Voices en Español

By Jason Love

A few years back, I moved to a “rustic” part of Port Hueneme, Calif.; and while I love the people, there is something I have really come to miss: English.

I was married to a Dominican woman, so it’s OK for her: Yahaira speaks both Spanish and English … at the same fricken time. They all do. It’s like listening to a song on the radio when you keep getting that interference from the Spanish station…

“Hey, Jude, don’t be a—”
“Yo quiero sentir sus labios—”
“And any time you feel the—”
“¡Numero uno en exitos, cien y siete PUNTO UNOOOO!”

Here is actual dialogue from the local Bank of America branch: “You know Maria? Ella es la persona who went to the wedding con nosotros el julio pasado. Remember?”
It’s only a matter of time before the locals secede altogether and become Spangland.

People ask why I never learned Spanish, and I say, “Are you kidding?! Can you imagine how hard it would be to tune people out if I understood everything they were saying?”

When Yahaira broke into Spanish, I considered that free time. I heard her the way a dog hears its master: “Blah blah blah Jason. Blah blah blah Jason.”

Once in a while it backfired. Like the day Yahaira called from Vons supermarket to say, “Do you want some … como se dice … patita de pollo? … you know—patita.”
“Um. All right. And a Pepsi.”

That night I ate a chicken’s feet. With tortilla utensils.

Yahaira started learning English when her Spanish was only half-installed, so her tongue has never recouped. She gets “down from,” not out of, the car; she dreams with, not of, other people; and while other couples spooned in bed, we would only “scoop.” So it goes.

In Spanglish, all the plurals end in “s”: I’m wearing underwears, the lottery is at 32 millions … white people eat a lot of spaghettis.

“No, Love. It’s just spaghetti. There’s no s at the end.”

“But there are so many of them.”

“We’ll touch bases later.”

Idioms are nutty to begin with, but mixed with Spanglish … Let’s just say that a little slang can be a dangerous thang.

“The toilet is overfloating. We’ve got to nip this problem in the butt. Don’t you back up on your word.”

Yahaira always had reasons for her outtakes and spent a good part of the day explaining them…

• “I thought it was a peek preview because you’re peeking at something.”
• “Isn’t it Old-Timers Disease because they forget things?”

At one point she gave up on words in favor of making noises. Every item in our house had a sound. Many of them whistled.

“Papi, have you seen my woohoo-woohoo?”
“Your what?”
“My pinza, you know, the jigamathing.”

Yes, gentle reader, I know that it’s “thingamajig,” but I didn’t have the galls to tell her. She might have gone bazooka.

I fear that my own English has spoiled by osmosis. I find myself looking up terms I knew in third grade. Was bob wire really invented by a man named Bob?

During our recent lunch together (Yahaira and I are just friends and no longer an “anti-racial couple”), she ordered smashed potatoes and cold slaw, and I a Caesar salad with extra crunchies.

“Do you mean croutons?” asked the server.

“I could mean just about anything.” I said. “I’m from Spangland.”

Jason Love is a modern-day Renaissance man with a syndicated weekly humor column called “So It Goes” and a daily cartoon called “Snapshots” that can be found in The Denver Post, St. Petersburg Times, Arizona Republic, Las Vegas Journal-Review and Newspapers.com. I want to be Jason when I grow up because his website, jasonlove.com, receives nearly 50,000 page hits per day.

Jason moonlights in standup comedy and has been working full-time in humor for the past 10 years. His mother still asks when he is going to get a job. A big thank you to Jason for letting me post his writing here at Voices en Español.

Do you have your own bicultural story to share? Does it involve Spanish? Contact me privately or post a comment here if you’d like to share it. Saludos.