No More Spanish, por favor!

I was in a state of dread watching the second Democratic debate last night, fearing that the candidates would feel obliged to follow in the steps of Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker the night before, and break into Spanish.

On the first night, when those two stammered their few ungrammatical, mostly incomprehensible sentences in the language of Cervantes, I cringed. And then I got angry. Did Booker and O'Rourke really think that the Hispanic population would be so swept away by hearing them mumble a couple of sentences in Spanish that they would forget to examine the candidates' records and their policies? How much more patronizing can you get?

Julián Castro also said a few things in Spanish, but they came more naturally to him, by reason of his heritage. Nevertheless, I find the habit of larding speeches with foreign sentences in order to manipulate the emotions of a certain population silly at best--sort of like a male candidate attempting to capture the women's vote by dressing in drag.

Language is a powerful thing. When I hear on the news the voices of captive immigrant children crying mamá! papá! it brings tears to my eyes, because those are the names I called my parents as a child. I remember myself newly arrived in the U.S., and I imagine being separated from them. But when I hear Spanish badly used for political effect, I don't feel flattered or included. I feel insulted.

Still, this is a crucial moment in politics, and I am pragmatic enough to recognize that a candidate may have to resort to less than pristine tactics in order to win. So I suggest that, with the use of Spanish, brevity is best, as when Julián Castro wrapped up his remarks by promising that, on January 20, 2021, we will say adiós to Donald Trump.

"Spanish": A Rant

O.k., here is a rant I've been repressing since the fall of 1958, when I first landed on these shores.

It has to do with what Americans mean when they say that someone is "Spanish."  It used to be that when people would tell me "Oh, I used to know a Spanish boy in high school," I would ask what part of Spain he was from.  And invariably it turned out that the person was Cuban, Mexican, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Panamanian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Bolivian, Paraguayan, Uruguayan, Chilean or Argentinian.  But never, not once, was he Spanish.  He spoke Spanish, or some version of it, but he was no more Spanish than someone from Kansas is English.

Now, when I'm told that someone is Spanish, I just nod.  It's highly unlikely that the person is from Spain--after all, there are only forty million of us, as opposed to some five hundred million Spanish speakers south of the Rio Grande.  Spanish people come from across the Atlantic.  We are Europeans, and though we share certain cultural and linguistic features with Latin Americans, we are as different from them as a Californian is from a Yorkshireman.  Not better, not worse--just different.

Latin Americans in the U.S.  have introduced the word  "Latino," which is short for latinoamericano, to describe their origins.  Of course "Latino," absent the americano part, is also inaccurate, since it necessarily includes people from Spain and Portugal, who were conquered by the Romans before they, in turn, conquered the New World.  But I've quibbled enough.

And here is a sub-rant, about the Castilian and Catalan languages, which are often confused.  Until the fifteenth century, Spain consisted of a number of separate kingdoms, each of which had its own language.  Then Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile married, subjugated all the kingdoms, and imposed Castilian as the official language of the new country. So what is generally called "Spanish" is actually the tongue originally spoken in the central region of Spain.

But the other regional languages--Aranese, Basque, Galician, Aragonese, Asturian, Leonese, Cantabrian, Extremaduran, Eonavian, Fala, Riffian, Calo and my own native tongue, Catalan--are alive to this day, despite centuries-old efforts at suppression by the central government.  With the exception of Basque, whose origins nobody has figured out, they are all Romance languages and not dialects of Castilian, but languages in their own right, just as French, Italian and Portuguese are.

And finally, a sub-sub-rant, about the supposed "lisp" of Castilian speakers which, according to a legend popular with Americans, originated with a Spanish monarch's speech defect.  Castilian speakers are perfectly able to pronounce the "s" sound--but they associate it exclusively with the letter "s."  They pronounce "Susana" not as "Thuthana," but the way you would.

However, the letter "c" when it precedes "e" or "i," and the letter "z" are pronounced "th." Thus Castilian speakers pronounce zumba (which means "he, she, or it buzzes") "thumba."  In Latin America and in the south of Spain it's pronounced "sumba."

That said, there are Castilian speakers who are afflicted with a genuine lisp.  How can you tell?  They are the ones who say "Thuthana."

I would like to end on a humble note:  I know perfectly well that one's sensitivity to regional and linguistic distinctions is dictated by culture and identity.  My mother teased my father because he spoke Catalan with an accent from Barcelona, whereas she spoke with an accent from Lleida, 100 miles to the west.  As a result, I am exquisitely aware of the contrast between those two ways of speaking.  But I cannot distinguish between an Australian and a New Zealand accent, or even a Queens and a Brooklyn accent.  And as for the origin of the differences between Sunnis and Shiites...I'll tell you in a minute, after I check on Google.

But I'm glad I got the Spanish and the lisp bits off my chest.

A Little Respect, por favor

For the last couple of decades, multiculturalism has been a revered concept in this country.  Little children in kindergarten are taught that difference is to be not only respected, but admired.  Authors from places no one heard from before write about those places and rise to bestseller status.  And authors from right around the corner, not to be outdone, buy airplane tickets and do years of research so they too can write authoritatively about places and people heretofore ignored.

It is mostly a good thing.  But unfortunately this regard for other cultures often does not extend to their most significant artifact:  their language.

I have been reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, published in 2009 by HarperCollins.  The first part of the book takes place in that most colorful of foreign lands, Mexico, in the colorful 1920's and 30's.  And it involves the era's most colorful trinity, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky.

The author has done a huge amount of research, and has surely traveled in Mexico.  There are endless virtuosic details about the temperament of tides, the smells of food, the sounds of monkeys  that she had to witness in person in order to transcribe them.

To intensify those bright hues and make them seem even more "real," she does what many other writers do:  she lards the text with Spanish words.  Open the first third of the book at random, and your eye immediately jumps to the italicized words and phrases sprinkled over the page:  pez volador (flying fish), el tiempo cura y nos mata (time heals and kills us), sergente...wait--what?  No such word in Spanish.  She must mean sargento (sergeant).  Just a typo that nobody caught.  But no, sergente appears in page after page--it's not a typo.

Then there are the accent marks.  Sometimes they are put where they're needed.  Often, they are neglected.  And sometimes they are applied where they don't belong, for sheer effect.

Worse than the accent problem are major grammatical mistakes such as--to mention just one--lo fugar (which makes no sense) for lo fugaz (which means, that which is fleeting).  Strange how that last  consonant makes such a difference.  The main character is given several opportunities to reflect on the fleetingness of things in general, and every time the mistake is repeated.

If the writer could not trouble herself to straighten out her Spanish, surely HarperCollins could have spared a few hundred dollars to hire a graduate student to proof for language errors?  Literate Spanish speakers are as close as the nearest college. We're not dealing with Serbo-Croatian here, but with a language that some say will soon be spoken by more Americans than English.

I have often laughed at the way restaurant menus scatter accent marks randomly over their lists of entrees* for flavor, the way chefs sprinkle thyme over the wild-caught salmon.  But The Lacuna is not a menu, and HarperCollins is a premier publishing house.

Obviously, neither the writer, nor the editors and publishers cared enough to make sure that the Spanish was correct, and that is a depressing thought.  Americans are enamored of multiculturalism, but multilingualism doesn't seem quite as romantic, and it is a lot of work.

I would have much preferred the book to use English throughout, reserving Spanish for proper names and where absolutely necessary.  It's the use of Spanish as a decorative artifact that offends me, and that surely has Sor Juana Ines* de la Cruz, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes and other Mexicans of genius writhing in their graves.

(* Both words need accents, but my software doesn't allow it.  But then, I'm not HarperCollins.)