Growing up on Railroad Avenue, the place we called “Tough Street,” presented manifold problems. Having left that barrio about 50 years ago, I still retain many quite lucid memories of that place.
Mom and Dad, like so many other parents raising families in the ‘40s and ‘50s, probably believed children needed to acquire English as their primary language, and if we were to pick up a bit of Spanish along the way, well, that’s even better. But to be fair, this behavior was a regular feature of our parents’ generation, and it has faded somewhat during ours.
Regardless of their intentions, I for one struggled, especially among kids I played with in the neighborhood and those I went to school with, at Immaculate Conception, for 12 years.
We hear endless tales of how children got punished for speaking Spanish on the school playground. I never witnessed such a punishment, although others’ tales abound.
I recall an incident early in my school years, when we were playing ball and one of the boys, involved in a game of keep-away, wanted the ball and, accordingly, blurted out in Spanish, “Tira me la bola (toss me the ball).” To that, the nun on playground duty, Sister Mary Krankenzimmer, told Alfred, “On the playground, you are not to speak in Mexico.”
What? Alfred’s reply was, “I’m not speaking in Mexico; I’m speaking in the United States.” I believe that retort shortened his tenure at I.C. School, and Sister M.K. was instrumental in Alfred’s removal.
Like many others, I understood more than I spoke. And I must have spoken it oddly. For example, one time Dad sent me to Peña’s Grocery, across the street, to buy a couple of Roi-Tan cigars. Well, what is Spanish for “cigar” if it’s not “cigarro”?
I asked the owner, for cigarros, and when he produced a few packs of cigarettes, I pointed instead to the cigars.
Well, that led to a lesson on the difference between these types of smokes. And of course, Mr. Peña told me what I should have ordered were “puros.” And his daughter, Lucy, who worked at the store, called me aside to explain the difference. Meanwhile, a young neighbor girl who had been taken in all the drama, rushed out to tell the neighborhood, in Spanish, “Manny (my nickname) doesn’t know what a cigar is in Spanish — and he talks funny.”
Now in those days, w-a-y before the Internet or cell-phone texting, messages spread much faster than they do today. Was it going to be necessary to leave town for a few months until the humiliation abated? Would I never again be allowed to play neighborhood games?
So, whatever Spanish I learned, I picked up on the street, and later in school. And much later, at the University of Virginia I managed to pass a gruelling written and oral exam in Spanish.
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As a self-appointed language cop, I enjoy reading signs and listening to people and discovering unusual uses of both English and Spanish. A former Highlands student recently showed me an assignment he’d submitted on the uses of Spanish expressions in his hometown of Pojoaque. Is there a difference between what we speak here and what’s spoken in Pojack?
Portions of the student’s research will be covered in a future column. For now, I’ll just mention our tendency to tack a Spanish ending to an English word and hope we can get by. Thus, for “typing” we’ll say “taipiando.”
I’ve never learned the “proper” way to say “back up,” as a car, in Spanish. So what’s wrong with saying “baquear”?
I learned recently that the Spanish verb, “fregar,” which we interpret as to “bother,” or to “mess up,” also describes what we do to dishes after dinner: we scrub them.
“Wachate” is common for “watch yourself.” Had Zeus been a Latino, would he have said “wachate” to Narcissus?
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Northern New Mexico is dotted with little communities, usually with Spanish names, that are taken from a founders’ name, a geographical feature, a carryover name for a previous site, or simply something on the land, like a fragua. What’s a fragua?
A reader, Sonya Berg, asked about the origin of Sapello, the village between Las Vegas and Mora. T.M. Pearce’s “New Mexico Place Names” calls Sapello “one of the most puzzling names in NM place history.” Pearce really struggled with this one. Among the speculations are “toad,” “burial” and “scrubbing brush.”
Pearce’s volume even cites Fray Angelico Chavez, who refers to a river called “Shapellote.” And Chavez posits that the word could be of Kiowa Indian origin, “chapalote.”
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Richard Lederer, the author of Anguished English, has a language blooper a day in his new desk calendar. Here are some:
- The concert held in Fellowship Hall was a great success. Special thanks are due to the minister’s daughter, who labored the whole evening at the piano, which as usual fell upon her.
- A monkey has a reprehensible tail.
- Winners at the card party were Miss Wilma Schmidt, a turkey, and Mrs. Ethel Riggs, a chicken.
- The pianist has the fastest fingers ever to set foot on stage.
- An article in Saturday’s local edition incorrectly reported that a suspect who had been indicted by a federal grand jury had been identified as “Fnu Lnu.” “Fnu Lnu” is not a name. “Fnu” is a law-enforcement abbreviation for “first name unknown” “Lnu” for “last name unknown.”
I was an Anglo kid at IC School and Arts classmate. Maybe because that is what little kids do I was sort of picking up on speaking Spanish before I started school and the neighborhood kids I was learning the language from believed that was not allowed. I did not agree with them for some reason but kept quiet about it and when I started at IC School tried again. There I ran into the opinion I was supposed to be laughed at if I tried to speak Spanish. I was told the reason this was supposed to be so important was Anglo parents will “get mad” if their kids learn Spanish. I believe I did know some who talked like that but do not think mine had that attitude.
When I was maybe about in the second grade I shared with my Mom that every time the conversation on the playground starts to get interesting everybody switches to speaking in Spanish and I can’t understand what they are saying. She told me some of the Spanish parents had got a rule made that the nuns were not to make the Spanish kids speak English in front of the Anglos. I don’t think the word Hispanic had not been coined yet and we said Spanish instead. Using the word Mexican was not politically correct. It seemed to be considered an insult.
While attending the IC High School we took two years of Spanish. Our Spanish teacher as I remember it grew up near Las Vegas and spoke fluent Spanish and broken English. The first time I was called on the recite a Spanish lesson there were a couple individuals who immediately laughed and I think even objected to the idea with the teacher. She told them off in Spanish.
Mary Elaine Zummach – Hintz
Thanx, for your input, Mary Elaine. I recall and certainly can identify with some of the things you wrote. Many times I noticed that when people are conversing in a language others don’t understand, the “outsiders” could suspect they’re talking about THEM. In my circle, we always switched back to English. Why? Because it’s courteous to allow others to understand what you say, even if it’s not about them.
But consider: How many times have you been in a situation when speakers of other languages (German, French, Italian, Navajo, etc.) continue to speak their language even though you know they speak English? I used to have a night job that necessitated my hitching a ride to work and home, from my boss. Of course, he greeted me with English, but when his wife was with, it was all Greek to me. Literally.
Possibly the wife knew little or no English, and that’s why he spoke to her in their native language. But I always figured that whatever they were talking about concerned only them, not me.
I do not believe I said anything about “suspecting” the kids were talking about me.
I believe it was partly about I wanted to be one of the group and not an outsider.
Sapello must be a toad, or a minor miracle, as we’ve discussed elsewhere in other columns. I’ve spend my life trying to learn Spanish starting 71 years ago in San Antonio, NM, in a virtually all-Hispanic school and often assaulted by the “Gringo salado” rhyme, but it never bothered me. The first words I learned were from my Dad who came from Louisiana and conversed a little in work situations. He miss pronounced “work” as “tawaho,” what is ear picked up, and “corn” as “mice.” We didn’t have a single Spanish class in grade school, but when I moved to Albuquerque, I took a class every year, and loved it, but never quite got over the hump. I also enjoyed what I learned on the street like “frajo” (spelling?) for cigarette, wheela (?) for bicycle, and “ferria (?) for “change” as in “cambio.”