I’m well into Part Two of Don Quixote, chapter 11 to be precise, and it’s hilarious. Cervantes plays with the idea of authenticity of authorship of Don Quixote and Part Two opens with a scholar from Salamanca coming to meet Don Quixote and Sancho, as they’ve become famous after their adventures from Part One had been published without their knowledge. What follows is discussion about the roles they play and how their reputations may have been enhanced or sullied depending on how they were depicted in the book. It’s great stuff.
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The other night on the HD channel they had a bit on Spain, specifically on flamenco in Morón de la Frontera (that’s pronounced mor-OHN, thank you very much) and the 500+ mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and it put a hankering in me to go back to Spain. Yes, I am aware that I just got back from Portugal not long ago, but a trip to Portugal is not a trip to Spain. Reading Don Quixote probably doesn’t help ease said hankering.
Amy and I informally agreed that her reward for finishing school next year would be a trip to Spain and I’m hoping we stick to it. As mentioned elsewhere, I need proficiency in a second language for my graduate program and it’s gonna be Spanish; I’m enrolling through Bilingual America that says I’ll be 85-95% fluent after one year of intensive coursework. I’m not starting from scratch and I can already speak limited Spanish (I successfully asked for a haircut in Barcelona and briefly discussed with a Madrid pharmacist which can of shaving cream to buy) so I’m hoping their claim is true. My academic aim is to be able to read the works of Latin American authors in their native language, specifically Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Laura Esquivel, and Isabel Allende.
So learning Spanish will be good for travel and for reading Latin American literature, but the biggest bonus will be being able to speak to a good number of Americans in their native language. (here’s where the blog goes off the rails into a political rant) You can debate til you’re blue in the face about whether immigrants from south of the border ought to be here, you can debate the positive and negative impacts they have on the economy and all sorts of other issues, but the fact is they’ve been coming in droves and have been for years. Even if the border is sealed up today, there are going to be a lot of folks here whose first language is Spanish.
Should these immigrants learn English? Ideally yes, but I also understand that you don’t learn a language through immersion or osmosis; you need to be taught, and teachers need to be paid. I’m going to be paying about $2K for this intensive course. One might humbly suggest that if an immigrant had $2K US to spend on English lessons, with that much cash they might just stay home instead.
To the point then. I find it ironic that one day after waxing poetic about Madison and how it’s tolerant, Amy comes home from her harrassment training seminar. During the post-presentation discussion, one woman said she found her workplace to be very hostile since she worked with Hispanics who, on their lunch break, spoke Spanish. She felt like they might be making fun of her. She wanted the university to mandate that English was the only acceptable language in the workplace. Even though her co-workers were on lunch break. I.e. not getting paid.
Indulge me for a moment and imagine this: Imagine the US’ economy tanks so badly that we’ve got massive poverty and unemployment. Imagine that Japan has jobs available and employers willing to hire you so you can earn a living wage. Imagine that (with considerable effort) you manage to move to Japan and land one of these jobs; you even learn enough Japanese to get by. Then imagine that at your job there are a dozen other Americans who work there. (Now for the lobbed question) When you’re on break in the lunch room with your American co-workers, what language do you think you’d speak? Japanese? Not hardly.
More from the bleeding-heart perspective: these are people we’re talking about. They’ve got spouses, parents, children, hopes, dreams and rent to pay. They’ve got to deal with racism and more than likely classism on a daily basis (two things I don’t have to worry about) and even a lousy job with crummy pay beats the hell out of what they left behind. Quite literally, the least I can do is speak their language with a smile when I order my torta cubana from my favorite Mexican take-out, or to help explain to the guy ahead of me in line that the pharmacist is telling him that his medicine should be taken twice a day and not before driving.
My first trip to Germany I lost my glasses in a train station. I happen to speak a little German and went to the station to find a lost and found. I said to the desk clerk something along the lines of “I don’t have my glasses. Do you know where my glasses are?” and he kept saying “No” followed by a string of increasingly impatient German sentences I didn’t understand. The man behind me asked in English if he could help. I explained, and he used the magic words “lost and found” in German to which the clerk said, “Yes, that’s here.” Then the lightbulb went on and he said what I assume was, “Oh, you lost your glasses” then rummaged in his bin. “Sorry, we don’t have any glasses. Check back tomorrow.” Which I understood.
I never did find those glasses but I remember that interaction very well. You can say it’s a different situation because I didn’t choose to move to Germany without speaking the language, but to me that’s irrelevant. The situation demanded more German than I possessed and I felt pretty helpless. So at the end of the day I’m not looking to assimilate myself into “their” culture but I would like ability to extend a verbal handshake once in awhile and maybe, just maybe, get the chance to say, “She’s telling you to take this medicine once in the morning and once in the evening with food, and don’t drive when you take it because it might make you sleepy.”
Current Mood: Irritated at Humanity | 
Currently Listening To - Woody Guthrie - “The Woody Guthrie Story”
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