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Cover art by Lucia Perezdiaz Spanish Language Antonio Alatorre Translation by Roberto Perezdiaz |
Spanish…the sum of
all our different ways
of speaking it
Excerpts from 1001 Years of the Spanish Language
By Antonio Alatorre
Translated by Roberto Perezdiaz
Chapter 10
Spanish Today
Today the Spanish language also enjoys good health yet it is in constant change like any living entity. [Interpreter emphasis] Not only has it left behind the language of El poema del Cid [The Poem of El Cid] but in its present “culmination” with respect to pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary throughout the Spanish-speaking world, there is a trend toward an increasingly rich diversity.
At the same time it keeps its basic unity as readers in any of the Spanish-speaking countries can verify by reading newspapers or by talking with anyone in those countries. There might be an occasional need for translation of a term or two between persons from Guadalajara, México and Guadalajara, Spain, or maybe a term or two between someone from Santiago de Chile, where guagua is a baby, and Santiago de Cuba, where guagua is a bus.
Nevertheless, these particular words would not be an impediment to conversation. These differences where there is goodwill are easily bridged among regions, countries and even social classes. Rather than being an impediment the differences actually become a stimulus to interesting conversation leading in many cases to humor.
These differences are the source of many humorous stories, such as the Spanish tourist who visits México and sees a sign, “Tacos y Tortas” [Tacos and Mexican style sandwiches] on restaurant windows and thinks here is a place where they serve bad words and face-slaps. Or the refugee that lands in Veracruz and while standing on the seafront boulevard with all his belongings and hears someone yell to him, “Aguzado, joven, que no le vuelen el veliz” [Young man, be careful they don’t steal your suitcase.], and he thinks, “Wow, my God, I thought they spoke Spanish in México; the only thing I understood was “young man” [joven].” Those first impressions are always full of surprises.
The jokes abound when they deal with taboo words, obscenities that can have tremendous variations from country to country. Chingar [Translator note: This verb and its myriad of meanings can mean from “to luck out” to “to fuck” depending on situation, context or country.] does not mean the same thing in Buenos Aires as it does in México. In Havana you shouldn’t say papaya [fruit], nor in Chile concha [shell] nor pico [beak, tip], etc. (There is also the first contact with the poetry of Rubén Darío “Que púberes canéforas te ofrenden el acanto” [Such young damsels are offering you acanthus.], to which the Spaniard says. “The only thing I understood was que.”).
....... (indicates omitted text from chapter)
AA Notes
On the other hand, even among academicians the ideal of academic uniformity has lost followers. Increasingly, there are fewer Spaniards that are shocked that their acera [sidewalk] is banquetain México, and vereda in Argentina. Or, that jerséy [jersey, English] in Latin America is suéter, or chompa [jumper], or pulóver[also English].
Language unity whether it was Latin of the Roman Empire, English, or present day Arabic, has never implied absolute spoken uniformity. It might be a good idea to write a cultural linguistics manual to deter superiority and/or inferiority complexes [“We say taxi and estacionamiento(parking), while those Spanish brutes say tasi and aparcamiento.”]. [“We say vos cantás (you sing), vos tenés (you have), instead of tú cantas, tú tienes.”].
Foolish concerns about uniformity distort what linguistic unity truly is. Those hang-ups over words that complement each other are not only alien to linguistic reality, they blur the vision and can contribute to total blindness. What difference does it make, for example, that the edge of the street dedicated to foot traffic is called different things in different Spanish-speaking places?
That cultural linguistic manual should make everyone understand that all Spanish variants are legitimate. There are no “good” ones or “bad” ones. What exists is a myriad of “practitioners” of that imprecise, abstract, surreal unique entity called Spanish. Spanish is the sum of all our different ways of speaking it. [Translator emphasis]
If we think about it the worst “practitioners” of language are those who think they “master” it, those who believe they “own” it, those who presume themselves titular and legitimate custodians. Then again, those who best appreciate what language truly is are those who are open to all its diversity.
AA Notes
Miguel de Unamuno made fun of those who said, “Spaniards (all who spoke Spanish) needed to learn grammar when what was needed was to have something to say,” and proclaimed it was useless “for speaking and writing correctly.” The cultural linguistic manual will not teach how to speak and write “correctly.” It will teach how “incorrections” should be considered and that “incorrections” are part of every living language past and present. There are no “incorrections” from the strictly linguistic point of view.
When murciégalo [bat] instead of murciélagois heard, or silguero [goldfinch] for jilguero, or ñudo[knot] for nudo is said, these are simply archaic forms that have always existed in Spanish. To say alderredor [around] instead of alrededoris to repeat a form exactly as it was written back in the times of SemTob. To say haiga [to have, aux. v.] instead of haya is to follow the evolution of a long tendency that centuries ago converted caya [to fall] into caiga. To say arrempujar [to push], arrejuntar[to gather], arremedar [to mimic] alongside of empujar [to push], juntar [to gather], and remedar [to mimic] is conserving a history of doublets like the medieval ones: repentirse [to repent] and arrepentirse[to repent]. The conversion of maíz [corn], raíz [root] into máizand ráiz is the same as the conversion of vaína [scabbard] and reína[queen] into vaina and reina. The changes in syllable stress as heard in intérvalo [interval], telégrama [telegram], hectólitro[hectoliter], líbido [libido], ósmosis [osmosis], metamórfosis[metamorphosis], instead of intervalo, telegrama, etc. are symptomatic of a tendency to stress the antepenultimate syllables. This is complicated to explain but its existence nevertheless has to be recognized.
None of this, however, will keep those speakers who consider themselves “educated” and of a higher “cultural” level from continuing to feel that the forms of speech of some individuals and social groups who say things like haiga, arrejuntar, máiz and líbido are speaking “incorrectly.” The concept of “correctness” is psychological and sociological but certainly not linguistic.
AA Notes
Much more interesting than a campaign for “correctness” from a linguistic point of view would be to inform people of the characteristics of those occurrences such as their geographic extension. All the ones cited above are general in nature; a detailed account would take up reams. One can hear probe [poor] instead of pobre [poor], pal camino [for the road] instead of para el camino and le escribo a mis amigos [I write to my friends] instead of les escribo a mis amigos[I write to my friends] in almost any part of the Spanish-speaking world. But tadre[late] for tarde [late] is not heard everywhere although it’s an occurrence as explainable as probe. Also the expressions me se cayóinstead of se me cayó [It slipped (out of my hands)], te se olvidóinstead of se te olvidó [you forgot it], or ir a por agua instead of ir para [go for water] are rarely heard. Also, except for a few villages in eastern Asturias one seldom hears la sidre nuevu da gustu bebelo [to drink fresh cider is a pleasure]. An “incorrect” occurrence doesn’t always have the same strength and intensity to impose itself or to become socially acceptable in all the areas where it exists. It is possible in Spain to hear encima mía[on top of me] instead of encima de mí as in the words of Muñoz Seca’s character: “Tendío yo der tó, y er toro tendío der tó ensima mía” [I was completely laid out and the bull was completely laid out on top of me.] but not in the speech of educated people. On the other hand forms such as encima mío, not mía [on top of me], detrás suyo [behind you], delante nuestro [in front of us], etc., are perfectly normal in Argentina. There they are part of the “norm.” In Madrid, a Juan le quieren mucho [Juan is well liked.], ayer les conocí [I met them yesterday], el paraguas, le perdí [I lost the umbrella.], los libros, me les dejé en casa [I left the books home.] are normal but in Latin America they are way outside the “norm.”
.......
The work of the purists is somewhat pathetic. Those self-appointed guardians of language purity repeated over and over again that controlar [to control] and entrenar [to train] were useless barbarisms since Spanish already had ample verbs to express that. At the time when hotel was a common international word, Baralt insisted that Spanish already had fonda, mesón, posada and other very Spanish words to express the same thing. It wasn’t necessary to say acaparar [to hoard]; instead say estancar. Nor was it important to say bellas letras; instead use letras humanas[literature]. For burócrata[bureaucrat], there is covachuelista; for revancha [pay back], instead say desquite. What was that zigzag thing when there were many very Spanish ways to say “curvy road,” “snaking road,” “S curves.” As late as 1930 they criticized Ortega y Gasset for giving his book the title [The Revolt of the Masses]when he could well have titled it La rebelión de la turbamulta. And, in 1931, when acaparar [to hoard], aprovisionar[to supply], avalancha [avalanche], debutar [to debut], etiqueta[etiquette], finanzas [finances], rango [rank], revancha[pay back] were already of general usage the Spanish Academy still recommended being on guard against those “poisonous words.”
.......
The iceberg of English words has a colossal tip. Within it, along with “iceberg” itself that English borrowed from Danish isberg(a mountain of ice), there are hundreds and hundreds of Anglicisms that come to mind: el hall, el lobby, el living, highball [eljaibol], el gin-and-tonic, el dumping, el crash, elhappening, el gag, el flashback, el walkie-talkie, losgangsters, los cowboys, los hippies, los punks… Little by little the visible Anglicisms sink below the waterline into that “submerged” 80% under the weight of new English words that pile up year after year.
As an example, let’s consider the case of sports that have come from England and the United States. The longer they are played in Spanish speaking countries the more Hispanicized becomes their vocabulary. The most popular of all is soccer, futbol, or fútbolin Spain and South America; it has a well-established and assimilated vocabulary. On the other hand, hockey is so rare that even the spelling doesn’t change and the English spelling is used; no one writes joki orjoqui. Baseball still has rudimentary Spanish spelling. The most sensational play, the homerun, is written jonrón, which is how it’s pronounced, at least in Mexico. However, a Mexican journalist writing about a baseball game might very well write the following: Manager y coach de acuerdo con pitcher y catcher, no obstante varios wild-pitchs del tercero y algunos pass-balls del cuarto, hicieron infructuosos un hit-and-run y dos squeeze-plays, y evitaron muchos hits.” [Manager and coach agreed with pitcher and catcher, in spite of several wild pitches from third and some pass balls on the fourth, nullified a hit-and-run, and two squeeze plays, and avoided many hits.].
AA Notes
What happens in sports also happens in many other areas. However, sports have the advantage of high visibility for those who go to the stadiums, and for those who watch on television and listen on the radio. The fans that also spend time reading about their sports in newspapers and magazines are in the millions. Other areas, like scientific and technological research, economy, statistics, computational linguistics, etc., are less visible. In all these areas there are words analogous to baseball’s hitand wild pitch and jonrón but the readers of scientific magazines are minuscule in comparison to those who read about sports. Therefore, those “scientific” Anglicisms don’t get much exposure and remain delegated to the area of “technical” language, not read by legions. They remain in the same situation as the vocabulary of other more traditional human activities like agriculture, navigation, or old crafts, a very esoteric vocabulary. (Who knows what andaraje and besana or alijarar and alombarare? They mean “wheel of a chain pump,” “first furrow plowed,” “to divide wasteland for cultivation,” “to plow into furrows leaving extra space between them”.) Nonetheless, although not common this vocabulary does exist.
Naturally, a certain amount of time has to pass for those “scientific” Anglicisms to reach the dictionary. Sometimes they cross the line from a technical term into general usage very fast. With the emergence of high fidelity products the Spanish version, alta fidelidad, didn’t take much time to come into use. Everybody now knows about aire acondicionado [air conditioning] and rayos láser[laser rays]. Economic forces have effects throughout the whole world and “unemployment” and “underemployment” have produced the Anglicisms desempleoand subempleo; although these are very recent terms they are already traditional vocabulary. And words like extrapolación [extrapolation], dumpingand marketing are not only Spanish they are more functional than the venerated old scholastic aseidad [aseity], quididad [quiddity], sorites[sorites], and entimema [enthymeme], for just a few examples.
.......
Literal translations from English to Spanish should be mentioned. In English “that’s all I want” is rendered often into Spanish as, Eso es todo lo que yo quieroinstead of es lo único que quiero, as it should be said in good Spanish. The same thing for “at the same time,” translated as al mismo tiempo in the sense of “nevertheless” [no obstante]; más bien [rather] in the sense of “enough” [bastante], as is said when a substance is “rather” poisonous; and the eighties [los ochentas] for the years from 1980 to 1989. It has to be admitted that this Anglicism is much more convenient than the expression “the eighth decade” or the “second to the last decade” of the 20th century. Some of these English phrases have become very generalized, for example, después de todo [after all], which in Spanish would be al fin y al cabo; and jugar un papel or jugar un rol [to play a role]. The expressions más bien, después de todo and jugar un papelcould also have come from French, plutôt, après tout and jouer un rôle. However, keeping in mind English’s dominance, they have to be considered Anglicisms.
.......
Naturally, today’s purists are screaming to high heaven. One of those screams was heard in Mexico at the beginning of the eighties. What is interesting is that it didn’t come from the Spanish Academy; it came from the President of Mexico himself. By presidential decree he created a Commission for the Defense of Language that was presented at the inauguration of a huge symposium held in 1982.
The secretary general of the commission very seriously stated that Mexican Spanish was in danger of sinking “taking down with it the national culture that it represents.” He then censured Mexicans who by their love of Anglicisms give an image of an “alienated” country, and he stooped to give details: “In outdoor advertising, establishments called Charlie’s, Vanity Fair, etc., in women’s magazines, on many radio programs, movies and television, of course, music, jazz and rock, etc., on the labels of many consumer products, in tourism promotions, on restaurant menus,…
“[All such Anglicisms have] acquired a naturalization card, to such a degree as to make this country’s genuine expressions sound ridiculous and out of style.” It is to be observed that the expression promociones turísticas [tourism promotions] that he used in his speech is a genuine Anglicism.
There has never been a moment in the history of Spanish that has not elicited similar outcries. The first one was heard in pre-history, more than 1001 years ago: “Oh, how it pains! Christians are abandoning their culture!” On the other hand these alarmist cries about the overbearing influence of English are not only coming from Hispanic sources; in France there are those who feel that French is no longer spoken there. What is spoken is Franglais, a mixture of French and English [françaisand anglais].
These are surely useful outcries; they represent the conservative tendency of all languages to remain the same. The Dictionary of Anglicisms by Ricardo J. Alfaro is as enlightening and useful as was Baralt’s about Gallicisms. But history tells us that more than these lamentations, more than scolding by the Spanish Academy; speakers of the language are the true “stabilizers” of language. They are the ones who decide what to reject and what to adopt and the form they will give those adopted words. The present warnings will pass into history.
The closest historical parallel to the present invasion of English words into Spanish was the invasion of Arabisms during Spanish’s formative centuries. It was a fatal invasion, willed by fate, by destiny. Arabic culture, all of it, not just the material one, nor that of the elites, became an irresistible magnet for the Christian kingdoms. The result is that Spanish Arabisms constitute one of the language’s appeals.
That commission created in Mexico to “defend” the language was dissolved by the end of that same year, undoubtedly thanks to the fact that there was a change of presidents. Had it been extended, it would have achieved some victories. The government could have suppressed with a heavy hand, ads “alien to the Spanish language and the national culture,” such as Vanity Fair and Charlie’s, as well as Le Petit Cluny and Pizzeria Napoli, and could have denied names like Nancy and Walter or Yvetteand Sandro entry into the national registry. It would not have been the first time that such innocuous signs of cosmopolitanism suffered repression.
But it surely would not have gone much further. El jazz, el jonrón and el jaibol would have emerged unscathed, mocking thousands and thousands of inspectors who would have to be trained to surprise people in flagrant use of Anglicisms and give them a ticket. The prohibition of this or that word is a tactic characteristic of dictatorships. It was quite fortunate that the Commission for the Defense of Language disappeared.
AA Notes
To round out the analogy between the Gallicisms of the 18th century and today’s Anglicisms, it can be said that Forner was right: the “mechanism of our language” is not English, and many of the Anglicisms of the translators, in the press and television, are the result of ignorance and servility. But Francisco de Miranda was also right; more than being “correct” what is asked of a writer is to say intelligent things. Perhaps someday television translators will reflect, as Miranda did, upon the convenience of such a “useful science” as knowing how to express themselves in the Spanish language. Instead of saying, Estoy esperando por ella, as a translation of “I’m waiting for her,” a little bit of imagination will make them say, Estoy esperándola, or La estoy esperando. This is how it is said in Spanish, or what we, in fact, would say waiting for a friend.
These last pages, like all the last pages of a history that includes contemporary matters, necessarily have been diffuse, digressive and even controversial. They deal with events that are taking place now and whose evolution is yet to be seen. It is easy to describe past events, but it is very difficult to avoid introducing the subjectivity of the historian into the vision of the present. It is to be seen what future historians will say about the second half of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the opinion of this historian is that the warnings precipitated by Anglicisms sound like “the warnings of Doctor Américo Castro” about the situation of River Plate Spanish (mentioned at the beginning of this chapter), and like all the past and present “alarms” about the “impoverishment” of Spanish: “real Spanish” has been “forsaken,” the foreign elements, distortion, fragmentation and use of incorrect language has so ruined Cuban Spanish that it cannot be understood, etc.
There are many things in our world to be alarmed about. Among them is not the Spanish language as such, in all of its spoken variations. In the case of Cubans, for example, the only thing needed to understand them is to want to understand them. It will be learned that their Spanish is not only good Spanish, but very colorful.
The panic alarmist balloons are filled with very thin and transparent air. Not all speakers pronounce their language the same way; they don’t all call things with the same words. Styles are not the same everywhere. The need for naming and emphasizing things are variables. The speech of young people is different from that of old people. A dominant culture imposes upon other cultures a good part of its vocabulary. Human languages do not tolerate ossification for very long.
This usually is the essence of warnings about things that have always happened and are normal for a living language spoken by so many millions. “The Spanish language is in good health.” That is the conclusion of the beautiful study by Ángel Rosenblat about El castellano de España y el castellano de América [Spain’s Castilian and America’s Castilian].
Editor's Note: This book is the only English translation authorized by the author, Antonio Alatorre, The translator, Roberto Perezdiaz, worked closely with Alatorre to attain a fluid version in English of the original Spanish.
1001 Years’ Translator’s Notes
Los 1001 años de la lengua española (1001 Years of the Spanish Language) has been a very successful publication. The first edition was published in 1979, the second edition, 1989, went through nine reprints and finally the third edition was published in 2002. The latter is the text used in this translation.
I translated chapter five of Los 1001 años de la lengua española on Arabic Spain for Dr. Coronado’s class on Politics of the Middle East at University of Texas at El Paso because not all her students read Spanish. It was well received and stimulated critical dialogue about the totally inconceivable concept (for many Americans) that Jewish, Islamic and Christian cultures could live and interact peacefully, under Muslim rule!
A melodic flow of language, as if he were really talking about his own personal life interspersed with anecdotal asides much in the style, I felt would better present his story by including his asides rendered as footnotes in the Spanish editions into the main body of the text. Antonio himself didn’t agree with this but he didn’t reject it either. He felt it interfered with the general flow of his story telling. In my mind these “digressions” were precisely what endeared his classes and humanized his story of Spanish.
His command of the material was personal along with his challenge to us to reflect upon language as a living dynamic entity. We are our language(s), however many we speak and to the degree we master our native one and any secondary language. He was particularly sensitive to the“Chicanos” and other Latinos raised in the US and our capacity of bringing English and Spanish into our amalgam of vocabulary and culture, for many neither fish nor fowl, for others the living embodiment of linguistic synthesis. I was one of those hybrid linguistic students.
Antonio Alatorre Chávezwas born in 1922 in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico, and died in 2010 in Mexico City. A philologist and translator, author of some 20 books, he became famous due to his influential academic essays about Spanish literature, and because of his book Los 1001 años de la lengua española (The 1001 Years of the Spanish Language). He was the director of El Colegio de México from 1953 to 1972, when he edited and directed the Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica. He won Mexico's National Prize of Linguistics and Literature in 1998.
Roberto Perezdiaz, born to farm worker parents in California’s Salinas Valley, is a retired federally certified Court Interpreter. Now living in El Paso, Texas, he has taught graduate and undergraduate translation at UT El Paso, written numerous technical articles and poetry in Spanish and English. Two other works, his collection of short stories, Más sabe el diablo, and his translation of Feliz Pyat’s Letter to Juarez and his Friends have been featured in Somos en escrito. For copies, contact Perezdiaz at rpdcs@sbcglobal.net.
This book can only be viewed on an iOS device with Apple Books on iOS 12 or later, or an iPad with iBooks 2 or later and iOS 5 or later, an iPhone with iOS 8.4 or later or a Mac with OS X 10.9 or later. Published by Cichlid Press.