Un chin-chin of Spanish

¿De dónde es usted....es cubana?

No. Soy de aquí- los Estados Unidos.

¿Nació en los EE. UU.?

Sí, ¿por qué?

Su español es como lo que se hablan en las Islas Canarias, o como las islas del Caribe. ¿Ha viajado a España, o vivía allí por un rato?

No, desafortunadamente. Mi conocimiento de español – la mayoría de ello – es teórico. Aprendía español en la escuela.

Hmm, interesante. Bueno, ¡suena cubana!

I’ve heard this from patients frequently enough that my curiosity is officially piqued! When I speak to them in Spanish at the office, they assume I’m either Cuban or from Southern Spain-- the Canary Islands -- to be exact. They tell me that my Spanish is very similar to the dialect spoken in those locations. This is very interesting and highly unusual to me, since I’m an Italian-Polish-American born to an English-only speaking family in the suburbs of New York City. I decided to do a little investigating...

Incidentally, all Spanish spoken in the Caribbean shares the same basic dialect, and there is a historical reason behind this. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, there was a large migration of people from the Canary Islands and Andalucía (southern Spain) to Cuba and the other Caribbean islands. The speech patterns in these areas were heavily influenced by these new settlers. Common language characteristics include:

1) the “debuccalization” of the end consonant “s” – in laymen’s terms, the weakening of or even complete dropping of the “s” sound at that end of a word. For ex:

Los niños no están aquí.   --> Lo’ niño’ no están aquí.

2) the complete dropping of “s” at any position in the word. For ex.:

Disfrutar --> Difrutar  

  

Después --> Depue’ (de-pwe)

3) the dissimilation of the final “r”, particularly in infinitive words. For ex.:

Nadar --> Nada’

Although I have been known to make the pronunciation changes as described above – which could give the listener, potentially, a sense of my Spanish language origin – there are other characteristics of Cuban/Caribbean Spanish that I don’t follow. For ex.:

4) the use of “ico” or “ica” at the end of a word for the diminutive (instead of “ito/ita”), for ex, to indicate a small or quick moment, a Cuban speaker would say:

“un momentico, por favor” ,

whereas I was taught to say “un momentito, por favor”

Dominican Spanish, in addition to the southern Spain, Canary Island Spanish influence, also represents a combination of borrowed vocabulary from the Taíno language (the language of the original native inhabitants of that region) and the 17^th  and 18^th century Portuguese colonists.  In addition to the language characteristics I’ve listed above, it is also not uncommon to hear the following in Dominican Spanish:

5) Silencing of the “d” in words ending in “ado”. For ex.:

Él es casado ---> Él es casao.

Mire al lado --> Mire al lao.

6) the letters “l” and “r” are substituted for one another. For ex.:

Miguel  is pronounced Miguer

Arturo   is pronounced Alturo

7) the unique indigenous vocabulary of the region:

guagua – bus               (Castilian: autobús)

chin-chin – a little       (Castilian: un poco)

All of this research got me to thinking about my early introductions to Spanish language: who taught me, and where were they from? I was introduced to very basic Spanish (alphabet, vocabulary lists, etc) in the 7^th grade by a teacher who was French Canadian. In high school, my studies were conducted by a Peruvian teacher. It wasn’t until I reached college, and began taking advanced classes in Spanish literature and composition, that I had a Cuban professor. It was in college that I firmly dedicated myself to ‘getting the language right’, so to speak. I wanted to sound authentic, more like a native speaker, so I paid more attention to and practiced how words should be pronounced. Having a Cuban professor as my guide, it is not so unusual now to imagine how my Spanish began sounding more and more Caribbean in origin.

There is the standard, textbook language taught in school. And then there is the language spoken by the people. What they say and how they say it reflects who they are as a culture and from where they come historically. Speak the standard language with them and you open the channels of communication. But speak in their dialect, and you open the doors of trust, friendship and understanding.

“Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.” –Rita Mae Brown

References

 “Cuban Spanish.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 August 2016. Web. 26 August 2016.

“Dominican Spanish.”Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 July 2016. Web. 26 August 2016.

Brod Fortress, Slavonski-Brod, Croatia

La Narración

A person can’t be a good translator unless she can express the same mood and sentiment of the source language in the target language. José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish philosopher, writer and translator who lived from the late 19^th through early 20^th centuries. In his work, “Miseria y Esplendor de la Traducción”, he writes about the experience of the art of translation. He comments that,

“...La traducción no es un doble del texto original...por la  sencilla razón de que la traducción no es la obra, sino un camino hacia la obra.”

“Translation isn’t a carbon-copy of the original...for the simple reason that the translation itself is not the work, but a path toward the work.”

He goes on to say,

“Lo decisivo es que, al traducir, procuremos salir de nuestra lengua a las ajenas y no al revés, que es lo que suele hacerse.”

“The imperative thing is that, when translating, we need to leave our language behind to go to the other one and not the reverse, that is what needs to be done.”

So, in order to do a proper translation, one must know more than vocabulary and sentence structure in the target language – one must be able to express the same sentiments, the same feelings, as in the original, but within the expressive capabilities of the target language. How does one get to this level of understanding and knowledge in the target language? Well, if you were raised speaking that language, then those abilities of natural expression are innate.  If, however, you’re  like me: someone who started learning the target language later in life, then it requires years of reading, studying, conversing, interacting—and ultimately reaching a point where you can dream and ponder and be creative in that language. I don’t feel there is a time limit that can be set on this level of learning. We all march to the beat of our own drummer. With dedication, we can all achieve this degree of language proficiency.

I had mentioned in an earlier blog entry that I recently completed an English to Spanish translation class. Part of that class was dedicated to creative essay writing in Spanish. There is no better way to practice and hone expression in Spanish than writing a story documenting a personal experience in Spanish. I wrote this story based on my experiences and observations during a visit to Positano, Italy. Aside from a few grammar mistakes indicated by my professor (whoops! wrong preposition!  preterite vs imperfect!) which have since been corrected, I want to share with you the end result in its entirety. I am proud of it. At the risk of sounding pretentious (but with the hope of the most humble pretension) I consider myself a skillful creative writer in my native English. To be able to express myself in Spanish—not through translation, but through expression of the original sentiment in Spanish—felt quite freeing. I can tell the same story in two languages and from two perspectives. Not the same words, but the same meaning.

Imagine un lugar completamente tallado en la roca. Una ciudad, esculpida de una montaña cerca del borde del mar. Un lugar finito, lo que se experimenta desde la base a niveles superiores. En la base, se camina por la arena de la orilla. Hay un hombre, un pintor, quien trabaja para capturar la escena: el mar, la arena, los visitantes, una fuente antigua que existe ahora solo de decoración. Las tiendas donde se venden baratijas y recuerdos. Por el lado, la boca de una calle con el cuerpo de una serpiente. Apresuradamente, se desliza y se desaparece arriba de la montaña. 

Me encontré aquí un verano. Yo quería ver este lugar secreto, el lugar del que todos hablaban. Fue el último verano de libertad, de juventud. Antes de que todas las cosas se volverían rutinarias. Tuve que escoger. Yo podía ir por la calle, seguir la serpiente misteriosa y luchar por espacio entre turistas y autobuses de turistas. Yo podía escalar las escaleras de piedra, directamente a la montaña. Allí, más sereno, pero más difícil. Pero creo ahora lo que siempre creía:  la vida le recompensa a quien toma el camino menos transitado.  Y por eso, fui yo, arriba de las escaleras.

Los escalones de piedra cortan a través de jardines cultivados en niveles diferentes hacia la cima. Los jardines de verduras, aceitunas, frutos secos y uvas, cultivados por los habitantes allí.  De vez en cuando, entre  respiraciones fuertes, vi a una persona, cubierta con un sombrero de paja, que se ocupaba del jardín. Paré para beber de una botella de agua, mientras él esquilaba las ramas de las plantas, levantó la cosecha y fue a la casa. “Verduras para cenar”, pensé yo. Sequé el sudor de mi frente y continué adelante, cada pisada más pesada que la anterior.

Después de una hora y media, llegué a la cumbre. A la cúspide había un pueblo pintoresco, enteramente hecho de piedra. Yo pasaba por una iglesia, una tienda, un café. Cada hogar, diminuto pero fuerte, rendía homenaje a la Virgen María.   Me paré frente a un hogar. Un letrero decía: “Ristorante”. Tuve hambre y curiosidad. Entré. Seguí a una mujer a una mesa, cerca de una ventana con vista a todo: la montaña, los jardines, la ciudad, el mar. La mujer era la camarera y la hija del cocinero. Ella nació en ese pueblo. Vivía allí. Trabajaba allí. Se había ido para asistir a la universidad, pero regresó. Esa fue la vida que conocía. “Me gustaría espaguetis de aceite y ajo”. Ella desapareció a la cocina con mi pedido.

Mientras me sentaba, a esperar por la cena, pensaba de no solo la camarera en el restaurante, pero todos los ciudadanos de este lugar;  turistas, como yo, llegarían y se irían, pero los habitantes se quedarían. Estables y firmes, como la montaña así. Literalmente, vidas talladas en la roca y piedra. Ellos aprendían a vivir con el mar y el viento. Se ajustaban a su entorno, no al revés.  Pensaba en mi vida, en mi ciudad de origen.  Dondequiera que vaya, estoy llamada a volver a casa. “¿Quiere queso con eso?”, la camarera esperaba la respuesta.  Sacudí mi cabeza y sonreí.

*

Narration translated:

Imagine a place completely carved in stone.  A city, sculpted in a mountain near the edge of the sea.  A place with boundaries, which one experiences from the base level to great heights.  At the bottom, one walks in the sand along the shore.  There is a man, a painter, who works to capture the scene: the sea, the sand, the visitors, an ancient fountain that exists now only for decoration.  The stores were they sell trinkets and souvenirs.  On the side, the mouth of a street with the body of a serpent.  Quickly, it slithers and disappears up the mountainside.

I found myself here one summer.  I wanted to see this secret place, the place that everyone talks about.  It was the final summer of freedom, of youth.  Before all things would become routine.  I had to choose.  I could go by the street, following the mysterious serpent and fight for space between the tourists and the buses of tourists.  I could climb the stone steps, directly up the mountain.  There, more serene, but more difficult.  But I believe now what I always believed: that life rewards he who takes the road less traveled.  And as a result, I went, up the steps.

The stairs of stone cut through  gardens grown at various levels up to the summit. The gardens of vegetables, olives, nuts and grapes, cultivated by the inhabitants there.  Once in a while, between heavy breaths, I saw a person, covered in a straw hat, that busied himself in the garden.  I stopped to drink from a bottle of water, while he dodged the branches of plants, he picked up the harvest and went into the house.  “Vegetables for dinner,” I thought to myself.  I dried the sweat from my forehead and continued forward, each step more heavy than the last.

After an hour and a half, I arrived at the top.  At the summit was a picturesque town, entirely made of stone.  I passed by a church, a store, a café.  Each home, small but strong, paid homage to the Virgin Mary.  I stopped in front of a home.  A sign said, “Restaurant”.  I was hungry and curious.  I entered.  I followed a woman to a table near a window with a view of everything: the mountain, the gardens, the city, the sea.  The woman was the waitress and daughter of the cook.  She was born in that town.  She lived there.  She worked there.  She had left to go to college, but she returned.  That was the life she knew.  “I would like oil and garlic spaghetti.” She disappeared into the kitchen with my order.

While I was seated there, waiting for dinner, I thought not only of the waitress in the restaurant, but of all the inhabitants of that place; tourists, like me, would come and go, but the townspeople would remain.  Stable and firm, just like the mountain.  Literally, lives carved in rock and stone.  They learned to live with the sea and the wind.  They conformed to their environment, and not the reverse.  I thought about my life, my city of origin. Wherever I go, I am called to return home.  “Do you want cheese with that?”,the waitress waited for my response.  I nodded my head and smiled. 

Vernazza, Italy. Courtesy: D. Hromin 

Difficulty is in the Eye (and Ear and Mouth) of the Beholder

“Usted habla español bien. ¿Dónde lo aprendió?”

“Gracias. Aquí...en las escuelas aquí en los EE.UU.”

“Es bueno tener un médico que habla mi lengua, porque no hablo ni entiendo inglés.”

(el examen continúa)

“Pienso que inglés sea mucho más difícil que español.”

“¿De veras?—¿En qué manera?”

“Bueno, las palabras – no se dicen  como se escriben. En español, se dice una palabra exactamente como la se escribe. Y también, la ortografía es bien diferente. Pero, me gustaría saber el idioma, un día.”

“Sí, es bueno saber más que una lengua- especialmente en este mundo global.”

It surprised me when my patient said she thought English is a more difficult language to learn than Spanish. It made me think back to a quick search I did once a while back-- it was one of those days I had some down time and for interest’s sake decided to compare languages.  I looked up “most difficult languages to learn” (from an English speaker’s perspective) and what I saw didn’t shock me. In no particular order: the Asian languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc, Hungarian, Icelandic (can you pronounce: Reykjavík?), Native American languages such as Apache, Cherokee, Choctaw and Navajo (incidentally, the Navajo language, due to its varying inflections, the existence of few native speakers and, at the time, the fact that it was an entirely oral and unwritten language, was used as a method of communication between US Marines during WWII, in an effort to hide military plans from the Japanese. The most skilled of Japanese decoders couldn’t break the Navajo communications during WWII).   Other languages making the difficult list include Polish, Russian and German followed by the romance languages.

But grammar rules and pronunciations aside, I personally feel a language is difficult to learn if it is significantly different in its rules, sound and structure to the one you grew up learning. Then again, anything different from what we know and are familiar with would seem daunting, minus any practice or experience.

In an effort to research more about language difficulty, specifically related to English and Spanish, I located an interesting article on the web: “The Differences Between English and Spanish,” which begins by stating that written English in and of itself is not problematic for the native Spanish speaker. However, the pronunciation, or phonology, causes several problems for a Spanish speaker learning English.   The length of the vowel, when pronounced in English, is very important to discerning the meaning of the word. Examples include:

sheep/ship

cat/cut/cart

fool/full

One personal example of this that I encountered in the office one time when asking a patient what pharmacy he uses:

“Quiero mandar la receta a la farmacia. ¿Cuál farmacia utiliza usted?”

“La una aquí en Garnerville...Drew-car. Pienso que sí. ‘Drew-car’.”

“Perdón, pero no conozco ‘drew-car’.  ¿Tenemos CVS...o Rite Aid...tal vez Walgreens?”

“No, no...hmmmm. Está ubicada cerca de la estación de gasolina. Ahí, en la carretera <202>. Drew-car.”

“<al pensar> ¡¡¡O!!! Usted quiere decir ‘True-Care’....True-Care Pharmacy!”

“<al reír> Sí, sí. Drew-car.”

This is particularly interesting to me, because there are several aspects of the English language that I take for granted as a native English speaker. But, if one can’t pronounce the subtle difference between the ‘tr’ of true and ‘dr’of drew, then he will not be understood by the listener.

The article continues by addressing the consonant sounds--which in general are not problematic for Spanish-speakers--except when used in particular instances, and other tricky nuances to the language:

a. Not pronouncing the end consonant hard enough:

            ie. “saying brish for bridge or cart for card ...”

b. Trouble deciphering phonetically similar sounding words like see/she or jeep/cheap/sheep..”

c. Problems with auxiliary verbs. Remember, in English the auxiliary, or helping, verb works with the main verb of the sentence to add clarity to the phrase. Auxiliary verbs, though used in Spanish, are not used as commonly in oral conversation. For example, in English:

            ie. Did he remember to put the garbage out?  Main verb: remember, auxiliary: did

            A Spanish speaker commonly makes this error when trying to say the same thing:

            ie. He remember to put the garbage out? The auxiliary is left out, and the sentence sounds wrong. There are only three auxiliary verbs in English: to be, to have, and to do, but using them appropriately is important to providing clarity to communication in English.

d. Inability to infer the spelling of a word in English from its pronunciation:

            In Spanish the sound of a word is strongly correlated to its spelling. As any native English speaker knows, this is not the case at all in the English language. For example:

            won, one  They’re pronounced the same, but the spelling and meaning are different

            their, there, they’re  Same concept

            And what of heteronyms? Words in English that are spelled the same, but when pronounced differently have different meanings, for example:

            bow  if said BAU: the front of a ship or to lower one’s head; if said BOH: a device for shooting arrows or a decoration for one’s hair

            contest  if said kahn-TEST: to argue;  if said KAHN-test: a competition

And the list goes on and on....

Researching more into my native English makes me appreciate more the difficulty that my Spanish-speaking patients encounter when in the process of learning the English language.  It gives me new insight into my own native tongue, and why certain concepts of my own Spanish learning come more easily than others.  I’m either aided or, conversely, tripped up by preconceived grammar and pronunciation rules molded and shaped by years of English education. Though there are some tools from our native tongues that we can take with us when embarking on new language learning, we invariably have to leave other concepts behind. Letting go of a lifetime of foundation can be scary, but it is precisely in the letting go that we evolve to something more unique and beautiful.

References

“Auxiliary (or helping) Verbs.” Ginger Grammar Rules. http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/verbs/auxiliary-or-helping-verbs/ (Accessed August 6, 2016).

Ellis, J. “Welcome to the Heteronym Homepage!” 6/1/96

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html (Accessed August 6, 2016).

Shoebottom, Paul. “The Differences Between Spanish and English.” Frankfurt International School. http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm (Accessed July 31, 2016)

Wilsont, William R. “World War II: Navajo Code Talkers.” HistoryNet. 6/12/06 http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-navajo-code-talkers.htm (Accessed August 6, 2016).

Barn Owl. Courtesy: Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation Center