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2016-05-25 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“Vote for me, I’m jes’ folks…”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

In this election season that already seems too long by half, we’ d be lucky to have a nickel for each time we’ve heard that word so dear to politicians’  hearts: the (near-untranslatable) “folks.”

Harrison log cabin

Claiming humble origins has been a favorite gesture of politicians in the US, almost since the birth of the Republic. An example: William Henry Harrison’s 1840 campaign, which made much use of log-cabin imagery.

The main sense of this colloquial word is “people.” But unlike the latter, “folks” connotes familiarity, warmth, even intimacy. “What can I bring you folks to drink?” is what a waiter might say trying to be friendly and casual instead of formal.

Politicians adore saying “folks” as it makes them sound humble and approachable—at least they think it does. “I want to thank the good folks of this state for sending me to Congress…”

Not only do they like to call the people, voters, and taxpayers “folks”—they love to apply it to themselves. “I’m just folks” (the deep-fried Southernism is: “jes’ folks”) is a verbal version of bluejeans and  lumberjack shirt. Could be the richer the candidate, the more they like saying “folks”—or feel they need to!

It can also be an informal term for “parents”: “I really miss my folks back home.” Not quite as common is the broader sense of “relatives” (old-fashioned “relations” or colloquial “kin” or “kinfolk”).

As “ordinary people,” “folks” can be translated by Spanish el pueblo. As a form of address, two possibilities are mi gente or amigos; a particularly Mexican variant would be mi raza or mi racita.

It’s not to be confused with the singular “folk,” meaning “the (ordinary) people” or “a people,” as with an ethnic group. (This is where the term “folklore” came from.)

The friendly aura of “folks” can also be weirdly out of place, as when Pres. G.W. Bush spoke of “the folks responsible for 9-11” or when Pres. Obama said, “We’ve tortured some folks.”

For a brilliant dissection of the way so many of our politicans try to be “just folks,” give a listen to the late, great country singer Cal Smith performing Sonny Throckmorton’s song, “I’m Just A Farmer”.

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "jes' folks", "just folks", campaign, culture, election, English, folks, humble, language, origins, politicians, politics, Spanish, translation

2016-04-01 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The first of April, fools and innocence

Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish

Dear reader,

It’s not a holiday, school kids don’t get the day off, stores don’t hold sales—but April First is widely loved.

April Fool’s Day is a day for telling false tales with a straight face—and, if the victim falls for it, crowing “April Fool!” aFree iPad visual!t your gullible listener. (French “Poisson d’Avril!” and Italian “Pesce d’aprile!¨ both mean “April fish”).

April Fool jokes can be in print too; many newspapers traditionally added a false front page over the real one, with absurd, fake news. A few papers still do it.

This US election campaign will be tough on April Fool pranksters—who can top the absurdity of the actual, real news?

In the Spanish-speaking world, though US influence has spread “El Día de los Tontos” somewhat, the real equivalent is Dec. 28, Día de los Santos Inocentes.

This light-hearted festival has a dreadful origin: the Biblical massacre of infants ordered by King Herod, who hoped the Baby Jesus would be among those slain. Christianity’s Feast of the Holy Innocents commemorates these martyrs.

From those tragic innocents to the innocent victims of the creative lies of Dec. 28 is quite a jump. But that’s how popular culture adapted and transformed that ancient religious commemoration.

When someone falls for a Dec. 28 gag, the traditional gloat is “Que la inocencia te valga” (May your innocence do you good).

The tall tale can be called a “joke” (Span. chiste, broma), “practical joke” or “prank” (broma pesada). If it’s elaborately constructed, uses print or other media, and is meant to snare a large number of people, it’s a “hoax.” In Spanish, Dec. 28 jokes in particular are often called inocentadas, playing off the day’s name.

On a serious note, did you hear about the Trump-Sanders “national unity ticket”? And that Apple is giving away free iPads to commemorate Steve Jobs’s birthday? ¡Que la inocencia te valga!

Buenas palabras/Good words!

Pablo

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Mar. 25-31, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 174 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (Aamerican Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", April, April Fools Day, cultura, culture, Davis, Día de los Tontos, English, español, Fools, inglés, inocentadas, Pablo, Santos Inocentes, Spanish, Tontos, traductor, translator

2016-03-26 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Lunary language and lore

Enlace para español/Link for Spanish

Dear reader,

This past week brought not only a full moon (Span. luna llena, or, in a graceful Latin form, plenilunio), but also a penumbral lunar eclipse.  And as far removed as most of us city folk are from the country and the spell the night sky used to cast on humanity, our companion orb has not lost the power to stun us with its beauty.

Human language testifies to the profound imprint that Earth’s satellite has made on human consciousness. We’ll look very briefly at some of that testimony, mainly in English and Spanish.

penumbral lunar eclipse march 2016The odd chance that Sun (Sol) and Moon (Luna) appear the same size in the earthly sky, has surely reinforced human cultures’ seeing them as a pair representing male/female, gold/silver, night/day.  The moon-female tie runs deep: the lunar phases find an echo in woman’s menstrual cycle.

The moon has its day: Engl. “Monday” (Ger. Montag, Dan. mandag), Span. lunes (Fr. lundi, It. lunedì).  It also gives us “month”; Span. mes is from Lat.  mensis, a root visible in words like “bi-mensual.”

Another link: moon and madness, yields  Engl. “lunatic” and Span. Lunático.  But  English informalizes it with “looney” and “looney tunes” (from the old cartoon series); “looney bin” is a mental hospital.

English also uses “moon” for “to languish sadly” (as one pining for a lost or unrequited love), which is a slightly archaic usage, and “to show one’s bared buttocks,” which isn’t.

Sp. lunar (loo-NAR) is also “birthmark,” once thought caused by the Moon’s influence, or “polka dot” on clothing. Spanish calls a landing on the Moon an alunizaje (by analogy to aterrizaje on Earth).

“Moonlight” (Sp. claro de luna, Fr. claire de lune) has a power over young lovers, long understood (and abetted) by poets and songwriters.

Samuel Johnson’s Sermon XII movingly uses the lovely, archaic word “sublunary” for “earthly”—urging his listeners “to bid farewell to sublunary vanities” and instead “with pure heart and steady faith to ‘fear God and keep his commandments.’”

¡Buenas palabras! Good words!

Pablo

An earlier version of this essay originally appeared in the Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as number 158 in the weekly bilingual column, “Misterios y Engimas de la Traducción/Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”.  Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an ATA (Aamerican Translators Association) Certified Translator, Engl>Span; a Tennessee State Courts Certified Interpreter, Engl<>Span; and an innovative trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and intercultural competency, with over 25 years experience. He holds the doctorate in Latin American History from The Johns Hopkins University, and is a Juris Doctor Candidate at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis (May 2017).

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", certified, cultura, culture, Davis, English, inglés, Julián, luna, moon, Pablo, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation

2015-02-21 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Ladybug, ladybug, don’t fly away!

Enlace para español/Link for Spanish

Dear reader:

We’re used to thinking of cultural difference.  But some things in this world are so inherently beautiful that people everywhere, and always, seem to have loved them. To name a few: butterflies, roses, kites, rainbows.

Este diminuto insecto, ¿puede que sea amado por todas las culturas humanas?

Is it possible that this little insect is loved by all human cultures?

A small, flying insect, usually red and spotted—English “ladybug,” Spanish mariquita (little Mary), vaquita de San Antonio (St. Anthony’s little cow), and other names—also has a strong claim on membership in this select group.

The English and Spanish names are subtly linked: the “lady” in “ladybug” seems to refer to the Virgin Mary.

Some others: French la bête à bon Dieu (the good Lord’s bug), Russian bozha kapovka (God’s little cow), Dutch lieveheerbeestje (the dear Lord’s little animal), Yiddish moyshe rabbeynus ferdele (or) kiyele (Moses’s little horse, or little cow).

Why this affection so strong it often crosses into the sacred? The ladybug’s pretty colors are not unlike a butterfly’s; the spots remind us of cows.  Ladybugs readily rest or walk on a human hand.  And mariquita, a farmer’s friend, eats such agricultural pests as the aphid.

Some religious traditions, like Judaism, shrink from naming the Deity, so the prophet Moses is used instead. Spanish also steers clear of God in naming this insect, displacing to the Virgin or St. Anthony.

Maybe the ladybug is one of those utterly joyous things whose contemplation once moved Robert Louis Stevenson to write: The world is so full of a number of things/I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

             ¡Buenas palabras/Good words!

Pablo

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is a Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. He has over 25 years experience in these fields. An earlier version of this column was written for the Jan. 24-30, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of his bilingual weekly column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.  

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", cultura, culture, Davis, English, español, inglés, Interfluency, ladybug, mariquita, Memphis, Pablo, San Antonio, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, vaquita, vaquita de San Antonio

2015-02-08 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Twists and wrongs

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

“Wrong,” “wrist,” and “wrench” look alike: it’s a resemblance that turns out to be a family one.  These words are cousins, descended from a common and ancient root.

En ingles, "wrench" (llave) y "wrong" (incorrecto, equivocado) forman parte de una familia de palabras que tiene que ver con lo torcido. En español se usa más un grupo de palabras emparentadas con "torcer".

In English, “wrench” and “wrong” are part of an ancient Germanic family of words beginning with wr-, all related to the notion of twisting. Spanish uses a Latin root for many of these objects and concepts, one related to the legal term “tort.”

What binds them together is the notion of twisting. “Wrong” comes to English on a Scandinavian route from a Proto-Germanic (the conjectured ancestor tongue of the family that includes German, Dutch, Danish, English, and others) root, *wrang- and long before that from Proto-Indo-European *wrengh- (to turn).

What’s wrong, then, is twisted.  Its opposite, “right,” comes from Latin rectus (straight). Colloquiallisms confirm the pair: a criminally dishonest person is “crooked,” a “crook,” while a “straight arrow” is honest and truthful speech is “straight up.”

A moral distinction, expressed aesthetically and geometrically.

Some descendants of wr-: “wrist” a body part that twists, “wrench” a tool for twisting, “wrinkle” twisted skin, “wry” mouth twisted in a half-smile; “wring” to squeeze by twisting; “writhe” to twist and turn in pain.

Spanish and its Romance relatives tend to express this sense through Latin roots for turning and twisting.  Spanish tuerto means “one-eyed,” French tort gave us the word for a civil wrong, The spinning lathe is Spanish torno. The root in distorsión is easily spotted—Latin tortus has influenced English too. “Torque” is an engine’s rotating force.

The ghastliest descendant of this family names the unspeakable act of inflicting physical or mental pain on someone who is completely under one’s power: the sadly not-extinct “torture.”

Copyright ©2014 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. An earlier version of this column appeared in the Dec. 21-27, 2014 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of the weekly bilingual column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.  

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Davis, distortion, English, español, Germanic, inglés, Intefluency, intérprete, Latin, mal, Pablo, palabras, Spanish, torcer, tort, tortura, torture, traducción, traductor, translation, words, wrench, wrinkle, wrong

2014-02-27 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“Secret” languages or slangs

Estas dos personas ilustran el verbo "to razz" en ingles, una manera de abuchear o expresar desprecio. El origen de esa palabra está en la jerga rimada del Este de Londres, la llamada "rhyming slang".

These two individuals illustrate the verb “to razz,” which has its origins in Cockney rhyming slang and is indirectly connected with the word “fart.”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

The idea of a secret or encoded language is ancient, with obvious appeal to teenagers, colleagues in an occupation, prisoners—any group, really, that feels the need or desire to exclude outsiders from its communication.

In English, children have Pig Latin, where the first sound is moved to the end of the word, followed by ‘ay’: thus “ellohay” = hello. It’s similar to jeringoso, jerigonso o jerigonza (all derived from Span. jerga, Engl. “jargon”), which is a bit more complex: after each syllable comes ‘p’ and the vowel repeated, thus hopolapa = hola (hello), sipi = sí (yes), grapaciapas = gracias (thanks).

El vesre (the word revés, or reverse, itself reversed) long popular in Argentina and Uruguay inverts the order of syllables, though sometimes only approximately: yobaca = caballo (horse), jermu = mujer (woman), viorsi = servicio (bathroom), dolape = pelado (bald-headed man), lompa = pantalón (pants),  tidorpa = partido (game or match). When some action turns out to be useless, it’s common to hear vesre used in saying “fue al dope” (the phrase al pedo means useless, in vain; pedo itself means “fart” and thus the original sense of the phrase may well have been “as useless as a fart” or “like a fart in the wind”).

Victorian English back-slang was similar, though it inverted words letter-by-letter, rather than by syllable: “evig ti ot em” = give it to me. Apparently it was much used by shop clerks and street vendors to deceive customers.

Rhyming slang, a Cockney (East End of London) art, is great fun. Just a few examples: “slabs of meat” = feet, “trouble and strife” = wife. “Lee Marvin” = starvin’, “apples and pairs” = stairs, “bread and honey” = money. Often, further concealing the actual word intended, only the first part of the phrase is used, thus “I fell down the apples and broke me hand” = I fell down the stairs and broke my hand. So in rhyming slang, the rhyme is often implicit.

The verb to razz has its own amusing origin in rhyming slang. It means to jeer by using tongue and lips to imitate the sound of flatulence—and comes from “raspberry tart,” which is rhyming slang for “fart.” In the US, the same sound is also called a “Bronx cheer” (see illustration above).

Though none of these “languages” is hard to decode on paper, it’s not hard to imagine that when spoken at high speed they can be quite effective for secret communication. Quite apart from that use, these kinds of word play appeal to many users of language simply because they are fun and offer an arena for verbal creativity.

Good words! … ¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2014 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT,  is an ATA Certified Translator (Engl>Span) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (Engl<>Span). An earlier version of this essay was originally published in the Mar. 2-8, 2014 edition of  La Prensa Latina, Memphis, Tennessee, as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.”

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Cockneys, cultura, culture, Davis, English, español, inglés, jerga, language, lenguaje, lunfardo, Pablo, rhyming, rimas, slang, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator

2013-11-01 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Is Día de Muertos/Day of the Dead a ‘Mexican Halloween’?

by Pablo J. Davis

We’re in the brief interval between Halloween, widely celebrated in the US, and the festival known as ‘Día de los Muertos’ or ‘Día de Muertos’ and associated primarily with Mexico, though it’s observed in different ways throughout most of Latin America. It’s a good time to think about cultural similarities and differences.

La Calavera de la Catrina, the brilliant creation of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, has been the icon of El Día de Muertos for a century now.

Many in the US think of the ‘Día de Muertos’ (Day of the Dead) as the ‘Mexican Halloween’. But is it really so? Does the one ‘translate’ to the other? Just as the Spanish word ‘amigo’ (or ‘amiga’) and English ‘friend’ may be side-by-side in bilingual dictionaries, yet tend to mean quite different things to the people using them – and the same can be said for familia/family, fiesta/party, and countless other culturally significant word pairs – so Halloween and Día de los Muertos may share certain symbols, and the time of year, but are markedly different phenomena.

The (often unsuspected) differences between what many people think of as equivalent holidays is not quite what is meant by the term  ’false friends’.  The latter term refers to words that appear to the foreign speaker to mean one thing, due to their similarity with a familiar word in her language, but that in fact mean something different.  An English speaker, on reading in Spanish that ‘Gómez sufrió repetidas injurias a manos de Pérez’, may imagine that Pérez repeatedly assaulted Gómez, causing him physical injuries; when in fact, Spanish ‘injuria’ means insults, lies, slander, and other sorts of verbal attacks.  False friends can be tricky, but ultimately are fairly easily caught and corrected by speakers with good mastery of both languages.

Not so cultural phenomena.  There the differences are more subtle, may not even be captured by the bilingual dictionary.  Most English speakers, for instance, more readily use ‘friend’ where a Spanish speaker tends to use ‘compañero’ or ‘colega’, reserving ‘amigo’ or ‘amiga’ for a closer relationship. In other words, ‘amigo/amiga’ is a harder title to earn – we can think of it as perhaps socially more ’expensive’ – than is ‘friend’. No criticism of either culture meant here: it’s simply a cultural difference, an important one that can cause hurt and misunderstanding when not perceived by one side or the other.

What does all this mean for Halloween and the Día de los Muertos?  These two holidays, seemingly close equivalents if not downright interchangeable, map very differently onto the two cultures.  Halloween is largely about defying and even mocking death, about neutralizing its terrors by rendering them theatrical.  There is a kind of daring play involved, a dancing around the macabre.

In Mexican (and, more broadly, Latin American) culture, el Día de los Muertos is something else entirely.  One celebrates, remembers, honors, one’s deceased loved ones – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles – it’s common to hear people speak of ‘mi muertito’ or ‘mi muertita’ (my beloved dead one) for a deceased father or grandmother, spouse or sibling. Ancient, pre-Columbian and pre-Christian traditions of ancestor worship and love were intertwined, over the colonial decades and centuries that unfolded after Contact and Conquest, with the Christian calendar and rites to create something new: scholars of religious history and culture refer to ‘syncretic’ religious practices.  Thus the celebration of the Día de los Muertos came to coincide with All Souls Day, or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, on the Christian calendar.

The ramifications of ritual involved in this festivity are elaborate and complex.  The baking of cakes in the form of skulls and skeletons, the making of skeletal figurines often fully dressed and adorned with hats and other accessories, the fashioning of altars bearing photographs of beloved dead and containing offerings to them, the creation of satiric verses, and a rich graphic tradition of death-related iconography (most famously in the work of José Guadalupe Posada, whose ‘La Catrina’ is above left) are just some of the flowerings of festive practice that the Día de los Muertos has given rise to.

Though there are some cultural-religious practices elsewhere in Latin America that have some commonalities with El Día de los Muertos – for instance, the cult of ‘San La Muerte’ (Saint Death) in the Guaraní cultural zone of northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and Paraguay, deeply rooted in the populace but rejected by the Catholic Church as pagan practice – there is nothing quite like the centrality of El Día de los Muertos in Mexican culture.

Still, wholeness and acceptance in the face of mortality, and the imperative of sustaining connection with loved ones no longer living – the heart of Mexico’s Día de los Muertos – form a thread that runs through much of Latin America’s cultural map. Argentina’s Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992) expressed this idea as beautifully as anyone ever has. Half a century ago, in his memorable anthem, ‘Los hermanos’, the singer, guitarist, composer, and folklorist wrote:

Yo tengo tantos hermanos     I have so many brothers and sisters
que no los puedo contar.        that I can’t count them all.
En el valle, la montaña,          In the valleys, in the mountains,
en la pampa y en el mar.        On the pampas and at sea.

Cada cual con sus trabajos,    Each one with his work,
con sus sueños, cada cual.      with her dreams, each one.
Con la esperanza adelante,     With hope before them
con los recuerdos detrás.         And memories behind

. . .

Y así, seguimos andando                 And so we go on,
curtidos de soledad.                         Hardened by loneliness
Y en nosotros nuestros muertos    And inside us, we carry our dead
pa que nadie quede atrás.              So that no one is left behind

Yo tengo tantos hermanos              I have so many brothers and sisters
que no los puedo contar . . .            that I cannot count them all . . .

In the end, interpreting cultural phenomena across languages challenges us to a subtlety of understanding even beyond what translation usually demands.  Things that look the same can be fundamentally different.

Copyright ©2011-2013 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.
This essay originally appeared at http://interfluency.wordpress.com in October 2011. It is being republished this year with  an accompanying Spanish translation.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", bilingual, certificado, certified, cross-cultural, cultura, culture, Davis, Día de los Muertos, Día de Muertos, English, español, Halloween, Hispanic, Hispano, inglés, Interfluency, interpretación, intérprete, interpreter, interpreting, Julián, Pablo, Pablo Julián Davis, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator

2013-09-27 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Hispanic Heritage: Why Spanish Matters

La Mezquita, or Cathedral-Mosque of Córdoba, southern Spain, is considered one of the treasures of humanity and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its majestic geometry embodies the encounter of Africa, Europe, and Asia that unfolded in complex ways in medieval Spain and helped shape the modern Spanish language.

Spanish dominates foreign-language study in the US: 865,000 college students took it in 2009,  followed by French (216,000) and German (96,000). Spanish enrolls more than all other world languages combined. In K-12 public schools, the dominance is even greater: 2007-08 figures showed 6.4 million taking Spanish (72% of all foreign-language enrollment), French a very distant second at 1.3 million.

Why is the “language of Cervantes” so widely studied (if not always mastered)? Here are some of the more common reasons:

A large and growing population. The US’s Spanish-speaking population, over 40 million, surpasses all but a few Latin American countries. Many see Census numbers alone as proving the importance of Spanish and making it “the language to learn.” Not to mention geography: the US shares a border with the most populous Hispanic country in the world, and millions more Spanish speakers live in the Caribbean, not far from Florida’s shores.

Community service.  Idealistic young people in substantial numbers pursue Spanish to serve immigrant community needs such as literacy, health, legal aid, and education, or in missions of faith. In turn, those interactions often become an arena for “service learning” where classroom knowledge of the language is put to the enriching test of real-life experience.

It’s “easy”?  The perception of Spanish as easy to learn is widespread; college students typically see it as the shortcut to meeting language requirements.  It’s a half-truth: Spanish really is a marvel of grammatical and phonetic consistency, due in part to Nebrija’s 1492 Grammar (one of the earliest for a modern language) and the 1713 founding of the Royal Spanish Academy. But true mastery of the language is anything but easy to attain.

It’s “funny”? Fascination with “Spanglish”— incorporation of English words and patterns into immigrant speech—treats as odd the natural result of language contact between populations. In any case, this linguistic resource hardly amounts to a dialect, much less a separate language. Somewhat different is the popularity of “Faux Spanish”: “no problemo”, “perfectamundo”, “mucho macho”, or “el grande jefe” convey a playful, at times mocking, attitude towards Spanish and its speakers.

Laborers. Many North Americans associate Spanish with poorer, often undocumented, immigrants—an understandable perception based on current media and political obsessions, and perhaps personal experience.  In this view, the language is useful to communicate with, and manage, laborers. It’s not really a “serious” language, though: this was actually the message a prestigious private school in Virginia explicitly placed on its website in the recent past, with the boast that for reasons of academic rigor, they proudly offered only French as a foreign language. The same unexamined premise was shared by the judge in an Amarillo, Texas family court who infamously, in August 1995, ordered a Mexican-born immigrant mother to stop speaking in Spanish to her five-year-old daughter, as using that language constituted “child abuse” and would condemn the girl to a future “as a housemaid.” (Both the school and the judge did later about-faces in the light of avalanches of public criticism.)

A “quaint” culture.  It’s common to hear people express love for the culture, often in terms of salsa (cuisine) and salsa (music and dance).  Adjectives such as “colorful,” “quaint,” simple”, and “exotic” paint a Hispanic world of peasants, rural and village life, “traditions”. This view can unintentionally place Hispanic or Latino people in a primitive past, even outside of time. An associated perception sees Spanish as the language of places college students on Spring break and other tourists go to run wild, places—many of them—that the United States once conquered, occupied, or dominated. Indeed, this is the other side of the coin from language-of-manual-laborers. A long history of power relations has planted such deeply-rooted habits of thought.

Quite a mix of reasons (and it’s only a sampling)! Sincere interest in other cultures is there, as are a calling to service, faith, and love of justice. So, too, are simplistic romanticization, patronizing superiority, and power agendas.

Here are some other, crucial reasons why Spanish matters and why learning it is one of the best things you can do in the early 21st century:

A global language. Spanish now ranks second in the world in number of native speakers, with over 410 million (approximately 1 in 20 members of the human race), trailing only Mandarin Chinese. English, with over 360 million worldwide, is in third place, right behind (though when we add the number of people who speak English as a second language, it moves into second place). Portuguese, which I like to call Spanish’s “fraternal twin”—no living language is nearly so close a relation to English—has over 220 million native speakers, mostly in rising economic powerhouse Brazil; Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese to a considerable degree and have an automatic head-start in learning the language.

Economic power. The US’s 53 million Hispanics (1 in 6 people!) spend some $1.3 trillion annually; Spanish-speaking countries’ combined GDP, $3.4 trillion, equals industrial giant Germany; add sister nation Brazil, and at $5.9 trillion it matches Japan. There are countless markets to sell to, jobs to be done, texts to be translated, by people with significant mastery of the language (inseparable, in the end, from cultural understanding).

A world civilization.  Every language bears witness to a people’s experience and creativity.  For Spanish that includes ancient Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Germanic legacies, as well as the unique Rom or ‘Gypsy’ presence (Spanish gitanos, a word derived from egiptanos and bearing witness to the passage of part of that wandering people into North Africa via Egypt); a near-millennium of Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence; the world’s first global empire; and, today, twenty multicultural societies of indigenous, African, European, and Asian heritage.  Just one example of the cultural richness that Spanish embodies: in societies viewed as overwhelmingly Christian, one says ¡Ojalá! (Arabic Inshallah) for “I hope so!”

The Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Likely the world’s best-known and loved work of fiction, Cervantes’s Don Quixote crowns a literature that includes the brilliant 17th-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; the greatest of modern stylists, José Martí, who died fighting for Cuban independence; Chile’s beloved poet Pablo Neruda, Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges with his metaphysical mysteries, and master storytellers of our lifetime like Colombia’s García Márquez, Peru’s Vargas Llosa, Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, Chile’s Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez of the Dominican Republic.

Recovering one’s own heritage.  Significant numbers of US-born (or raised) Hispanics are English-dominant, even monolingual (note that the Hispanic/Latino population, at 53 million, is larger than the Spanish-speaking figure of 40 million). For “heritage learners,” as the language-teaching profession calls those who grew up with significant home exposure to Spanish, learning it can be a powerful reclaiming of family and cultural legacy.

An outlook on life.  To master Spanish is to learn another way of being in the world, a peculiar combination of seriousness, humor, hierarchy, and dignity. The native English speaker learns to tuck away that ever-present, imperial pronoun “I” (the only one English capitalizes!), taking on a more sparingly-used yo: Spanish embodies a certain modesty.  One learns words for relationships and customs English can’t name: compadre or comadre if you’re their kid’s godparent, tocayo if you share the same name, sobremesa for staying at the table talking after a meal.  Saying Nos vemos mañana (See you tomorrow), one often adds si Dios quiere (God willing): a small linguistic bow to the Deity, or simply to life’s unknowns.

There are many valid reasons to learn Spanish; it’s fine as preparation for a Cancun vacation or to improve HR.  But a global economic force, a major world literature, and the quest for genuine intercultural fluency offer other motivations that can be mind-expanding, even life-changing.

Copyright ©2013 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.

Pablo J. Davis provides professionally-certified translation/interpreting services, and cultural coaching, through Interfluency.com. He has formal graduate training in Latin American History. A version of this article was published by The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) on Fri., Sep. 27, 2013.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", bilingual, Certified Translator, culture, Davis, English, English-Spanish, español, foreign language, heritage, Hispanic, inglés, Latin America, Latino, Memphis, multicultural, multilingual, Pablo, Spain, Spanish, Spanish-English, translation, translator, USA

2013-06-15 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Translating “bird” into Spanish

Dear reader,

E.G., a native English-speaking friend who’s quite proficient in Spanish, asked about the differences between aveand pájaro in translating “bird”.

For starters, both originate in Latin: avis and passer (sparrow), respectively.

How do the two Spanish words divvy up the turf of meaning—what linguists call the “semantic field”

Sparrow and ostrich: in Spanish both birds are aves, but only one would typically be called pájaro. Which one?

Ave (AH-veh, as in Ave María; that ave is a different word, a Latin greeting usually translated as “hail”) is a scientific term: the taxonomic class Aves. It’s broad, covering hummingbird and sparrow, turkey and heron.  It can name categories, e.g. birds of prey (aves de rapiña), poultry (aves de granja, literally “farm birds”), or songbirds (aves cantoras).  And it is often literary or poetic in tone.

Pájaro, true to its origins, is almost always used to mean used a relatively small, flying bird, typically a songbird.  Somewhat informal, it can also be applied humorously to birds that would usually not be so called: a penguin, for instance, or a goose, or a ñañdú (the three-toed South American counterpart of the ostrich).

In English, “bird” carries singly almost all the weight that in Spanish is shared by ave and pájaro. In English, the Latin root avis appears only in scientific or technical terms such as “avian”, “aviform”, or “aviation”.

In highly informal or vulgar language, pájaro can refer to the male genital organ, a connotation not absent from English: think of “flipping the bird” for the obscene, middle-finger gesture. In some (particularly Caribbean) countries, pájaro, pato (duck) and the like can mean male homosexual.

Bird-related expressions where English and Spanish coincide include “A little birdie told me” (Me lo contó un pajarito) and calling someone “a strange bird” (rara avis).

On the other hand, Pájaro que comió, voló (literally: Bird that ate, flew away) is rendered in English simply as “Sorry to eat and run”.  And saying something is “for the birds”, or worthless, in English, has no avian counterpart in Spanish, although in Argentina the rhymed expression “Alpiste, perdiste” (literally: Birdseed, you lose) is common in a situation where someone has said something they regret, or otherwise made a mistake.

While we’re on the subject of birds, we can’t help but think of the humorous definition of Homo sapiens, often attributed to Plato, as “the featherless biped”.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright © 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. A version of this essay was originally written for the June 23-29, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the regular bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (inglés>español) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (inglés<>español) who also provides custom-designed cultural/linguistic coaching and training.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", ave, bird, Certified Translator, culture, English, español, inglés, language, Memphis, Mid-South, Pablo Davis, pájaro, Spanish, traducción, traductor, traductor certiticado, translation, translator

2013-06-02 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Summer, its names and romance

Dear reader,

The calendar tells us that the Northern Hemisphere summer is still a few weeks away.  A few moments outdoors confirm that the season is already here. Let’s spend a minute with its names in English and Spanish.

“Summer romance” (amores de verano, in Spanish), a phrase that brings a sigh to many lips.

 

“Summer” is Germanic in origin (Old Saxon sumar)… One of the oldest extant texts in English is the poetic hymn to the season, ”Sumer is icumen in” (Summer is here), from 13th century Middle English.

Spanish verano, unsurprisingly, comes from Latinveranum; what’s unexpected to modern eyes and ears, though, is that veranum could mean either spring or summer.  These seasons, which we differentiate, were historically blurred together—as were their names. Indeed, Spanish primavera, for spring, used to mean “early summer”.

English speakers turn “summer” into a verb and speak of “summering in Maine”; in Spanish, the noun has to be retrofitted to make veranear: Antes veraneábamos en la sierra (We used to summer in the mountains).

(By the way, let’s clear up a lingering doubt: the seasons are not capitalized in English unless part of a proper name such as “Summer Olympics”, “Fall Semester”.)

Kids go to “summer camp”, which in Spanish can be called either la colonia de verano or, much like the English, el campamento de verano.

Spanish has another word for summer, almost unused except in literary contexts: el estío (from Latin aestivum), a relative of French été. The same root is present in “to estivate” or “estivation” (the latter a hot-weather equivalent of hibernation).

Finally, dear reader, there must be a “summer romance” that you can recall with a sigh.  Curiously, this phrase, the same as its Spanish equivalent, amores de verano, was little used before the 1960s.

¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright © 2013 by Pablo Julián Davis. All rights reserved. A version of this essay was originally written for the June 9-15, 2013 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee), as part of the regular bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation”. Pablo Julián Davis (www.interfluency.com) is an ATA Certified Translator (inglés>español) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (inglés<>español) who also provides custom-designed cultural/linguistic coaching and training.

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