Category Archives: Language

Pssst — the Passat

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It happened suddenly this year.  Almost as instantly as changing a television channel.  I do not know the actual count, but the number of commercials that now include more than a HispanicLatino “feel” has exploded.  This is more than about brown-hued actors, words in Spanish or surges of guitar music.  It signals the start of the era that goes beyond the HispanicLatino at last being imprinted on the national consciousness – which in and of itself is nothing to sneeze at.  The slew of ads is about what happens next politically and socially and ultimately, when language is at the core of a globalized world.

The larger story wittily and wittingly is contained in an ad promoting the environmentally-friendly Volkswagen Passat TDI. The commercial is entitled Vamonos, setting the departure point of the country’s new journey into the future.

The subject of the commercial is symbolically a road trip that begins with two young men in a car that soon crosses a bridge into time and into the kinds of terrains and vistas that can found anywhere in the country – just like the HispanicLatino population.

“Road trip, buddy, let’s put some music on,” says the uninformed passenger to the driver.  The passenger like so many Americans wants to feed his fixation on entertainment in the midst of change on a global scale.  He is interrupted from the dashboard of the car – representing the engine of HispanicLatino demographic growth – by a female voice, itself symbolic.  At the root of all culture is the mother tongue: “Welcome to learning Spanish in the car.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” says the passenger, who like many Americans today is not pleased by what he hears and sees around him.

“Yeah, this is good,” says the more-knowing driver – the like of which cannot be found in Arizona or Alabama.

The first word in Spanish learned in the commercial is “gracias,” perhaps a thankful demographic tip of the hat to HispanicLatinos who are saving America.  Without HispanicLatinos, the nation’s population eventually would run out of gas, except that the car arrives at a service station and store – and a new beginning.  The passenger alights from the car now speaking impeccable Spanish thoroughly and although still miffed signals that nothing is impossible.

“Trece horas en el caro sin parar y no traes música!”  (Thirteen hours in the car without stopping and you bring no music!)

“Mira, entra y compra unas papitas!” the driver retorts. (Look, get in there and buy some chips!)

They remain the same but are changed.  Unlike most Americans – including many HispanicLatinos – these two are already in the future around us, even the recalcitrant one.

“This is good,” the driver said.

Actually, it is priceless — o de valor incalculable — to quote another commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oOVqUInA6w

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The Language of Us

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I was asked if the website and its content would be in Spanish as well as English.  Of course.  I cannot imagine anyone writing about HispanicLatinos in English not having their websites in passable-enough Spanish.  The times call for making sure that anything written about the more-than-50-million-member HispanicLatino community is translated well.  Falling short of that falls short of history.

But about translating English into Spanish and Spanish into English: Is there anything more difficult?  Words that mean one thing in one household can signify something else next door.  The nuances in verb tenses are critical yet imperfect – pun very much intended.

So, what to do?  Computerized translations while instantaneous take you so far, thus every line must make the best use of dictionaries and thesauruses – including the bank of words that memory has stored in vaults long not opened, of words not long heard.

The process at first can be daunting but soon enough both languages reveal their artful beauty.  A quiet thrill that I cannot put into words in either idiom ripples through me upon encountering a word my parents used that has meandered in meaning.  ¿Y este laberinto? my mother would ask upon arriving at home to find not a place of intricate passageways and blind alleys but a chaos of rowdy kids.

In the end, there will be errors and typos but the exercise is more than about affixing meaning to language.

It is about affixing meaning to one’s life.

 

Next: Tilting at Immigration

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