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Sunday, September 26, 1999

Harsh lessons en espanol
If you don't know it, it can hurt you
A recent trip to South Padre with friends wasn't supposed to be educational. But in the midst of our Animal House-like festivities, one friend picked up a Spanish publication and started looking it over.
   "I like to read Spanish," he said.
   Like many South Texas Hispanics of his generation, English was his first language and he had reached adulthood with only a smattering of Spanish. But lately his job takes him often to Laredo. Before these regular trips started, he said, a colleague who also did business in that border town had told him that he'd pick up a lot of Spanish in the course of his work there.
   Sure enough, the colleague was right. And lately, my friend has been making a conscious effort to improve his Spanish. He knows it's a tool that can improve his livelihood.
   "It's the equivalent of a college degree," he said. "If not a graduate degree, at least an extra bachelor's."
   In a roundabout way, this conversation led to business reporter Andrea Jares' quest to assess the value of Spanish fluency (see article at right on this page). She found that it's hard to pin a cash value on Spanish fluency but easy to show that it has great value.
   On the way back from South Padre, my friend and I talked about the changing attitudes toward Spanish that we had seen within our lifetimes.
   Boyhood lessons
   When I was in fifth grade, growing up in Kenedy, 90 miles to the north of Corpus Christi, I learned to count in Spanish. I didn't learn it in the classroom because it wasn't taught there. I learned it from the Hispanic kids. It caused such a stir among them that for weeks, I was counting to 100 in Spanish for the ones who hadn't yet heard me do it. Their faces would brighten at the spectacle of an Anglo kid reciting numbers in Spanish. Apparently I was the only one who showed any interest.
   At the time, Hispanic students faced disciplinary measures if they were caught speaking Spanish on school grounds. With such little value placed on Spanish, it's little wonder, and so unfortunate, that I didn't take the extra step and learn conversational Spanish from these willing teachers. My Anglo friends didn't understand why I bothered to learn the numbers. I already knew the cusswords, so what more did I need?
   Unknown to me at the time, my friend from the South Padre trip was growing up 15 miles to the south of me, in Pettus, in a household of Spanish speakers who emphasized English to him.
   Rolling r's
   On our recent trip, we talked about the similarities in the two languages, the words that are nearly identical in both languages, except for pronunciation, and the overwhelming tendency of Spanish-deficient Anglos to mispronounce Spanish.
   We agreed that correct pronunciation was a huge step toward learning the language, and toward showing a respect that can open doors. For some reason, I don't suffer the mispronunciation affliction. I've never had trouble rolling an "r" or pronouncing the vowels correctly.
   Here's a secret for those who think they can't roll an "r": Pretend it's a soft "d." Try it. For example, say "comprende" like this: cum-puh-DEN-de. Now say it really fast. See?
   One of our non-Spanish-speaking Anglo reporters tried it the other day and it worked for him. He received a crash course at a Mexican restaurant after he saw lengua (beef tongue) on the menu and asked, "What's lun-GOO-uh?"
   "LENNNN-gwah!" we corrected him.
   Fifth grade drop-out
   OK, so I can pronounce, count, recognize an insult, order food in Spanish and recognize immediately that the "Cucuy" Rodriguez who wrote a Letter to the Editor recently is really local lawyer Rene Rodriguez putting one over on us again. That was of no help to me at a news conference nine days ago, when the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the tourism department of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon announced a cooperative agreement to promote business and tourism ties. I'm reasonably sure I was the only person there who couldn't speak Spanish.
   When the Nuevo Leon representative was ready to begin, he asked which language he should use. He started in English, to accommodate me, then switched to Spanish. By the time the news conference concluded, a lot had been said in Spanish by a lot of people. No telling what I missed.
   "Tom, you need to learn Spanish," City Councilman Arnold Gonzales said.
   Times have changed and the tables have turned.
   I'll one-up the councilman: I need to repeat fifth grade.



Tom Whitehurst, Caller-Times business editor, writes a weekly column Sundays. He can be reached at 361-886-3619 or whitehurstt@caller.com.

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