Hablar Español

I speaka English, but I learned Spanish on my church mission to Las Vegas. It was a wonderful experience—it taught me a lot about my religion and about their language and culture. After my mission my knowledge of Spanish has helped in several areas.

For one, teaching Spanish to missionaries who were just about to leave for their missions (a long with substatial parental backing) was what paid my way through college and helped me get out without any student-loan debts. It was a well-paying job, but what I really enjoyed about it was just being with the missionaries. I always enjoyed having a district full of elders who worshiped me and hung on every word I said—as if I were Yoda, but at the same time they were light hearted enough to poke fun at me and make each day not just work, but as much fun as just hanging out with the 12 little brothers I never had.

“You coulda been anywhere in the world, but you're here with me;
I appreciate that...”

I really did enjoy just being with those elders. I can remember one day just after the Jay-Z song, “H to the Izzo”, had become popular, I was assigned to a new group of really fun elders headed for Mexico City. It’s the missionary’s duty to discard all worldly interests (music, movies, activities) so they can focus on the work of preaching the good word and it’s the teacher’s job to help them along—the idea being, if the MTC teacher can set them straight at the start of their mission, they wont struggle with it for the remaining 22 months—so even though we always enjoyed joking about anything under the sun, I would try to avoid topics that might make them homesick for movies or music they used to like.

“Los estúdiantes son mis ámigos.”

But one day I was teaching a preterite (past tense) verb-conjugation lesson. As with any lesson, I posted the tenses for various verbs on the board: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person in both singular and plural forms. They were all quiet and diligently taking notes—each of them perfectly focused on his learning—but when I posted the preterite forms for the verb hacer (to do/to make) the elders just lost it. When I wrote the 1st person singular form: hizo (he/she does/makes—pronounced ee-so) Elder Roberts, the self appointed class clown, who just moments before was very on task and very well behaved, looked up to make note of the verb and the bursted out, “Hey, look! H to the Izo!” The once somber class busted into roars of laughter—all composure was gone as everybody broke into song and chants of “Fo' sheezy my neezy keep my arms so freezy.”

I knew it was my job to reestablish the class’ quiet dignity—and eventually the moment passed, but it was all so funny, and those poor elders had been working so hard to be so good, that we all just took a break from being serious, purpose-driven grown-ups and for five minutes we were all kids again.

“Frah-Gee-Lay. Hmm, must be Italian.”

Spanish has also been a fun way to joke and communicate with roommates and friends. Bastardized phrases like chupe the peen (chupar la piña is Mexican slang for “making out”, but literally translated means “sucking pineapple”), ponchees (also slang for “getting action”), hace (hacer is a word used to denote temperatures--in Spanish it requires an adjective, but we use that one word to mean either “its too hot in here”, or “it’s freakin’ freezing outside”--its up to the situational context to determine that), no me goost (an abbreviation of the Spanish phrase meaning “I don’t like it/this/that”), and gras dude, gras (a show of gratitude among bros derived from gracias) have all made their way into the daily vocabularies and enriched the lives of me and my roommates—both Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers alike.

I have one issue with the Spanish language (well, any language for that matter)—and that is when people who’ve learned it as a second language, use their knowledge of it to show off.

“What? I'm sorry, where you speaking? No, I don't speak Spanish.”

On my mission and since, I’ve always been bothered by hearing two English speakers speak Spanish to each other—I would usually avoid it. Now, the speaking of Spanish among non-Spanish speakers is somewhat socially excusable. On the mission, for example, one is encouraged to speak the language all the time for practice and learning—and I have no problem with the humble student of language making honest efforts toward learning a new tongue.

“For those of you who don't habla espanol, El Niño is Spanish for: The Niño.”

But more often than not, the foreign language is spoken not for practice, but for show. Their eyes glaze over, they get a pompous air about them, and they speak, not to be understood but “to be seen [or heard] of men” and even God doesn’t approve of that (Matthew 23:5). Their intention is not to communicate with the listener, but to perform for him to the point that he is either impressed by the speaker’s knowledge, or intimidated it.

“Buzz, don’t be a moron.”

I’ve, also seen something similar when gringos who “hablan español” and don't often see other Spanish speakers, come across a Hispanic person. Its almost demeaning the way the gringo will begin a conversation with the Hispanic, not because he’s interested in getting to know the Hispanic or in any sort of exchange of ideas, but instead he sees that person as an object, like a tackling dummy, upon which he can hone his skills and practice his technique, or a podium from which he barks a self-promoting political campaign. Those self-centered intentions are obvious when the Spanish-speaking gringo makes few or no mistakes: the more imperfect the grammar and syntax, the more excusable the “practice” is.

The reason I've got this on my mind is because at church there are two new girls who are visiting for the next few months from Mexico. Generally, Mexicans are very easy going, and I’ve really enjoyed the ones I’ve known. They love to share what’s going on in their lives and to tease you about what’s going on in yours.

Marcela and Melisa are cute, fun girls and are becoming good friends. We’ll sit near each other and whisper jokes back and forth during classes. When I speak with them (or with a friend of any native tongue), its to enjoy their company, and I don’t care if anyone else can hear me, or if anyone else knows which language I’m speaking to them.

But just last week, we were in a small group and this guy, who made every effort to make it known to the entire group that he served his mission in Mexico, kept on bellowing Spanish comments in their direction. If anything remotely Spanish came up in the group conversation—he had something to say about it. Like if someone said they grew up in Los Angeles, he’d correct them infront of the group stressing a Spanish accent, “Oh… Lows-On-Hell-Ess!”

“Beat that you little trout sniffer.”

And what made it more annoying was the way he tried to cover up his true intentions (which were to show off) by trying to make it look like he was just contributing his encouragement and approval to the idea that that person was from LA (this was usually demonstrated by an overly exaggerated head nod in the direction of the Californian).

“A gentle smile often breeds a kick in the pants.”

I guess my complaint is against insincerity. I think it is a very stupid act. It not only makes a fool of the offender, but leaves behind it a wake of degraded victims. Sincerity begets friendship, and authenticity begets trust. The irony of selfishly trying to shed a positive light on oneself is that the person really ends up exposing his worst side and the shameful shadow cast by that self-projected positive light is the unfortunate silhouette of low self-esteem.