SPANGLISH -- FRANGLISH -- SPAÑILIANO, ETC... TAGLISH TOO, MAYBE?

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/jun/03/press-1-spanglish/

Welcome to San Diego, the second largest city in the world where Spanglish rules and the only one where such linguistic magic can even be glorified as an art form.  If you care to read the article before going any further into my true to life stories about linguistic mish-mashes, click on the link that serves as the caption for the cover of the "San Diego Reader" weekly free magazine with an average circulation of  115,000 [Wikipedia, April 2015].
I grew up in Western Massachusetts where a large part of the population was of French Canadian descent, I included. So naturally, we spoke French less fluently than our parents and grandparents.  Let it be said though that even they had a serious tendency to mix their mother tongue with English words and expressions.  It is over 100 years, four generations, since Franglish was introduced to the area.  It is now all but gone.

As the years wore on, I migrated from Franglish to Spanglish by moving to California with a few linguistic  stops along the way.  How I got here is a long story.  It is a story that is as interesting as the metamorphosis of Western Massachusetts from Franglish to Spanglish [Puerto Rican immigration] and my relatives didn't even have to move! Because they did not move, they are surrounded by a new tongue that has grown up around them.

The story in the San Diego Reader depicts a very classy project that was realized at one of the famous and popular museums in San Diego's marvelous relaxation and strolling area, Balboa Park.  This is a huge park of some 1,200 acres complete with a mammoth outdoors organ, many museums and a wonderful arboretorium. The production of Spanglish depicts one form of hodge-podge language, the classiest possible form that was worked out for the production that resulted.  One of these days I will have to go see it, en vivo, as we say in Southern California and Madrid.

The Spanglish and Franglish of the simpler type goes like this.

I was the HR Director for a company close to East Los Angeles.  I got the job because of my fluency in Spanish.  Here's a sample between me and an EE from ELAX.

Me: Sabes que?  Se nos hace que tu camioneta ocupa el espacio del dueño en el estacionamiento. Podria ser justo?
EE-ELAX:  Eee, por favor, can you speak Ingles?
Me: But you asked me to speak Spanish when you entered my office.
EE-ELAX:  Eee, not understand a proposito del dueño.
Me:  Ah.  Tu troque (truck, got it?) esta en el parking del patron, maybe?
EE-ELAX:  Oh no.  Mi troque is parking en el otro lado del railroad crossing, no here.

This was a 25 year old employee from East Los Angeles who professed to not know English.  His problem was worse than that, he did not know Spanish to boot.  We did straighten out the parking problem and we parted friends.
I tell this story a lot because it is true and I have a dear friend from East Los Angeles who speaks very straight English and some rudimentary Spanish from his background.  Across the years, he has decided that if he is going to speak English he is going to do it right.  His Spanish is quite strong on the listening side, but but not so great on the speaking side.  This happens more often than not as people mature and realize that they have to communicate better to deal with the wild, wild world.

Me?  I can speak and understand a lot of things, especially when I get hungry.  I had some rather interesting linguistic experiences over the years and especially when I worked in Tijuana, Mexico. You want to hear some fluent Spanglish?  Go to work there.  Even some municipal signage is in Spanglish.

In this world, it is unwise to not learn the meanings of "cross-over" language.  On the Internet, some words stay in English and some are translated literally and this sometimes makes a polyglot laugh, or brings on confusion.
For example, the French do not use the term email.  They simply say mail in the masculine gender.  It never means what we accept as the default meaning of the word "mail."
They also do not say "Fin de semaine" for "weekend."  They say "weekend."  They've been saying "weekend" for decades.  We Franco Americans (and French Canadians) NEVER say "weekend" because it is one expression that we do not accept as being acceptable Franglish!  So there!

So, friends and  neighbors, Enjoy your taste of San Diego Spanglish Culture.
I can't wait until some artist discovers Taglish!


  

SOMEDAY I'LL GO SEE HER

(French lullaby) "J'irai la voir un jour"  I'll go see her one day
Au ciel, dans la patrie,              In heaven, in the homeland
Oui j'irai voir Marie,                   Yes, I'll go to see Mary
Ma joie et mon amour.              My love and my joy

Au ciel, au ciel, au ciel,              Above, Above, Above (In heaven, In heaven, In heaven)
j'irai la voir un jour.                   I'll go  see her one day
Au ciel, au ciel, au ciel,              Above, Above, Above
j'irai la voir un jour.                   I'll go see her one day

J'irai la voir un jour!                   I'll go see her one day
J'irai m'unir aux anges,              I'll join the choir of angels
Pour chanter ses louanges       To sing Mary's praises
Et pour former sa cour.             And provide her with a court

J'irai la voir un jour,                   I'll go see her one day
Cette Vierge si belle!                 This beautiful, sweet Virgin
Bientôt j'irai près d'elle              Soon I'll be by her side
Lui dire mon amour.                   To tell her my great love

J'irai la voir un jour!                    I'll go see her one day
J'irai près de son trône               I'll go right by her throne
Recevoir ma couronne                To receive my longed for crown
Dans l'éternel séjour.                 In my eternal sojourn.

J'irai la voir un jour!                    I'll go see her one day
J'irai, loin de la terre,                  I'll go far away from earth
Sur le coeur de ma Mère             To rest on my Mom's heart
Reposer sans retour.                  To rest without return.

I have taken the opportunity of Ronald Chateauneuf's eternal visit to Mama Mary to translate this wonderful, traditional French canticle.  If it is sung at Ronald's funeral Mass, many will not have the joy of understanding it.  I went to Google and could not find a translation that I respected.  So I did this one.  As many of you are aware, a French Canadian funeral is not complete without this popular prayer being sung as the coffin is guided out of the church for the last time.

Many of you readers do not relate to this particularly important vestige of North American French culture.  However, I have taken this opportunity to make this page of the "365 Thoughts..." blog a singular autobiographical note for all of you and especially for my two sons, who someday may even take the time to read through these silly pages in a moment of nostalgia. 

A final note of intellectual curiosity.  Notice I call this a canticle.  It is because it forms part of popular piety, not high level liturgy.  It translates popular faith practices into simple, easy to learn repetitive words and musical phrases.  It is more a catechism than a theology.  It is hard to forget and easily passes into the tradition of the community from which it springs. There are many examples of canticles.  We just don't bother to apply that label to them because the word does sound like a $50.00 piece of language.  But you know me.  You know that I never pass up a chance to spring $50.00 words on you.  At least this time I gave you fair warning!

SPEAK ENGLISH!

ELLE N'A PAS FRETTE AUX YEUX
THERE'S NO ICE IN HER EYES

All my life, I have had to deal with mental "disconnects."  Some of them are humorous and some of them are confusing.  The one that I had today comes in the variety of  humorous, I guess, and maybe at the same time confusing.  It is a disconnect between my English speaking mind and my French Canadian, Canuck speaking mind.  Since French is my mother tongue, this happens to me rather often.  The Voice from the Kitchen and I were having a friendly conversation about a situation that has developed at the parish church where she works.  It is rather messy.  Naturally, messy human situations in churches are always good fodder for friendly conversation between two people who are not involved and included in the mess.  At some point in the verbal give and take between us, she told the story of how the central figure in the Mess had accused the parish secretary of conduct deleterious to him.  [No, not that kind of conduct.]  My interlocutor, named above, told me that the secretary, whom I know very well and have even featured on "No Crying at My Funeral", slammed him with a direct right uppercut to the left brain with her swift and devastating riposte to his accusation.  Stage right entry of my disconnect.  I wanted to affirm in the strongest of terms my assent to the ease with which my mind came to the conclusion that Miss Secretary [a confirmed 5' 10" adult in her deep 40's] was very capable of delivering such a blow to Mr. Arrogant Priest.  All that came over the neurons, in the smallest fraction of a second, was the dialectical French Canadian expression, "C'est facile a craire, a pas frette aux yeux."
To the Ears from the Kitchen, that would have made no sense.  I was left standing there for a few seconds with a quivering tongue, quickly sweating palms and stupid babbling sounds gurgling up from my throat.  My disorientation was crippling. I couldn't recover because for the like of me, even as I sit here writing this, I still cannot think of a meaningful translation.  You know that I made one up.  Of course, you know.  So I limply said, "Well, as we say in French, There's no ice in her eyes."  As we say in Latin, "Stercus Taurorum!"  We don't say that in French.  We say something like that, but not that.  Belle [that's her Real Name] just said something inane like, "That's for sure.  She's not afraid of anybody." By the way, that, too, is true of this very fetching, statuesque woman.
I leave you with that insight into my personal inner workings.  When I am tweaked just the right way, I never know what my synapses are going to deliver.  It's an interesting life.  That's why it's not hard to write a least one thought per day.  Too bad I'm limited to English, right?

BEAU MERLE! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

MERLE AMÉRICAIN

If you have a little bit of French Canadian vocabulary, the picture of the red-breasted bird is what you are thinking of -- maybe.  Then again, if you were brought up in a Frrench Canadian houselhold with a mother who was always looking for a new way to address creative expletives to her children, then you might have an idea what Beau Merle means.  If you have forgotten your French Canadian dialect as it was spoken in Massachusetts and other famous (infamous?) regions of New England and you're trying to apply the translated-to-English meaning of "Beau

Merle" [Pretty Robin] then you are nowhere near the true meaning of the expression.  It actually means, "Dopy," "Lost," something like a dunce who did something inexplicably and unexpectedly ignorant.  Like when we sometimes talk to ourselves and call ourself stupid or something like that.  Now, what do you suppose made me think of that?  Get ready for this.  We happened to be in Palm Springs the other evening and as we were wending our way to our destination, one of the streets was named "Merle."  I figured then and there that it couldn't be our French Canadian Patois [argot] that was being honored here.  It has to be Merle Haggard, or some such personage.  I must say that when you have a free-ranging imagination like mine, anything is fair game.  So, like a shot of lightning, there I was back in my old childhood frame of mind.  Then you know what I did?  When I got home,  I went to Google to check out the meaning of the expression that I had heard and used so often while growing up.  Nothing.  So I tried the pictures section.  That's where I found out that there is a breed of dog that in French is a Merle.  There is even one that has what seems to be blue fur.  Bow ain't that something!  There was one bird there that is so deeply blue that it appears black.   In case you are wondering,and perhaps you aren't, but the French and the French Canadian for Robin is in fact Merle Americain, so it is there, only it has to have the adjective Americain with it to be proper.
So, you can see, culture can be a tricky thing.  In our American English we have rats, pigs, asses and snakes to name a few, along with bird-brains, of course.  Robins?  Nope.  Not that I can think of anyway.  So, enjoy yourselves with the wildlife expressions that we used to snicker at ourselves and see if I missed any.