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.”
For the past year or so, I’ve been critical of Arizona, and with reason. But now is not the time for rehashing SB 1070 or the state’s attempts to whitewash its culture.
Instead, all of us are sending positive thoughts, good karma, and, yes even prayers to Tucson.
The assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords left six people dead and a dozen wounded.
We have no idea if the gunman was, as many pundits presume, motivated by right-wing vitriol or Sarah Palin’s crosshairs or some other conservative fear-mongering tactic.
However, it would be the ultimate elephant-in-the-room moment to avoid bringing up the unsavory connections.
After all, we’re talking about a psycho in a red state who took advantage of lax gun-control laws to carry out an attack on a Democrat. The guy spouted conspiracy theories that are close to right-wing talking points, and he expressed hatred for the government. Let’s face it: It’s unlikely that he’s an Obama man.
Still, we don’t know what this domestic terrorist’s agenda or motives are, and we’ll set aside the hyper-defensiveness of right-wingers who are tripping over themselves to shout, “It wasn’t us, so don’t you dare even bring it up!”
Instead, what interests me is the story of Daniel Hernandez, the young intern who is credited with saving Giffords’ life. Five days into his job, he wound up running toward gunfire, taking action to prevent his boss from choking to death on her own blood in a Safeway parking lot.
The irony, clearly, is that in Arizona, a lunatic can obtain a Glock without question, while a hero named Hernandez may be stopped by cops and asked to present citizenship papers.
It should also be noted that the maniac in question is a native-born American. I mean, I thought undocumented immigrants were causing all our crime. But here this suburban thug raised in comfort has caused more death and destruction than whole neighborhoods of illegal immigrants ever have.
It’s all very depressing, of course. But even this most grotesque of events has its black-comedy moments. For example, the gunman was apparently obsessed with grammar, and he believed that the government controlled people through the manipulation of the English language.
Who knows; maybe he would have been less crazy if he just spoke Spanish.
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.
Whatever happened to the controversy over bilingual education? I don’t mean that the topic has gone away or been resolved.
However, with all the hysteria over immigration and assimilation and undocumented Latinos stealing our jobs… well, it just seems like the debate over the best way to educate immigrant children with poor English skills has been rendered quaint.
Perhaps this is because English-immersion appears to be the de facto winner. Teaching immigrant kids in their native language seems to be a 1970s concept — like gun control and no-nuke rallies — that failed to accomplish much.
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 new year, of course, is a time for resolutions, proposals, reflection, and big shiny ambitions. However, I’ve never been one to declare things like “This year, I’m going to go skydiving and become a chess grandmaster!” I’m busy enough following through on my long-term goals.
Among those goals, as I’ve written in previous posts, is regaining my knowledge of Spanish. To that end, I’ve been studying online as much as I can. But as appreciative as I am toward the people who offer free lessons on the net, they are seriously freaking me out.
This is because I keep running into practice sentences such as “Todos tocaron la piel de zorro para que les diera buena suerte.” As we all know, this translates to “Everyone felt the fox skin so it would give them good luck.” Or I might spend several frustrating minutes trying to decipher “El traficante de armas no había leído mis libros,” only to discover that it’s the very common phrase “The arms trafficker had not read my books.”
Perhaps it’s because there are only so many innocuous, straightforward sentences that can be created. But I find it hard to believe that some of these examples will ever be uttered in the real world. While we’re at it, I’m mystified over the instructors’ fascination with the word “zanahoria” (carrot), which shows up regularly and is apparently the only food eaten in Latin America.
More disturbing, of course, is when I have to wonder if the instructors’ deep secrets are coming though in their examples. What else can one make of the practice sentence “Maté a mi amigo y tengo mucha vergüenza” (“I killed my friend and I’m so ashamed”)? Or how about “Llegaron a México los cuerpos de estudiantes muertos en Ecuador” (“The bodies of the students killed in Ecuador arrived in Mexico”). I mean, what the hell is going on at translation websites?
In any case, I will keep at it and try my best not to wonder what kind of person cranks our foreign-language examples filled with death, murder, and carrots. At the very least, I’ll be amused by phrases such as “Te perseguimos fuera de la sala de baile” (“We chased you outside the dance hall”). In fact, when it comes to that sentence, I really want to know how the story ends.
As I wrote in my last post, my interest in learning Spanish has been renewed. My hope is that by chipping away for a few hours each week, I will regain my long-lost fluency.
My studying recently consisted of an attempt to watch Spanish television. Flicking on the station at random, I caught the last fifteen minutes of what appeared to be a Mexican version of the “Jerry Springer Show.”
On the program, an older couple confronted their young adult daughter about her lifestyle. At one point, the parents really let her have it over some shameful behavior.
Evidently, the woman had sex with four men in one month. Or she had a walrus for lunch. I was unsure because, like I said, my Spanish is poor. Then it became impossible to track what was going on because they all started yelling at each other. The body language, however, was easy to translate.
Besides diminishing my already low opinion of human nature, the program also intimidated me. Listening to native Spanish speakers roll out rapid-fire questions and declarations verified how much I have to relearn. Up to that point, I felt pretty confident about understanding basic sentences. But the furious accusations on the show were far removed from the leisurely paced, innocuous dialogues on my Spanish-class podcasts.
The brilliant David Sedaris has pointed out the surreal nature of learning a new language as an adult. He writes that the conversations used in language courses “steer clear of slang and controversy. Avoiding both the past and the future, they embrace the moment with a stoicism common to Buddhists and recently recovered alcoholics.”
Yes, it’s quite a leap from comprehending someone’s observation that the sky is blue to understanding what that guy is screaming about at the top of his lungs. I guess I’ll have to watch more Spanish television to fully get it.
But for now, I’m taking a break from Univision. Instead, I plan to watch the sublime “Pan’s Labyrinth” without the English subtitles. I think that will go a lot better.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqYiSlkvRuw&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
All the members of my family speak Spanish better than I do. Some of them were born in Latin America, which gives them an unfair advantage. Others took to studying the language when they were younger, while I was busy mastering “Ms. Pac-Man.”
Regardless, I am now in solid adulthood and burdened with a foreign-language aptitude that can only be described as muy malo. I could easily let it go, because despite the shrill warnings of xenophobes, English is not going away anytime soon.
After all, English is the lingua franca of American pop culture, international business, and the internet. Nobody has achieved success in America without knowing at least some English. And people from Mexico to India to China are learning that it’s in their best interests to study the language.
So with English firmly ensconced, why should I, or anyone, bother to learn Spanish?
Well, first, there is the practical aspect. According to the U.S Census Bureau, about 12 percent of U.S. residents speak Spanish at home. They range from adults who don’t know any English to little kids who are perfectly bilingual. Within this range are millions of Americans who prefer to communicate in Spanish.
At some point, you will need to talk to someone who will throw a cascade of trilled R’s at you. It will happen. And when it does, gesturing randomly or yelling louder in English will not work. Even if the situation is not critical, your feelings of helplessness will be profound.
A second reason for learning Spanish is pure economics. Among the few booming occupations are jobs where Spanish is considered a plus, if not an outright requirement. Both the blue-collar construction worker and the white-collar marketing manager are learning that it’s smart to know the difference between “Lo siento” and “Claro que se.” In these recessionary times, a little awareness of Spanish can be the difference between landing the gig or spending another day watching soaps.
In addition to these practical matters, there is the fact that we are a multicultural society. We have always been a multicultural society, in truth. It just is no longer possible to wall ourselves off and demand that everyone acquiesce to the majority’s needs. Showing respect for other cultures, and gaining a basic understanding and empathy of others, is becoming a necessary skill – not a luxury for do-gooders.
Finally, exercising your brain and learning something new will never hurt you. So don’t worry.
Of course, for me, there is another, more personal reason. Growing up Latino without a firm grasp of Spanish is culturally confusing. It gets into messy questions of identity and authenticity, and we all love addressing those issues as middle age closes in.
So I’m going to hit the books and internet sites. When I get up to speed again, maybe I’ll take an intermediate class. It will take weeks, perhaps months, before I’m ready to tackle a conversation with a native speaker. When it comes, and I stutter past the initial “Buenos dias,” it will be a sublime breakthrough.
