Los Angeles Rag Afraid of that Coarse Mexican Language
Oh, Mexico! It's "a land so rich in slang and wordplay (much of it salty but freely used) that a newcomer armed with book-learned Spanish might feel he had studied for the wrong test." HAHA RIGHT? UNLIKE FRANCE OR RUSSIA OR CHINA. (Whoops, sorry.) Anyway! Thus begins what is a phenomenally dim little piece in the Los Angeles Times this week. Salty! Freely used! Unlike in New York City or London, where in our fine English language we never speak in slang. (What would that trashy Charles Dickens make of this? Hell, what would Evelyn Waugh say?) Here's the deal: nearly all other Spanish-speaking people hate both Mexican common words and slang, and the sounds of Mexican Spanish itself. They think it's coarse and low-class talk, and they will tell you to your face straight-up that your Spanish sounds "gross" to their refined, classist ears. And English-speaking people don't much like it either, though they're largely deaf to the connotations—they just hear it as servant-talk, or as cartoon Mexican babbling. So, neato, here is this look at The Wacky World of How Them There Mexicans Talk, from America's saddest newspaper, which by the way, is based in a Spanish-speaking town, not that you could tell from this. But don't worry, white people! There's only 112 million Mexicans in Mexico, and 30 million in the U.S. I'm sure you'll get used to the coarse and degrading sounds of Mexico, vato.
Que relajo! Pinches cabrones que no tienen madre.
No mamen, bueyes!
I get that Mexican Spanish : Spain Spanish :: Quebecois French : France French, and yet the Spaniard accent and inflection bother me so much more. Like that fucking Penelope Cruz? Nails on a chalkboard. Oh, and also her face.
Well that's the OTHER THING. For me, who got most of his Spanish from working at a homeless shelter that served Mexican and Central American kids, some of whom spoke, like, some hybrid of Spanish and Mixe or what have you–I can barely handle listening to what people consider "pretty" Spanish. It's like someone's talking Victorian English at me, but with a crazy, consonant-dropping drawl.
Um. But what about Almodovar, Choire what about Almodovar??
Gachupines.
See also what English think about American English.
Hmmm, let's see here:
Daniel Navarrete greets friends with what seems an unlikely term of affection — he calls them "dude."
Navarrete, a 19-year-old snack vendor, isn't being rude. Go anywhere in New York City and you can hear someone calling someone else "dude," which means "sheltered" or "slow-witted but ostentatious." The word, also spelled d00d, once was an insult, but it has morphed over years of popular use to become the United States's version of "guy" or "bro."
A dude (pronounced "dude") can be a spiky-haired boy, a stubbly-chinned jitney driver, a college student with a ring in her nose. Take a table near a bunch of American teens and it often sounds as if all other parts of speech were designed to transport you from one "dude" to the next. Even narco thugs have scrawled the word as an epithet in threatening banners, misspelling it "dud".
"Everyone I talk to, it's 'dude,' 'dude,' 'dude,' " Navarrete said as he pulled a shift selling potato chips one recent afternoon with a friend and retired Seattle Mariner named Edgar Martinez, who said he, too, uttered the term "all day."
"It's a custom of American culture," Martinez, 33, said with a shrug.
It can be like that in America, a land so rich in slang and wordplay (much of it salty but freely used) that a newcomer armed with book-learned English might feel he had studied for the wrong test.
Although it never hurts to know the "salutations!" greeting, you may be hailed with a slangy "'SUP!" an American version of "what's up?" Someone who shouts "six o'clock!" isn't announcing the arrival of dinner; she's telling you to watch out. (It's aimed a lot at crotchlings, slang for "children.")
The oft-heard "NO FUCKIN' WAY!" literally means "that is not possible," but it's used to express incredulity, as in "get out." A person with lots of scrilla, or scrilla, isn't fuzzy, he's rich.
Some Americans worry about a proliferating usage of slang terms once considered too coarse for common use. They blame the looser talk on television and radio, as well as social changes that have given American women equal access to colloquialisms, even raunchy ones.
"A narco, a rube and a yuppie all speak alike," said commentator Guadalupe Loaeza, who said she has been shocked by the crude words that sometimes pepper the e-mail she receives.
"There's a laxity of language that I would say is almost offensive," Loaeza said. "We've gone too far to the other side."
Is this what they call a salty rim job?
Of COURSE Ken Ellingwood is the reporter.
Love the look today.
"Here's the deal: nearly all other Spanish-speaking people hate both Mexican common words and slang, and the sounds of Mexican Spanish itself. They think it's coarse and low-class talk, and they will tell you to your face straight-up that your Spanish sounds "gross" to their refined, classist ears."
Hmm, yet Mexican Spanish (the not so slangy one of course) is standard broadcast Spanish in this hemisphere. So suck it Colombians!
My Venezuelan cousin would often complain that he was being "worked like a Mexican" at his job. Cultural hegemony and racism is not exclusive to white vs. other!
There are a lot of white people in Latin America. There is a lot of racism within these countries, too.
Mexican Spanish vs. Hick English: who ya got?
Quintin? Is that you??
I thought it was a pretty standard "Person who makes living off denotation is amazed at the fungiblity of language" piece, generally.