslatable phrases and idioms. For example, a few years ago, my mom and my aunt were speaking in Spanish. My mother let loose with a comment that made them both laugh.
Naturally, I asked what she had said. My mother informed me that, strictly translated, the phrase translated into something like “Your stepbrother’s bus is driven by a rage-filled monkey with pneumonia. And he’s very punctual, if you know what I mean.”
Yes, it all makes sense now.
Of course, it’s not just the quirks and exceptions that are frustrating to learners. It’s the faulty translations that well-meaning individuals foist upon the rest of us.
To give you an egregious example, recently I saw a sign outside a nightclub. The sign read, “You must be twenty-one years old to enter.” The very helpful Spanish translation beneath it read, “Necesita tener veinte y uno anos para entrar.”
There was just one problem. The “n” in the word “anos” was missing a tilde, the punctuation mark better known to English speakers as “that wavy line thingy above the letter.” The absence of this diacritical mark altered the sentence’s meaning, just a little.
Instead of saying, “You must be twenty-one years old to enter,” the sign read, “You must possess twenty-one assholes to enter.”
I think we can all agree that even the most determined club-goer is unlikely to achieve this high standard. We can further agree that few doormen or bouncers would be eager to check patrons to verify their adherence to the club’s policy.
I propose a system. Before anyone is allowed to translate anything into Spanish, they must demonstrate their proficiency by repeating the following tongue-twister at a fast rate, and then explaining what it means:
R con R cigarro
R con R barril
rápido corren los carros
cargados de azúcar del ferrocarril
I heard this little ditty a lot growing up. My mother said it often, and then watched amused as I, and the other American-born members of the family, tried in vain to master it. I still can’t do it, but at least I know that it has something to with railroad cars filled with sugar travelling at a high rate of speed.
No, it doesn’t make sense. But then again, when was the last time you saw someone selling seashells by the seashore?
My point – exactly.
The waiter approached our table and recited the specials in a flowery French accent. Because I live in Los Angeles, I assume that every waiter is an actor, especially ones who are speaking with outrageous inflections.
But as it turned out, he was the real deal. Over the course of the dinner, he informed us that former Parisians constituted most of the restaurant’s staff. Evidently, the owner was from France, and he liked to help his fellow countrymen get started in this country.
“So you’re an expatriate,” I said.
“Oui,” he answered.
Now, I’m certainly not going to claim that the French are wildly popular with Americans. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that people in this country were ordering freedom fries.
Strangely enough, I don’t recall anybody asking for a freedom kiss. But I digress.
The point is we can all agree that Europeans, in general, receive kinder greetings here than do people from Latin America. In fact, it’s in the very terms we use.
The French waiter was an expat. It’s a word that evokes a daring and exotic nature, an upscale sensibility. It’s a positive term.
In contrast, we refer to Guatemalans and Colombians and Ecuadorians as immigrants. That word conjures up a lot of connotations, but most of them, alas, are not positive.
What is the reason for this dichotomy?
Certainly, legality has something to do with it. I presume that the French waiter has a work visa. The Mexican busboy, in contrast, may not. But as I’ve written before, the self-righteous screeching over the “illegal” part of the phrase “illegal immigrant” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s a point, yes, but a minor one.
The differentiation, according to one unimpeachable source, “comes down to socioeconomic factors… skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual laborer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labeled an ‘immigrant.’ ”
It’s an arbitrary, even unfair, definition. But it’s accurate.
Still, that doesn’t explain the difference fully. For example, we would never call someone a Mexican expatriate, even if she were a successful businessperson like the owner of the French restaurant. She is forever an immigrant.
At its most basic level, the reason that we view Frenchman and German women and British people as expats, rather than as immigrants, is because we like them better. We respect them more.
It’s right there in the language.
It works the other way too. Any American adult who chooses to live abroad is an expatriate (with the possible exception of Peace Corps volunteers). It really doesn’t matter if you bum around Europe for years or head up the international office in Hong Kong. If you’re an American living in a foreign land, you’re an expat. You won’t be called an immigrant unless a native resents your presence, and even then, you’re more likely to be called “gringo,” “yanqui,” or “member of the invading imperialist army.”
There is, of course, a long history of Americans moving abroad to have their art better appreciated, or at least to sleep with people who have more interesting accents. It’s the Lost Generation of Hemingway, and the Beat Generation of Kerouac, and the Brooding Generation of Johnny Depp (he lives in France, you know).
So perhaps I will do my part and live out that dream I have about moving to London. It might be amusing to see the British try to figure out if I’m an American expatriate or a Latino immigrant.
Perhaps I would be both.
