can you paint with all the colors of semantics?

Working on my third and final PhD exam, which is due Friday, does have some benefits: thinking out loud via whiteboard trees!

My life motto is Everything is better color-coordinated. (Which, now that I think about it, also sounds like a motto for some blatantly racist organization.) Aside from aiding in my thought process as I finish up my exam, though, this exercise also made it very evident that I do not own enough dry-erase markers. Notice how I had to use ‘green squiggle’, which is different from the green type… a.k.a. pure anarchy. Investing in the dry-erase equivalent of the Crayola 120-pack is imminent.

On a related tangent, the list of Crayola crayon colors is a fun read. Did you know they retired thistle and raw umber? First, they can retire colors? Second, what’s an umber? And what umber isn’t raw? Can it be cooked? Questions begetting questions begetting questions.

Okay, okay, I’ll get back to work…

[wɑnt jɚ bæd 'ɹo:mæns]

Today I was sitting in the lab, prepping to teach the kids about the phonology of the English vowel system. In Spanish. Not an easy task. Moreover, I was having difficulty parsing apart caught and cot ([ɔ] vs. [ɑ]) (as it is disappearing in English), so I kept testing other similar words, saying them over and over and over again. Like spa, spa…  jaw, jaw… raw, raw…

At which point my office mate chimed in, “Rah rah, oo lah lah? You sound like Lady Gaga over there.”

So for those of you who are curious, the Fame Monster is using all open back unrounded vowels (as in spa) in “Bad Romance,” not open-mid back rounded vowels (as in jaw). And don’t think I’m not going to use this as my example Friday in class.

i conjugate -eep instead of counting sheep.

To say English is ridiculous morphologically speaking is nothing new. I’m sure we’ve heard them all. They’re some of the lamest grammar jokes ever. (Sidenote: Is there a grammar joke that isn’t lame?) If the plural of mouse is mice, why isn’t the plural of house hice? Goose to geese, so why not moose to meese?

Har, har.

Nonetheless, last night one popped into my head as I was trying to sleep and I couldn’t stop laughing. (Sidenote: Yes, I am that lame). I was thinking about those kooky past tense verbs that end in t, e.g. sleep to slept, keep to kept, weep to wept, etc. So I present to you:

Today the alarm beeps. Yesterday it bept.

Sheer hilarity.

a work of prose by any other name.

For my book club this month we’re reading the du jour crime novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was originally the Swedish novel, Män som hatar kvinnor (‘Men who hate women’), but I’m reading the en español version, Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres (‘The men who didn’t love women’). Three different languages, three different titles. Zero sense.

Okay, maybe not zero, but I’m just curious as to who and how these decisions are made. Reminds me of my time abroad and perusing the aisles of Blockbuster (pronounced bloke-BOO-stair) and finding such gem re-titlings as:

• Failure to Launch = Soltero en casa (‘Bachelor at home’)
• Inside Man = El plan perfecto (‘The perfect plan’)
• The Departed = Los infiltrados (‘The infiltrated’)
• The Prestige = El gran truco (‘The great trick’)
• Saw III = Juego de miedo III (‘Game of fear’)

Yes, I can see how idioms and plays on words can cause problems. Hence why the most literal title possible is the only intelligent option, as the list above clearly indicates. Fine, I get it.

However, and this is a big however, the most valiant abuse of this sort of cinematic loss in translation that I’ve seen would have to be Terror a bordo (‘Terror on board’). Excuse me, but Snakes on a Plane is about the most literal damn movie title you could ever imagine. Mother-effing Serpientes en el mother-effing avión!

i am cómico.

While watching Star Wars Episode III:

B: Yo-da? Shouldn’t it be Yo-doy? His name is ungrammatical.
(pause)
X: What have I done? What have I done to deserve this?

Not only do bilingual jokes already have a limited audience, but apparently they’re a tough crowd too.

phd candidate in linguistics, not spanish teacher.

I-language, then, is the component of the mind of members of the human species which allows us to link together meanings (which are in part propositional in nature) with forms (sequences of sounds, strings of letters, collocations of body signs in sign language). [...] Without I-language, that is, without an internalized syntax, we would be unable to communicate fluently, because we would be unable to externalize our messages except in the crudest ways. Syntax is, then, key to human achievement at a fundamental level. The project of modern linguistics is to investigate and try to understand this phenomenon within the human mind, both as a goal in itself, and as part of a broader attempt to map our cognitive abilities.
– David Adger, “Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach”

Finally a brief (ish), yet developed explanation of what I do. (That is, when I’m not correcting the 102 kiddies’ misuse of por and para.)

and i quote.

Discussing my amalgamated dialect of Spanish:

Nina: Todo el mundo tiene derecho de escoger el acento que más le guste.
Bryan: Yo voy a escoger todos.
Nina: Me parece bien. Vas a ser tutti frutti.
Bryan: Pero muy frutti.

foreign films in gringolandia.

Quick poll: on a scale of one to ten, how ridiculous is it to have a completely English-language autobiographical film about foreign people who live in a foreign country and speak a foreign language? Is it that Americans hate reading subtitles that much?

Case in point: Frida, starring Salma Hayek. Yes, I enjoy the film very much, but the absurdity of Frida Kahlo not speaking Spanish while she’s living en México drives me insane. In terms of poetic license it’s just about as unrealistic and illogical as you can get it as it’s something that can be easily accomplished cinematically, specifically when the actors portraying the individuals are nativo-freaking-hablantes.

And if we’re already supposed to understand that they weren’t actually speaking English, why on earth do they have accents?! Is it supposed to put us in the español mood? All that English might make you forget, so this way you can be reminded, “Ah yes! They’re foreign. Frida is really e-speaking the e-Spanish.” Granted, Hayek can’t help the thick accent I’m sure, but I’m talking to the rest of you. And, Ashley Judd, what are you doing in this movie? Ridiculous gringo casting is just one more atrocity that the English-language loophole encourages. Ay, ay, ay.

works cited.

I’m totally Mr. Judgmental when I see people reading gossip magazines. In Touch, Us Weekly… whatever. It’s the same ridiculous stories of baby bumps and plastic surgery accusations every time, just a different cover.

But upon being given a Spanish rag, well… I’m starting to sing a different canción. How can I not love something that has a word bubble next to Tom Cruise’s head saying, ‘Culo veo, culo quiero.’?

Perhaps a stronger argument for my fascination is that I could propose a dissertation just on the españolización of English catch phrases that I encounter, including but not limited to guau ‘wow’, biuty ‘beauty’, and, the gem of them all, culosex ‘butt sex’. I’m going to get myself a subscription and call it doctorate research.

¿cómo se dice ‘brownie points’?

This is the second spring in a row that I’ve taught Spanish 102. During week two, the second-semester estudiantes have a vocab lesson on holidays and have to do a partner activity relating to birthdays. Question five asks:

¿Lo anuncias de antemano, así que la gente sabe?
(Do you announce it ahead of time, so that people know?)

The polite and humble kids that they are, most say no or justify that their friends already know, so they don’t have to.

The crude and completely not humble person that I am, I follow up bluntly saying:

Well, I do. It’s in two weeks. The fourth of February. Feel free to bring me cookies.¹

It gets a good chuckle. Wit in a foreign language usually goes right over their lil’ freshman heads, so it makes me really happy any time they crack a smile.

But what’s even better is that this year it worked. Not cookies exactly, but a student baked and brought in cupcakes for the class yesterday. You laughed at my joke and you brought me treats? Clearly you are nearly fluent in Spanish and you get an A, ma’am.

Luckily nowhere in the ethics code does it mention funfetti bribery, so feliz freakin’ cumpleaños to me.

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¹In Spanish, por supuesto.