ingléspañol

Al Principio explained a little further

First my apologies to anybody who tried to post and couldn't - I'd had the blog closed to outside posts by any non-member, but I've changed the access to "anybody" so if you're reading this please feel free to comment. I really would like any comments.

Especially some of the comments that I've had about the first post. Several of my friends/amigos have expressed some consternation over the "America must learn Spanish" quote - all of them in complete disagreement. Interestingly enough this includes both my English-only and bilingual friends. Each ond every one of you (OK - the five of you), if I understood your comments, could be summed up as this:

Keep English as the one "central" language enjoyed by all Americans. Hispanohablantes can keep their cultural identity/language, but must learn English in order to communicate and further their personal and professional success within the borders of America.

De acuerdo. I like the idea of keeping one unifying language - a central springboard for communication. However, when I said that America needs to learn Spanish the point I was trying to make was this: That los estadounidenses (Americans born in America) need to shed their linguistic xenophobia. Americans are raised on a diet of "English is the ONLY language worth speaking," and thus their minds are closed. To be able to speak a foreign language opens up a world of possibilities. To be able to speak/communicar con los otros permits a person to see that they are not the center of any universe, that there are other people out there.

Simply put: to speak to foreigners lets us see that they want the same things we do: a nice safe place to live - and to be happy and content.

For example: I saw on Univision last week about a young Chicano in LA who was thrown off a bus. As he related the incident, he had been speaking to two other women in Spanish, and the African-American female bus driver said something along the lines of, "Hey just because you might think I don't speak Spanish doesn't mean that I don't understand when you're talking about me!"

To which the young man replied something like, "Well, if you understand, then you'd know that we weren't talking about you."

At which point the bus driver stopped the bus and had him leave.

In all honesty, the exact dialogue is not as important as the social implications expressed here: One person felt threatened because that person couldn't understand what was being said.

You might feel that if the hispanohablantes would give up their language and conform and not speak Spanish in public, only English, then this would be a non-issue. I take the other side of the coin - in that, if the ingléshablantes would take the time to learn another language (whatever language in their particular community, no me importa! Spanish, French, Arabic, Tagalog, whatever group you've got living in YOUR part of the country!) then there would be LESS fear, LESS misunderstanding, and consequently, FEWER incidents like the one on the bus.

I hope that kind of fleshes out the idea there. Again, let me know what YOU think!!

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 8:11 AM 1 comments

Defender DPL

While I realize that in a year or so this incident will be nothing but a distant memory, and not even a footnote to anybody who isn't actively involved in this debate, I must state that the current situation this month at the Denver Public Libary is one of the incipient reasons for starting this blog.

and to start near the end, so to speak, let me post this link

http://denver.lib.co.us/news/dplnews/mayors_letter.html

which should help clear up any misunderstandings about the situtation. I will post some other comments regarding this situation later, pero querría empezar with the salve, not the incidiary device.

Cómo siempre, más después.

VG

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 11:48 AM 1 comments

Al principio

Let me begin by saying that whomever comes across this site, please feel free to write your messages in either English or in español. I can read either, although I read English far better than my secondary language. In this first post I want to tell you that I felt the need to start this blog to communicate with other bilingüeses concerning matters that are very close to me (about which I will delve into further detail in soon-to-follow future posts). By communication: I mean honest and ernest thoughts about how America (and by this, yes, I do mean the US/EEUU) is absorbing (or NOT absorbing) the influence of Latino/Hispanic culture/language.

Many changes are occurring, and have been occurring, for quite some time, and many many people are upset, nervous, or simply scared about this. I somewhat understand the fear, being gringo myself; but what I cannot abide is the reaction to this fear, which usually entails more programs spent on "protecting our Southern border" or waging a war on the teaching of Spanish in our schools and libraries.

In short, America needs to learn Spanish.

You've probably heard the term "Spanglish." Spanglish refers to this mixture of language, how Spanish is picking up English terms, such as "carpeta" for "alfombra" and "trucka" for "camioneta." In this blog, I want to skew that a little bit and talk about the term that I have coined: ingléspañol. This term goes a little bit further than Spanglish, because Spanglish appears to remain insular, that of "maintaining" a Latin/Hispanic culture inside the greater melting-pot culture of America, while ingléspañol feels a little more like the melting/melding that has historically been the raison d'être of the so-called American Dream. This term, for me, is a starting point: an indication about one possible direction for both our languages, that of an eventual merging. Until the two become uno, ¿lo sabes lo que I mean?

Dime lo que piensan.

posted by Verble Gherulous @ 10:04 AM 1 comments