\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s go over that again, Phillip, and this time, try to get rid of the excessive tire pressure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That was part of a bit of coaching I once did as a teacher of beginning speech in high school and college. My 33 years of teaching that subject yielded some interesting trivia.<\/p>\n
First, I learned that students in this area have peculiar speech mannerisms. How many times have you heard it said that people in Las Vegas specifically, and northern New Mexico generally, have their own style of talking?<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
Spanish speakers in particular often parade a whole new vocabulary, even though we know the correct word for what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re saying. For example, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00bfYa estuvo?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is a way of asking another if the person has finished a certain task, suddenly becomes \u00c2\u00bfYa estufas?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And that, my friends, is a permutation that means something like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stoves, already?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t promise you these liberties with the language were going to make sense.<\/p>\n
Fellow columnist Lupita Gonzales once floored me by taking extreme liberties with her response to a simple question. I had emailed her a question about grammar, and her reply was (hold your breath!) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00bfPorqueria quieres saber?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Why do you want to know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) Now most people understand that, depending on its position in the sentence, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00bfporque?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and without the question marks, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153because.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
But Lupita, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spent a lifetime parsing words in Latin, French, Spanish, German, English, etc., and in fixing punctuation, wrote \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00bfporqueria?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a sloppy mess.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That word only sounds like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00c2\u00bfporque?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In spite of my fascination with how people in this area communicate, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never tackled this particular issue, so, understandably, the following paragraphs will probably have more question marks than periods.<\/p>\n
Is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153estufas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153porqueria\u00e2\u20ac\u009d phenomenon a bit of slang, a method of speaking in a way different from others? Wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t slang created as possibly the only means of communication aimed at confusing others? By this I mean that youngsters often conjure up a host of terms they hope their parents won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand.<\/p>\n
I believe the use of slang also confers on its users a kind of membership, or a secret code, password or sign known only to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in\u00e2\u20ac\u009d crowd.<\/p>\n
When in the classroom, my students quickly learned what I called forbidden words: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ya know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I dunno,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153well.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Soon I needed to add another word, the tire pressure construction mentioned above.<\/p>\n
Ya know, sometimes we get so wrapped up in simply counting a speaker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ya know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that we fail even to listen to the message. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ya know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for all its endearing qualities, seems to have been replaced by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Like, I was like going to town and I like saw my friend, who was all like all kinds of dressed up, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get back to Se\u00c3\u00b1or Air Pressure. Phillip had a way of beginning many sentences with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psshh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It sounds like air escaping from a tire. Now, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psshh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ought not be confused with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psst,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a sound made when we want a person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attention.<\/p>\n
After much \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psshh-ing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I discussed it with some colleagues, one of whom made the explanation obvious. She asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you remember when you were a kid, and Sister Misa Mayor confronted you, accused you, demanded an explanation and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really give you time to respond?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Yes, as a matter of fact, that seemed to be my daily regimen: being confronted and accused. Then it hit me: Psshh is a shortening of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pues,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which every Las Vegas kid knows is how we begin any sentence in our attempts to explain things to a nun.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pues\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is roughly equivalent to the English \u00e2\u20ac\u0153well,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pues\u00e2\u20ac\u009d represents a whole lot more. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pues\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the first word in a feeble denial, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pues, Sister, I was just looking at the statue and all of a sudden it fell all by itself. Pues that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the truth, Sister.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The teachers at Immaculate Conception, where I went to school, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to think we needed time to explain our misdeeds, and because of the rush, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d shorten \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pues\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psshh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In fairness to Phillip, he was only one of legions of psshh-ers; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply that we hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been aware of the air-filled exhalation until then. Soon after, scores of students who delivered speeches included psshh at least once.<\/p>\n
Pues, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the moral of this story? Pues, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been out of the classroom for more than a decade and thus unable to zero in on students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 speech. But an event a week ago brought it all back to me.<\/p>\n
Pues you see, during the run of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Over the Edge V,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lisa Cisneros did some rapid costume changes and needed to tape on a skinny black mustache, don some cholo clothes and play the part of Paco.<\/p>\n
During that segment, Lisa began virtually every sentence with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153psshh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What vivid memories she brought back! It was so convincing that one would think she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been rehearsing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or perhaps even living \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that role all her life.<\/p>\n
So pervasive is psshh-ing that if you listen carefully, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hear many instances of psshh, and not all in the classroom. Oh, but I forgot to mention: Psshh appears to be the exclusive domain of male Hispanics. No woman, and certainly no non-Hispanic, has ever uttered that sound.<\/p>\n
Pues it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that must be wired into our DNA. But yo no se porqueria it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that way.<\/p>\n
And don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pues, if only men use that word, how come Lisa Cisneros psshh-ed?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an exception when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a woman playing the part of a male in a Las Vegas theater performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s go over that again, Phillip, and this time, try to get rid of the excessive tire pressure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That was part of a bit of coaching I once did as a teacher of beginning speech in high school and college. My 33 years of teaching that subject yielded some interesting trivia. First, I learned that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}