Thread: En Espanol? English? Many Buttons Pushed

http://www.banderasnews.com/0508/edop-enespanol.htm

¿En Español? English? Many Buttons Pushed
Enrique Fernandez - herald.com
August 11, 2005

It's not like we have not done it already at The Herald. After all, esto es Miami, ¿no? But to see not just a Spanish headline on The New York Times Magazine July 31, but an 18-word subhead in that same language did make me wonder if The Gray Lady was publishing something like El Nuevo Times.

The story, on the Hispanization of baseball, is something Herald writers have been covering for some time. Still, Spanish . . . the forbidden language.

Hispanics have become the country's largest minority and in some areas, like Miami, they are even a majority. With that growth has come a proliferation of Spanish-language use, e.g. major U.S. TV networks in Spanish. Understandably, a number of other Americans are befuddled or even upset by what appears to them a tidal change: Their own country begins to feel like a foreign land. And since many Americans are descended from foreign speakers - sometimes even their own parents - they find the difference between their own family experience in quick assimilation to a language and culture - a bit of a myth if looked at closely - and Hispanic insistence in keeping their first language galling.

Whenever I write a story on bilingualism I get a hot reaction from readers. Spanish pushes buttons. Years ago, in an article on the English Only movement, Pete Hamill listed the many languages that were used in some official function in the United States. Arguing that the movement's only target was Spanish, he added, rhetorically, that they were not exactly getting hot under the collar about Urdu.

Spanish and English are two of the world's most prolific languages. Chinese is another, but China is so far away. Spanish and English speakers share this hemisphere and are the children of two violently competing empires. That was long ago, but history has unforgivably long repercussions.

There's a Latino standup riff that is done best by Paul RodrÃÂ*guez. It consists of speaking to a bilingual audience by apparently saying the same thing in both languages. In reality, Paul gets all gentle in English about how Anglos and Latinos need to get along. Then, in Spanish, he rips into the ''gringos'' by arguing that if it weren't for the Treaty of Guadalupe (which gave the United States one-third of Mexican territory) we Latinos would be guests of honor and they would be our waiters.

By the change of tone and facial expression even audience members who speak not a word of Spanish can figure what's been said. And by making fun of Anglo/Hispanic hostility, Paul manages to defuse the tensions of a bicultural house.

''Those people don't want to learn English'' is the most common charge made by folk whose buttons get pushed by Spanish - never mind that the words ''those people'' push even hotter buttons. It can be true. I knew an old man, father and manager of a major Latin pop star, who simply refused to speak English. Of course, the wily old fox understood it perfectly, and cut the best U.S. deals for his son with the only English words he boasted that he needed to speak: ''yes'' and ``no.''

I don't think the multimillionaire manager of a superstar is exactly what is meant by ''those people.'' Miami is home to hordes of Hispanic multimillionaires (well, one of their many homes, since the mega-rich don't exactly own one little suburban ranch house), and they all speak English, if for no other reason that they were educated here, often at prep schools and the Ivy League. These are not ''those people'' either, though often they are the ones who own and run the businesses, like TV networks, patronized by ``those people.''

No, the target of Anglo wrath are folk of humbler backgrounds, like many of the baseball players. Still, some of the latter quickly rise to the ranks of the mega-rich, with or without English - a hilarious episode of the HBO sports-manager series Arliss focused on a Cuban rafter who was hot baseball property, and the dialogue, with deliberately mismatched translations, was frankly aimed at bilingual viewers.

In spite of the Spanish Only perception, I have yet to meet a working-class Hispanic immigrant who does not struggle to learn English. Many fail. But since I was a Spanish-language teacher for many years, I know there are people who just can't learn a foreign language, or who can master it about as well as I do, say, higher mathematics.

So our country moves forward in two languages. And, yes, augmented by a non-Anglo-Saxon culture, with all its virtues and foibles. If I may paraphrase the Gospel, let the culture that is free of foibles throw the first stone.

The English language is marvelous, but can anyone say the same about English cooking? That honor we reserve for the French, although, since we're looking at language, let's recall that ''chauvinism'' is originally a French word, and though I don't want to join the stupid anti-French backlash, it's generally recognized as a French foible. ''Machismo,'' not exactly a virtue, is a Spanish word. And it was the Italians who coined - and enforced the strictures of - the word ``ghetto.''

All cultures have pluses and minuses. We mix it up and, hopefully, we can keep the good ingredients and discard the poisonous ones. As for languages, they are all corruptions, if you want to call them that. Spanish and English are already mixes of other stuff. In fact, none is more miscegenated than English, thus its immense - the world's largest - vocabulary. The English language has been, as a British historian once said of a wanton Spanish queen, ``delightfully promiscuous.''

Long live the Queen's English, I say. And may she keep welcoming us and our languages. We pledge that it'll be good for

I went onto the La Raza web site. I couldn't read a thing there.

They want and demand everything here to have Spanish language on it, but their web site has no English...that I could find.

I emailed them. I told them I thought they were hipocrites(sic). Asked them if they thought our voting ballots should be 3 feet long to allow all foreign languages?

I did not hear from them.

They don't care if they are pushing "our buttons". Makes no difference to them. After all, they are "THE RACE"!

Hey Enrique,

Have you ever heard of The Minute Man Project Just wondering.
How bout Tom Tancredo Tom DeLay 90% of the LEGAL American Citizens Have a great day, Eric.

Legal American Citizen