Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Swear Words)

- You know what? In Cuba they would probably arrest you for having that bottle on display in a public place.
- Why?
- Because to us 'cojonudo' is a swear word. It comes from 'cojones', which is as rude as it gets in our neck of the woods.

The man shrugged his shoulders, turned around and began to talk to another customer. After all the Santoña market was buzzing by now and he had a business to attend to. My linguistic grievance could take a bench and sit on it all day if it wanted to. He was not in the mood for pesky busybodies lecturing the locals on what was correct language and what was not.

It never ceases to amaze me the stark differences between the Spanish spoken in Spain and that used elsewhere in the Hispanic diaspora. It is not just words and phrases that make their norm distinct, but a whole cultural mindset that makes us outsiders feel more prudish occasionally than a heroine from a Mills & Boon novel.

During my recent holiday in Cantabria I was fascinated and shocked in equal measure by Castilian Spanish. The former occurred when talking to the locals and noticing the familiar 's' sound at the end of words that finished with 'd' as in 'verdad' (truth). They would say 'verdads', the 's' an almost imperceptible sound, but easy to hear. It reminded me of Irish English speakers who add a soft 'sh' sound to words ending in 't'. My consternation, on the other hand, was the result of coming across words that I was used to seeing in veeeery different contexts. Like the aforementioned 'cojonudos', which in this region of northern Spain referred to asparagus. More baffling for me was when I saw a stall in the same market advertising 'Chochitos Ricos' (Cuban female readers, you have no idea how much I have agonised over writing that sentence, please accept my most sincere apologies). Never mind the fact that the word 'rico' translates as 'yummy' or 'nice' into English, it was the other term I blushed over. Ironically, by then I was of a darker hue due to a couple of visits to one of the local beaches. Nevertheless, I still turned a bright red when I read that caption. The word 'chochito' (diminutive) or 'chocho' is a sexual colloquial term - although some people would call it slang - for female genitalia in Cuba and one of those vocables not to be used unless you and the femme en question are very intimate. Would Cuban women be less offended by the fact that this word was casting their privates in a positive light? Bigging them up, so to speak? Would the fact that 'chochito' (and it does sound like a term of endearment, doesn't it?) referred to a local confectionary delicacy lessen its impact?

Later on that day I had the chance to put these questions to the test. I happened to walk past a group of my fellow countryladies who were completely immersed in a discussion about how high the prices at the market still were. I was tempted to interrupt the flow of their conversation and ask them what they had to say about these linguistic peculiarities but on second thoughts I desisted because by then I'd already had enough of 'chochitos' and 'cojonudos'.

First photo taken from flickr.com, the other two images were taken by the blog author.

Copyright 2009

Next Post: 'Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music' to be published on Sunday 27th September at 10am

A Cuban In Cantabria, Spain (Photography)

Next Post: 'Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music' to be published on Sunday 13th September at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (Grave)

- Hi (with Spanish accent).

- Hola (Son).

- What's your name? (still a strong Spanish accent)

- Me llamo... (still Son)

- How old are you? (I gather she's from Madrid)

At that point, Son gave up. He told the lady his age in English. This is one of my pet hates and I confess that I lose my patience very quickly when a situation like this arises. Spanish-speaking people who default to English when confronted by a child speaking to them in their mother tongue. The issue becomes even more exasparating for me when the person in question has fluency problems in their adopted language and rather than using words that come to them naturally in the lingo they were brought up with, prefer to switch to a tongue full of sounds they are not equipped to pronounce even to a basic level.

But that's not the end. Cue the lady's child. I told Son to go and try his luck with her offspring instead and see if his linguistic thirst could be quenched with the younger kid. Well, I guess you know the answer to that one. The Spanish lady's boy (she turned out to be from Madrid, you see, I told you!) could not utter a word in her Mum's tongue, let alone communicate with Son. Is that the sound of an ol' chip climbing up my shoulder? You bet. When I quizzed this woman on her boy's lack of basic linguistic skills to get by in the country of her birth, her answer could not be more obtuse: 'We rarely go to Spain and we live in England now, anyway, he never wanted to learn the language in the first place and his dad is British.'

Can you hear that noise? That was my jaw hitting the floor. Since when have babies decided which language to speak? 'OK, Mum and Dad, I know that I'm only three months old, but I don't fancy the dialect that the natives of Albion speak, can I go for French instead, please?

Any language, whether it be Sanskrit, Gujurat or Portuguese is nurtured through a mix of games, communication and active participation. Maybe my ire is based on the centuries of exploitation, pillaging and looting that my continent has suffered and therefore the fact that language is one of the elements that define who we are as a Diaspora makes me defensive/aggressive against those whom I perceive to be selling out. I know parents from Mexico, Spain and Columbia just to name but three nations well represented in GB, who speak to their children in broken English, struggling to string two sentences together and their offspring, born in the UK and fluent, of course, in their mother tongue unfortunately find themselves at the losing end of this supposedly cultural exchange.

Maybe, too, I'm being unfair to some of these parents. It's daunting to open your mouth and utter a word in a foreign language in some public places here in the UK, especially in the present climate of fear and mistrust of immigrants. Sometimes the drive to be understood overwrites the need to present your child with the marvellous gift of a different culture and a different language. But, please, don't turn your back on our beautiful Spanish.

When we were leaving the park, Son looked up at me and asked me:

- Why was that lady speaking to me in English if she's Spanish, papi? Could she not understand me?

I hugged Son very hard and told him: 'No, nene, she's just confused.'

Copyright 2007

Illustration courtesy of Garrincha.