My niece Evelyn is a confused little girl. She's 8 years old and stuck in that zone somewhere between English and Spanish. The problem is, she doesn't speak either language particularly well.In my wife's family the rule is generally, "Spanish in the house, English at school." Some families enforce that rule stricter than others.
In the case of Evelyn's father William, my brother in-law, he was very strict about that with his son. As a result of his strictness, Junior, speaks with a perfect Salvadoran accent. His English is good, but he's equally comfortable in either language.
It's unclear exactley what happened with Evelyn. Either William was too lazy to continue correcting her, or Evelyn's incredible power of cuteness made it impossible for him to be stern with her. I think it's a little bit of both. But regardless, the result is that Evelyn's vocabulary is a mess!
Ask her how old she is, and she'll reply with a mix of English vocab and Spanish sentence structure; "I have 8 years."
Ask her the months in Spanish and you get the this crazy American accent where Julio morphs into Jew-lee-o, and Abril becomes Ab-reeeeeal.
She gets a lot of teasing about it and I always feel sorry for her. Of all people, I should be able to sympathize since Spanish is a second language for me too. And I do sympathize... But at the same time, there is nothing funnier than seeing her reaction when I call her my, "sobrina gringita (or little white niece)," or when I pick her up and say "Evelyn, looks like we're the only gringos here." That never gets old.
Anyway, we were visiting her house on Saturday and as usual, Evelyn followed me everywhere I went, refusing to let me have a conversation with anyone accept her. This is uaually fine by me.
Her big, "Spangligh," highlight of the day was when I asked where her brother was.
"He's at la gang-cha!" she replied, angry that I had even asked about him in the first place. (My attention is supposed to go to her only, so asking about anyone else always elicits a dirty look)
Of course what she meant to say was, "He's at 'la cancha'," which means 'the soccer field', but her accent wasn't cooperating. Everyone had a good laugh until she looked liked she might cry.
A few minutes later she went to the refrigerator to pull out an Avocado that she wanted to show me.
It had a sticker on it indicating that it was from Chile... In addition to being the name of a country, in Spanish, the word 'chile' means a 'spicy hot sauce'. This confused her greatly and she asked me, "Este sticker dice que it's Chile, pero, why isn't it picante?"
Translation: "This sticker says it's 'Chile', but why isn't it spicy?"
I knew the other kids would laugh at her if they heard that. So very quietly, I tried to explain to her that Chile is a country and not just a sauce... She wasn't buying it. I had to be teasing her. No way was 'Chile' a country. Not possible.
"It's a mentira!" [It's a lie] she screeched while trying not to laugh at my crazy statement.
Finally I went and got the globe from her brother's room... To her amazement there it was, right next to Argentina... Chile!
I pointed to it just to make sure she got a good look.
I guess her Spanglish must have been getting to me because I told her, "Mira Evelyn, it's a country tambien!" [Look Evelyn, it's a country too!]
Evelyn looked up from the globe with a VERY serious look on her face. She pulled my ear close to her and looked around the room making sure nobody was listening.
"Tio," [Uncle] she whispered... "In this country you have to learn to speak English or Spanish, but not both!" And then she had a good laugh at my expense.
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6 comments:
Evelyn sounds like she is adorable, too adorable, and very smart at that. I loved her comment about you choosing to speak english or spanish!!!! I LOVE CHILDREN...as long as they get to home though, hehehhehe
i grew up with the no english at home rule. i'm actually kind of glad my parents enforced it. spanglish is so misunderstood, i don't think there is anything wrong with using it--there are just some feeling and words that cannot be translated.
You are so lucky to have your niece in the same country. She sounds like a lot of fun. She's still young she will catch on to the languages. I agree with Cracked Chancla that there are some things you can't really express in English. I remember when I was six- years old and asking my mom what giraff meant. She had not learned this word yet in English. She asked me to say it in Spanish and I had no idea...
Sonrisa- that's how I feel, I love being an uncle but I don't know about being a father. Not yet anyway.
Cesar- i agree, for someone that is raised in a two language house, Spanglish is a part of who they are, so looking down on it would be to surpress a part of themself, which is wrong.
Chancla- yeah if I ever have kids, we're going with the no english in the house, which I suppose is stange considering spanish is a second language for me. But I wouldn't want my child to lose a part of his/her culture.
mariposatomica- In my old job I had to translate a saftey meeting in english for like 50 spanish speaking construction workers... as they meeting was coming to an end one of the workers came up to me and said "necesito tapones para oidos poque mios son viejo y ya no sirve..." or something to that effect. So I turned to the boss who I was translating for and I realized that I had no idea how to say that... in english. I couldn't remember the word "ear plugs"... finally I had to tell the guy "he needs those things that go in your ear."
It was quite embarrassing.
I think that is sooo cool. It reminds me of a school where I sub at where they teach both english and spanish from Kindergarten on. You walk into these classrooms and the kids are fluent in english and spanish (at times they even correct my spanish!). Did I mention that many of these kids are not native spanish speakers? Now that is way cool to me.
gustavo, yeah I've heard about schools like that (maybe even from something you wrote).
I'm sure those schools must have some opponents, but to me it sounds like a great idea. Why wouldn't you want your kids to speak 2 languages? It can only benifit the kids. Had I gone to a school like that maybe I wouldn't keep saying "por" when I wanna say "para"!
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