POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN BA (2nd edition)

If you have not read the introduction of the book “Che, boludo” yet, let me quote for you an excerpt:

Argentines love to talk. They comunicate directly, openly and often loudly. In Argentina, there’s no taboo in the use of foul language. A respectable old woman will swear like a sailor and no one bats an eye. Fools are not suffered lightly and anyone behaving in a pretentious or obnoxious manner will be sharply reprimended, sometimes with just a simple gesture of the hands. Political correctness does not exist on Argentina because it would only impede getting your point across. (…) It is evident when Argentines communicate with one another that their freedom of speech is real.

Well, sounds great… and it is even plausible at first sight. However, it is a little too much.

Getting your point across is important in Argentine speech. Yes. Of course with exceptions, it´s ok to call things by its name: avoiding this is making it shameful, something you should feel embarrassed about. Also, it´s true that we often use the imperative form instead of other periphrastic ways to ask for things such as “¿podría decirme?”. We do prefer “vos” instead of “usted”, we kiss sometimes even in a formal situation, etc.

Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that there is no political correctness. You can be really offensive.

I always remember a story told to me by an ex-student. She was at a disco and she had asked a man to take a picture of her and her friends. At some moment, he let her camera fall, and she said (trying to sound understanding) “Eh, boludo!” She could not understand why he got angry: she had heard so many times that “boludo” is a word that people use with their friends.

Here is the thing: “boludo” can be used (and it´s actually used) with your friends but it doesn´t make it nicer when you use it with someone you don´t know. Being extremely informal with people you just met feels rude in Buenos Aires too.

Here´s another excerpt:

If you are a little overweight your nickname might be “el gordo”, or if you have a dark complexion they might call you “el negro” or if you happen to be of Polish descent, “el polaco”. 

What the book doesn´t say is that if you are really overweight no one will call you “gordo”, or if you have Peruvian descent your nickname will not be for sure “Peruano”. As I wrote in another post, language is never about grammar. The control on the language is a result of a social situation. The more social prejudice against something, the more careful you have to be when talking about it. In Buenos Aires, having a dark complexion or being of Polish decent has no social implications and there is no prejudice formed against it.

So, in Buenos Aires, you can be extremely polite or rude just as in any other part in the world and it is not always clear for a foreigner whom you can talk to in a certain way and whom you can´t so ¡Ojo! with the use (and abuse) of slang because you might get involved in an uncomfortable situation.

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LA NEGRA SOSA

Haydée Mercedes Sosa (9 July 1935 – 4 October 2009), known as La Negra, was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout South America and some countries outside the continent. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by both Brazilians and Cubans. She was best known as the “voice of the voiceless ones”.

Sosa performed in venues such as the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Théatre Mogador in Paris and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, as well as sell-out shows in New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Roman Coliseum during her final decade of life. Her career spanned four decades and she has been the recipient of several Grammy awards and nominations, including three nominations which will be decided posthumously. She served as an ambassador for UNICEF.

In this video she is singing “Sólo le pido a Dios” (one of the most beautiful songs ever) with León Gieco, its composer.

Sólo le pido a Dios – English subtitles.

 

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AMORES TANGOS this Saturday 7th

I can´t be there but if I could, I wouldn´t miss them!

+ info

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ARGENTINE SPANISH DICTIONARY

Languages, like all human products, are subjected to changes overtime. And when a language such as Spanish, in view of its eventful and long history [...] has come to be a thousand years there will inevitably be differences manifesting along and across the broad geography in which it settled.

José Luis Moure
University of Buenos Aires - CONICET - Academia Argentina de Letras

Unlike many dictionaries of Argentinismos (that suggest the idea of a fixed inventory of Spanish words to which one could attach an “expansion pack” of Argentinian slang) this dictionary presents Spanish as it was constituted by the Argentine standard. It includes words shared by other Spanish speaker countries excluding those ones exclusive of other dialects. The different meanings of the words are ordered according to the frequency of use in Argentina.

It´s an essential tool for all those who are living here or who would like to adopt our variety. To start using it click on the link below:

ARGENTINE SPANISH DICTIONARY

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When language determines human behaviour or on how to avoid waiting too much.

You have certainly heard, read or experienced yourself that if you want to call to have a party at 10, you better tell your Argentinian friends to come a few hours earlier. This might be mostly due to the misuse of the word “fiesta”. Why is that?

Because, although no dictionary would hesitate in translating “party” as “fiesta”, there are certain things implied in “fiesta” that make it different from a “party”.

So lets say you want to plan something with your Argentinian friends on Friday at 9 pm but you would like to be done at 12 am. In this case, you should invite everyone to a “cena tranqui”. If it were a goodbye party, then it should be “una cena de despedida”. Of course, there should be food since no one would have had dinner by nine but it doesn´t have to be anything very elaborate: some empanadas or pizzas would make everyone happy.

If, instead, you would like to start a little later, sometime around 11 pm, with some drinks, snacks and chill music and you would like it to go on for a few hours then we are talking about a “reunión”. You could also call it a “previa” if the plan were to go to another place later, such as a disco, pub, etc.

Keep the word “fiesta” only for those nights you:

buy lots of drinks and no food; when you are planning to play music you can dance and you are ready to sacrifice your living room to the furious dancers from 12 am until the candles burn out.

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YOUNG LINGUISTS SYMPOSIUM – March 21st, 22nd and 23rd 2011

For all those advanced students who are interested:

The First Young Linguists Symposium arised from the interest of a group of students in fields related to linguistics to generate a space for communication and discussion.

The proposal: a meeting of senior students and non doctorate graduates to present and exchange research and to build new ties with the scientific community.

The Symposium is organized by the Linguistics Institute, University of  Buenos Aires and it  has the support of the Buenos Aires Arts University.

You will find presentations on different subjects such as Speech Analysis, Pragmatics, Cognitive linguistics, Language Historiography, Native Languages, Pshycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics, in which is included my own presentation (you can find the article below)

Address:  217/221 25 de mayo (Downtown)

SCHEDULE                    PRESENTATIONS SUMMARY

—

   Guitérrez Böhmer, Sofía, Laura Mazzocchi: 

- CHARACTERIZATION OF VERB TENSES IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVES: THE CASE OF THE PERFECTIVE IMPERFECT

- NARRATIVES CORPUS

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SPANISH in America: a succinct study.

Uncountable times I have heard that the way porteños speak is different from “the rest of America”. This is probably due to the (mistaken) belief that Argentina is the only country with voseo. The same happens when it comes to the pronunciation for “y” and “ll”. For many people there are only two ways to speak Spanish in America: like Buenos Aires inhabitants or like “the rest of America”.

This idea is so deep-rooted that, every time, I have a hard work convincing people (who, after all my attempts, will give me that suspicious look) that there is no such thing. There are more dialects coexisting in America than I will ever know. Each of them, different.

It would be an impossible task to give a complete report of what America dialectal situation is like. Instead, I will simply provide (without becoming punctitious at all) a few examples to prove the variety and complexity of American Spanish dialects.

1- Regarding pronunciation, I can easily think of:

- 6 different ways to pronounce “y”:

/ʃ/ – as in she

/ʒ/ – as in vision

/ʤ/ – as in June

/ʤi:/ – as the name for “g”

/ʧ/ – as in chin

/I:/ – as in see

- 3 for “r”

/l/ – as in leg

/ʒ/ – as in vision

/r/ – the most known pronunciationl.

- 3 for “b”

/b/ – as in bed

/u:/ – as in too

/g/ – as is got

- And 3 for “s”

/ʃ/ – as in she

/s/- as in so

/Ɵ/ – as in thin

Morphology:

The following map shows (as reliably as Wikipedia allows) those countries where vos is used.

In dark blue and blue, countries with voseo predominance (except for Chile where they use vos in a different way). In green, countries where vos is used in some regions. In sky blue, countries where is almost unused. In red, countries where only tuteo exists.

Technically, only Cuba and Spain don´t have “vos” among their available forms.

Another interesting nuance is the opposition “tú/vos” vs. “usted”. The most spread use says that “usted” is formal and “tú/vos” are informal. However, this ignores the fact that in Colombia people use “usted” as an intimate and familiar form. In Buenos Aires, instead, “usted” implies aging but not always formality; several times it´s used as a friendly form and not few times it´s a sign of “flirting”.

At the same time, in the places where both “tú” and “vos” are used, they are not interchangable. Each has its own context of usage.

Vocabulary:

I chose “remera” just to take a very common word. The following chart shows how many different words exist for the same object according to the countries.

 

I could continue for ever but I will stop here. Don´t panic.

Not even us, as native speakers, know (let alone use) every one of these variants. A common grammar (with this I am meaning syntaxis) let us understand each other in a very high percentage, high enough to leave vocabulary variation as the only one aspect to be learnt. We become more and more familiar with it as we are being in touch with movies, people, songs, news, places, etc: understanding other slang is a process that needs culture contact, ergo, time. However, even then, when we get to understand it, we don´t change our way to speak to talk to someone with a different dialect.

I, as porteño, am not expected to change “vos” for “tú” when talking to a Venezuelan guy, neither I expect a Peruvian to say “sho” as in Buenos Aires; Colombian people are free to use “usted” in a colloquial and familiar way, and so on and so forth…

So if we, native Spanish speakers, are not able, therefore, not requiered to know and to use every single existing form in America at a certain time, why should a student?

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LA COCA SARLI

Isabel Sarli (born July 9, 1935) is a retired Argentine actress, and model. She was a local sex-symbol of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Born Hilda Isabel Sarli Gorrindo Tito in Entre Ríos Province, Sarli was nicknamed La Coca from early childhood. She was discovered by filmmaker Armando Bo when she became Miss Argentina in 1955, and she later married him and became the star of his films, starting with El Trueno entre las hojas in 1956. She became an international Latin American star, filming in Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexici, Panama and Venezuela, and films like Fuego, and Fiebre (1970) reached the American and European markets.

Bo later insisted in casting her in naturalistic melodramas. After his death in 1981, Isabel Sarli retired from the cinema industry altogether but came back in the mid-nineties for Jorge Polaco´s picaresque film, La Dama Regresa. In 2009 she teamed once more with Polaco in Arroz con leche.

Her most memorable quote is “Qué pretende (usted) de mí” from the movie “Y el Demonio creó a los hombres”:

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ON LANGUAGE CORRECTNESS AND INCORRECTNESS.

“Everyday language” is not innocent or neutral. It is the language of Western metaphysics, and it carries with it [...] a considerable number of presuppositions [...] which are knotted into a system.

Jaques Derrida, On Grammatology.

For most of people born and raised in a literate environment, thinking of a language becomes an equivalent of thinking of its writing: despite the fact that writing, as we know it now, is historically much more recent than orality;  despite we don´t learn our mother tongue by means of writing; despite the predominance of oral language in our lives, writing is often the basis of any reasoning when it comes to reflect on language.

This “writing-centrism” has made us believe that language has an immutable presence, that it exists regardlessly people who speak it, just like writing. However it doesn´t. Homogeneous societies are an ideal: variation is a constitutive part of every language.

Unfortunately, the only reference most people often  have about linguistics is the one they have studied at school or while learning a second language: in both cases, language is taught as a prescriptive grammar concerned with rules for correct usage.

However, there is no such thing as correctness neither is there and absolute truth in what grammar explains: prescriptive grammar is merely one among hundreds of theories about language (not precisely the most popular between linguists) and it´s been developed for didacticism´s sake, after making a decision on which one, out of millions of slangs, is going to become the standard language.

Why is that, if no society has ever been homogeneous in terms of slangs, there is such a great effort made to keep this idea?

Because language is, among other things, a tool of power. (Click here for another post on the subject).

What is claimed to be the “correct language” is nothing more than just another slang (not that surprisingly it´s often high class slang), chosen to be the archetype of the language and imposted via educational system onto the rest of people. Behind every grammar there is a linguistic policy. It is normally taught as neutral to evade controversies on why one specific slang should be more adequate to represent the whole community than others.

To criticize one specific slang in terms of incorrectness is simply to claim that your own slang, and this always means your own belonging group, is better than others  to represents the society as a whole but there is no objective validation for that since there is no objectivity in grammar.

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KISSING GOODBYE

The making-your-point-across issue I talked about in a former post doesn´t count for farewells. Kissing goodbye is only a part of the whole act.

Saying goodbye is a ritual. As well as we like to spend time at a cafe or after a meal (having what we call “sobremesa”) we spend, if not hours, a proportionally long time saying goodbye: you don´t want people to think you want to run away. If you´ve had a great time or even a good time, we like to show it.

Announcing that you are leaving

We start to make casual comments such as “I think I am going in a few minutes”, or “I am tired, I think I am leaving” at least fifteen minutes before we actually walk away. If someone in the party wants to say something or if they don´t want you to miss something important, they know that is the moment.

Later (enough time later to finish the conversation we are having) we normally say something like “I will take my stuffs and I am going”.

Kissing goodbye

After taking our stuffs kissing time begins.

Contrary to what most visitors think, you are not expected to kiss everyone. You can avoid it if:

- it is a big party with people all around the house. However, you should approach to those ones you have been talking to.

- there are people having a conversation, separate from the rest and not paying attention.

- If you don´t know any of them and you haven´t talked to anyone. However, if there are only a few and they notice that you are leaving, you should do it.

Small talks

When you kiss goodbye someone, it is nice to make a short  comment about what you have been talking about, to say you will find them on FB (although it might not be true), that you will help them with that problem they told you about, to wish good luck if they have an exam, wish they get better if they are sick, etc.

The goal of these small talks is not to actually commit with what you said but to let the other person know you have been paying attention and you´ve had a nice time. Of course this talks can bring a new topic to the conversation and postpone your leaving.

As I wrote before, we are never conscious of these “rules” until someone breaks them. Someone announcing: “Ok, I have to go” and leaving right away might provoke comments like: “Have your friend left already?”, “was he or she tired/getting bored?”, “does he or she feel ok?”, etc.

The closer the tie, the longer the time you spend: You shouldn ´t leave a party without telling your closer friends that you are doing it because they could be annoyed because you left without letting them know and they would be right.

Saying goodbye is a sad thing, especially if you are having a good time. Why not to stretch that time a little bit. It is also a great time to find new friends and the perfect moment to get someone´s mail or number if you happen to need it.

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