Work of Art

Here’s a brief primer on one important difference between English and Spanish. Somewhere along the linguistic ladder, people stopped using “thee” and “thou” in English, whereas the Romance languages, for example Spanish, retained forms like “usted.”

I won’t speculate as to whether the use of particular word combinations determines respect, or lack thereof, or is the result of it. Which came first?

Let me explain:

Once, when I was a child, my dad asked me — in front of company — to explain whatever I’d learned that day in the classroom of Sister Mary Migrainia at Immaculate Conception School. Dad called me by my baptismal name, Arturo, which prompted an answer in Spanish, “¿Que?”

Big mistake. Why? First, we had company, and whatever carelessness and callousness we ever displayed when alone needed to be rectified when we had guests. Second mistake: In our house, one never responded to an elder’s question with “¿que?” I saw Dad was both annoyed and embarrassed over my paucity of ethics, as he explained in front of his guests, “The correct answer — and I’ve told you before — is ‘¿mande usted?’” That’s a variation of “yes sir,” “please repeat,” or “pardon me?” Read the rest of this entry »

What’s happening to our language? English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. In human time, it hasn’t been around that long, but yet … but yet …

Let me explain:

I read Sunday’s Parade, a better-than-average publication when it comes to the use of the English language. But on the cover, next to a photo, it reads, “At Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C., Natalie Randolph is making history — as one of the nation’s only female football coaches.”

The problem is with the part-whole relationship, the words “one of,” but that’s contradicted by the word “only,” which ought to denote a bit of exclusivity. How can Natalie Randolph be both? She simply can’t be “one of” and “only” at the same time. The writer must mean “one of the few.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is a family newspaper, a publication that seeks never to offend its readers. Accordingly, when a public official expressed his contempt, a few years ago, toward the media, our page-one article simply used “a–.” The elected official had authorized the media to pucker up and then osculate a certain nether portion of his anatomy.

I believe people got the picture, even if we bowdlerized the more graphic word, which, by the way, appears in Christmas carols, including “What Child Is This?”

Now we have a, well, touchier issue, picked up by newspapers and other news outlets across the world. It seems that in a criticism of the way President Obama is handling immigration, his erstwhile opponent’s running mate, Sarah Palin, said he lacks the necessary equipment to deal with the issue, presumably, “like a man.”

I’m certainly no biologist nor psychologist, but I’ve always wondered why and how a pair of bodily objects determine how macho presidents and others ought to be. Read the rest of this entry »

“May I see your hands, please?” Good grief! Is she coming on to me? I thought.

Instead, she rubbed what looked like a small, damp orange Wet One across my palms. “Now turn around.”

I did so, my anxiety increasing. “I meant ‘turn your hands around.’” I did that too. So the backs and the palms got swabbed, but what for? We’ll get into that later.

The woman, who used a line I hadn’t heard since Sadie Hawkins dances at Immaculate Conception School, spoke with a kind of eastern European accent. By her nametag, I could tell she was one of an army of Transportation Security Administration workers who keep our skies and passengers safe. The Sadie Hawkins allusion is what some girls in high school used to say when they wanted someone to hold their hands. Most of us didn’t hold hands on the first date, but that’s a topic for a future column.

Let me explain:

Jet-lagged after a recent 10-hour flight from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Washington, D.C., my wife and I were feted, along with hundreds of other travelers, from Munich and Vienna, to passport-and-baggage inspection at JFK Airport. Read the rest of this entry »

PORTO, Portugal — Why can’t all countries agree on their currency? Why must travelers take along an MBA or at least a banking expert any time they wish to go beyond San Miguel County, or in our case, the U.S?

We’re preparing for a boat tour of Portugal, the last leg of a trip to Copenhagen where we will visit our son Stan’s family. The tour is a round trip, from Porto, in northern Portugal, back to Porto. It was my friend Pedro Carrico who encouraged me to travel to his homeland.

Pedro, a 2009 graduate of Robertson High School, spent a year in Las Vegas as an exchange student. When he learned of our plans to cross the Atlantic, naturally he wrote, with the hope that his family could meet mine. I brought a copy of a Portuguese-English dictionary, hoping it’ll help.

People who speak Spanish invariably say, “Oh, Portuguese is a piece of cake; if you can speak Spanish, you’ll get along fine in Portugal.” Not quite. Though there are strong similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, the difference — especially with the false cognates — can be glaring. Read the rest of this entry »

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Anyone who’s been around long enough for a green-and-red chile (notice the word ends in an “e,” not an “i”) inauguration knows the beneficial effects of eating it. It can cure gout, asthma, the common cold, rheumatism, depression, indigestion and a bad attitude.

True, we all know the best places in town to find it, but it seems none of the dozens of restaurants that prepare chile know how to classify it. It’s not really Mexican food. Go to Mexico City and try to order enchiladas, tamales and refritos and you get a blank stare.

So it is Spanish food? No, their national dish is paella, a fish-rice-snails concoction. But the same probably goes for other favorites of other countries. Try ordering pizza in Rome. Maybe we need a term that includes “southwestern food” or Rio Grande-style food. Read the rest of this entry »

The signs at both entrances at the erstwhile Celebrity Sports Center in Denver made it clear: No Oakland Raider paraphernalia.

Did the center management ban caps and jerseys touting the San Diego Chargers or Seattle Seahawks, at the time rivals of the Denver Broncos?

Now I say “erstwhile” because it used to be called “Celebrity,” and as I recall, traded that word for “Family,” and now, who knows? The massive entertainment center on Colorado Boulevard might not even exist anymore, but the sentiment still wafts.

Let me explain:

The center was a draw for families. When my three sons were younger — long before the “chip” made everything computerized — we’d drive to Denver twice a year, where all of us (except my wife Bonnie, who’d spend her time reading some Victorian novel), would break loose. We’d score higher than Obama on any of the 40 bowling lanes. But most of all, we liked the hands-on feel of holding a real basketball or tossing a series of wooden balls down a small lane in a game called “Ski-Bowl.” Read the rest of this entry »

For the third time in my career, I’ve participated in a spelling bee, but no, not as a participant (my eighth-grade classmate, Ermalinda, beat me, and others, out).

Once, while I was still teaching, Betty Leger and George Fidel invited me to be a pronouncer at West Las Vegas High School. Later, I served as a judge at the Baha’i School in Manuelitas.

Most recently, I was one of four pronouncers for the Colfax County Spelling Bee, in Raton, a couple of months ago. As Raton’s Bob Stewart, coordinator of the event thanked me for my services and asked if I’d be willing to do it again, I thanked him, the experience being so enjoyable.

Without reciting the entire lexicon of rules (and it would take a giant database to store all of them), let me stress that the rules cover every possible occasion. “But what if a student begins to spell a word, backs up to correct it and…,” I was tempted to ask, but before I could, Stewart cited chapter and verse for each conceivable situation. Read the rest of this entry »

What are the chances? There are about a third of a billion people in the U.S., and two of us see the same person — a stranger — twice, though we’re hundreds of miles away?

That’s too much of a coincidence, but stay with me and help me unravel this sighting matter.

A while back, on the first Rail Runner trip for most of us, my family and I drove to Santa Fe’s South Capital Station to board the train for Albuquerque. There, I saw a man I swore had donned a half cantaloupe as a way of keeping cool.

The tam, sans brim, simply sat roundly on the elderly man’s head. It had the texture and color of a melon; it’s as if he cut a large melon in two, scooped out the guts and placed the remains of the half sphere atop his head. Naturally, I didn’t hesitate to photograph him; I figured that anyone who chooses to dress like that couldn’t claim invasion of privacy. So I clicked away. Read the rest of this entry »

Two things have happened recently to make me really ponder the ways in which people communicate — or sometimes don’t.

When people say, “We’re just not communicating,” I want to say, “Yes we are, but we’re just not agreeing.” In other words, “Nothing never happens.”

At the risk of violating the double-negative rule (nothing, never), I’m merely saying there always is communication, but not always what we desire.

The two things that happened involved our oldest son and his family, who recently visited here from Denmark. With the addition of their daughter, our granddaughter, there are now 12 of us.

After taking a family photo, we went to a Japanese restaurant in the Duke City, a place where all of us sit around the grill while the cook masterfully entertains us. First he uses a long blade to fling pieces of chicken into our individual plates. All of these came from NBA three-point range. Read the rest of this entry »