Spanish Teacher Question

[Michael Tee]

Hi, XO, another thread just reminded me what you do for a living. 

Maybe you could answer just one question for me - - I was just in Argentina and Uruguay last month and was puzzled by the locals' way of referring to the Spanish language - - sometimes it was "espanol" (sorry I can't get a tilde on this) and sometimes it was "castellano" (Castillian.)  (Are you familiar with rioplatense Spanish?  They pronounced it something like "cah-tehzhanna.")

Is there some kind of rule for when you use one and when the other?  Or are they truly synonyms to be used interchangeably?  Does the speaker's geographic location have anything to do with this?

Thanks, XO.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Argentines and Uruguayans use the term 'castellano' to refer to Spanish. This is the word used in high school for the textbooks and cpourses to refer to Spanish properly spoken, much as Anglophones use the term "King's English".

At one time, castellano (Castillian, the version of the language spoken in Castilla and Le?n) was used in the same way in pre-Franco Spain, but Franco and those that supported him in the Civil War wanted the language to unite the country. Their slogan was 'Espa?a, una grande y libre' (Spain, one, great, and free) and the national language became known throughout Spain as espa?ol and the term castellano was discarded.

There are four languages spoken in Spain: espa?ol, (everyone speaks espa?ol nowadays), gallego (Galician, spoken in Galicia, the traditionally Celtic province directly N. of Portugal), Catal?n, or Catalonian, spoken in Catalu?a, Valencia and Andorra, and vasco or euskadi, a non-Romance language related to no other language on the planet, spoken in the Basque provinces. During the Civil War, the Republican side was in favor of greater autonomy for the regions, including linguistic autonomy.

In Barcelona, it is usual to hear people in the stores speaking Catal?n, and then speaking espa?ol with foreigners. People who decide to live in Catalu?a are expected to try to learn Catal?n, even though it is unnecessary in any practical sense.

In Buenos Aires, they use the word vos in lieu of usted or t?, and have a variety of local terms. There used to be a sort of Italian-Spanish patois called lunfardo spoken around the Boca area, but this is mostly a thing of the past. Argentines are extremely friendly folks, as are the Spanish. My experience is that if you speak the language, pretty much everyone is more friendly and outgoing to tourists than Americans, especially East Coast Americans.

There is less difference between regional versions of Spanish (Mexican, Chilean, Colombian, Argentine) than there is between Ile de France French and Quebe?ois French. Cubans have a whole lot of words that no one else uses, and they often do not recognize the standard words for a lot of common items.

There is only one official dialect of Spanish, called papamiento, spoken in the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Cura?ao (it contains words from Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English). There is another, unrecognized patois mixture of Spanish and English spoken in the Orange Walk and Corozal districts of Belize.

[Michael Tee]

Thanks, XO, I knew you'd come through.  So it's "castellano" for "Spanish" in the Rio Plata area (Montevideo/BA) and espanol elsewhere; except if the "elsewheres" want to express the same kind of idea as the phrase "the King's English" does in our own language, in which case they would then use "castellano."

I agree whole-heartedly with your comments on the friendliness of folks in that region - - I was eating lunch at a parilla in Montevideo and one of the three guys sitting next to me at the counter, after asking me where I was from (in English - - guess my accent was the giveaway) offered me samples of the local delicacies he and his two buddies were eating, as the counterman brought it to them, and then at the end of my meal, as the counterman brought me my bill, reached over, took it from his hands and insisted on paying it "so I'd have a good vacation and something nice to remember from Montevideo."

I knew about papamiento from a winter vacation in Aruba; the locally-distributed tourist material referred to it as a language, and I didn't know until now that it was an officially recognized Spanish dialect, and the only one at that.  I actually got some newspapers in the language/dialect, which was fairly easy to understand.   Lunfardo, I had come across on the Internet while reading up on BA, but I never knew about the Spanish dialect of Orange Walk or that other district of Belize.  I would bet that there are also unrecognized Spanish dialects in Trinidad, because I know a bilingual woman who comes from an isolated French-speaking village in the hills of that island, and when I was talking about it to another Trinidadian (lots of them in Toronto,) I was told about similar isolated Spanish-speaking villages in the same area.   The same series of Internet articles that mentioned lunfardo also referred to "portanol" (again, missing the tilde,) a Spanish-Portuguese mixture spoken in the areas where Argentina and Uruguay border on Brazil.  Lunfardo, BTW, apparently originated in the criminal underworld of BA in the early 20th century, at least according to the articles.

P.S. after I posted this, I started having doubts - -  papamiento or papiamento?  So I did a  quick Google - - it's both.  But I also found that it's spoken in Suriname as well as the ABC Islands - -
http://burgaudp.free.fr/TALEN/fr/papamiento.htm

[Xavier_Onassis]

porte?os are residents of Buenos Aires
rioplatense refers to the whole R?o de Plata area.

Belize is pretty much the end of the Earth, so it does not surprise me that very little researech has been done on the linguistics of the area.
In Honduras and Belize, there is another language spoken by Black people who were dumped originally on the Bay Islands of Honduras from St Vincents, called gar?funo. The Gar?funos later settled on the coast of Honduras and in the Southern Belize towns of Stann Creek (Dangriga) and Punta Gorda.

The Brits took St. Vincints and the Grenidines away from the French in some treaty in the late 1700's, early 1800's, and they had no use for the free Blacks and Maroons and so the rounded them up and dumped them on the coast. The Miskito Indians in Nicaragua have a similar origin, but they speak English...sort of.
 

[Michael Tee]

<<porte?os are residents of Buenos Aires
<<rioplatense refers to the whole R?o de Plata area.>>

I think rioplatense was used to describe the accent, because as far as I could tell, it was the same in Montevideo as it was in BA.  I noticed it in Montevideo first because parilla there was pronounced "pa-REE-zhah," same as in BA.  It seemed to me that the two cities shared a common culture, not just the accent.  In some of the tourist literature describing the tango, it said that the dance originated in the port areas of both cities.

The Caribbean must have dozens of linguistic backwaters where dialects of the colonizing powers are growing and/or dying in isolation from their cultural mainstream.  We were in St. Lucia in its first year of independence from Great Britain, and we met two teenage boys on the road.  Although all the islanders can speak English (the language of the tourist industry,) among themselves, they speak a French patois.  So just to see how far the patois had deviated from standard French, I went through all the colours with them.  Everything was an exact match, but when we got to the last colour and I asked them what the patois word for "white" would be, they both kind of giggled and said, "Oh, we can't tell you THAT."  So I gathered it was something quite uncomplimentary to the white race  But I never found out what.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Uruguay and the Buenos Aires region of Argentina (the city and the Province of Buenos Aires) are quite similar in language and culture. Uruguay is seen as a sort of lesser version of Buenos Aires by portenos. The world's greatest tango singer, Carlos Gardel, was born of a French mother in France, Tacuarembo, Uruguay or Buenos Aires. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Gardel

He died in a plane crash in 1936. Over his grave in the Chacarita Cemetary is a statue of him with his fingers spread out to hold a cigarette. The legend has it that his admirers have always supplied his monument with a smoke since he died in 1936. There are portraits of Gardel all over the city, and he is always smiling.

http://www.cementeriochacarita.com.ar/carlosgardelgde.htm

Probably no city has more elegant cemeteries than Buenos Aires. They are paved, with streets and grave numbers, like cities. The term used to describe them is necropolis. There are always lots of people visiting and like the parks of Buenos Aires, they are populated by hundreds of friendly stray cats. There are societies of people dedicated to feeding stray cats in every cemetery and park, and you see little piles of kibble scattered about most of the time. I guess this is a custom from Italy, where the Collisseum has many stray cats.

[_JS]

XO, would you translate something for me? I'm reading a book and one of the source documents is in Spanish. I would certainly not ask for an actual translation, just a synopsis.

[Xavier_Onassis]

XO, would you translate something for me? I'm reading a book and one of the source documents is in Spanish. I would certainly not ask for an actual translation, just a synopsis.
================================
Sure, if it isn't too long or boring.

[_JS]

XO, would you translate something for me? I'm reading a book and one of the source documents is in Spanish. I would certainly not ask for an actual translation, just a synopsis.
================================
Sure, if it isn't too long or boring.

If it is just say so, no big deal.

Link

Thanks!

[_JS]

And if you're really bored: Link

Seriously, only if you have time, otherwise no worries.

You may find this one more interesting (and shorter) anyway.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The first is a conference to establish that Spain has the right to make known instances of torture and repression of the Argentine military government under Videla and others.

It elaborates the procedures and plans. It is written by lawyers in legal jargon.

The second deals with the collapse of the Argentine peso. It argues that the IMF forced the Argentines to prop up the peso on a par with the dollar in a manner that was untenable and drained the nation of bazillions of dollars. It argues that Argentina has an obligation to pay its debts, but not the thievery that occurred as a result of the 2003 monetary collapse.

[_JS]

The first is a conference to establish that Spain has the right to make known instances of torture and repression of the Argentine military government under Videla and others.

It elaborates the procedures and plans. It is written by lawyers in legal jargon.

The second deals with the collapse of the Argentine peso. It argues that the IMF forced the Argentines to prop up the peso on a par with the dollar in a manner that was untenable and drained the nation of bazillions of dollars. It argues that Argentina has an obligation to pay its debts, but not the thievery that occurred as a result of the 2003 monetary collapse.

Awesome!

Thanks very much XO!

[Xavier_Onassis]

You are welcome.

Lately, Spain has begun to regard itself as a sort of moral nanny to its Spanish-speaking former colonies. Spain had the same opinion under Franco, of course, but Franco being a bloody repressive and impoverished dictatorship, no one took her seriously. As a member of the EU. Spain has become a bastion of democracy to many in less democratic countries.

Spain also understands better than, say, the US, how repression and one-party personal rule works. Juniorbush may have many fans in the US, but no one seriously expects him to be president after 2009 or to continue ruling in some way from behind the throne. The Spanish understand political phenomenas like Fujimori, Fidel, Chavez and even the Kirchners better than Americans ever will.

Many political exiles from all over the Hispanic world live in Spain, and they get together and compare notes with one another and many students who come to Spain to study. After all, Spain and Hispanic society are both more accessible and more relevant to Latin Americans than is the US. The Universidad Complutense de Madrid (basically the national university of Spain) is more accessible, cheaper and far more relevant to Hispanics than is Harvard or Yale or the bigshot US universities.

After 9-11, getting a student visa to the US is expensive and a pain in the butt. Spain is seen as a modern, progressive nation that is more like Mexico, Argentina, Peru. Chile, etc. than the US, anyway.


 

[_JS]

I wondered about this XO, especially when Honduras pulled her soldiers out of Iraq after Spain did the same. There definitely seemed to be a strong connection there, whereas in the past the United States had the stronger influence on Latin America.

The United States set up programs through the Ford Foundation in the 1950's to exchange students and build close ties with U.S. universities and South American universities. Of note was the University of Chicago's infamous Economics department who sent economists back to Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. They went specifically to be the political and economic leaders of the next generation. This was a succesful program that had been field tested by the CIA in Indonesia. Sukarno was overthrown and Suharto had the "Berkley Mafia," a group of Cal-Berkley trained western economists come in and help him remove trade barriers and "westernize" Indonesia (this was before Cal-Berkeley became the hotbed of American leftists).

The problem in South America was that the economic policymakers made no electoral gains. In fact, they kept losing throughout the sixties and seventies. It wasn't freedom that placed them into power (though Milton Friedman threw that term around a lot) it was extremists right-wing military juntas. Brazil fell in the late 60's. Chile fell on 9/11/1973. Argentina, already safely held by fascist Peronista, fell to the hardline military junta in the latter 70's. It wasn't through elections and a wave of freedom that Chicago School economics graced Latin America, it was through pure brutality. Football stadium massacres, priests and nuns murdered, Pinochet went as far as to track people to the United States, Spain, and Britain and murder them there. Freedom of the press, the right to assemble, the right to due process were all removed in each nation. Pinochet's party was purely fascist (even harboring a German Nazi wanted by West Germany for war crimes!).

So, I have no doubt that Spanish Universities are preferred today to American Universities. With the civil wars, dictatorships, and complete disregard of human rights of the 60's, 70's, and 80's I'd be willing to bet that Spain is the better choice. And at least Spain doesn't typically defend her Fascist history, but attempts to come to terms with it.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If you ever visit Madrid, one thing you should not miss is the Valle de los Caidos (The Valley of the Fallen), a humongous monument and church dedicated to those who died in the Civil War. For over 20 years, Franco arrested dissenters and forced them to build this thing. Unlike the Fascist monuments in Italy and Germany, it was never damaged in any war, and of course, Franco had decades to build it. It is as close to a stone representation of the fusion of Fascism, militarism andf the Holy Mother Church that could be made of stone.

Modern Spain is sort of the antithesis of this thing. You have to get up really early, as there is only one bus early enough to see it all. The Escorial, Felipe II's palace is not too far from there, and if you rented a car you might be able to take in the Valle and the Escorial in a day. The Tourism department does not make much mention of the Valle, because they probably see it as an anachonistic embarrassment. But it will give you a real feel for Fascism. You just have to see it.

If you are into afflicted, horribly suffering statues of Jesus, Spain has way more than her share.  The one near el Palacio Real de El Pardo outside Madrid is phenomenal. You can almost hear it moaning in pain.