"Que mucha poca p**a madre!"
I am behind the wheel in San Juan, screaming with absolute glee at the top of my lungs at the idiot in front of me that just came to an inexplicable full stop in the middle of the intersection. And in mid-stream profanity, it really hit me.
I am back home.
Lemme 'splain.
No. There is too much. Lemme sum up.
My wife is the quintessential southern lady. She does not leave the house without makeup carefully arranged, and follows rules I never had to learn. If you think Steel Magnolia, you have the right picture. And then she begins to speak Spanish.....
And her entire personality changes, and she becomes La Patrona. The result is not bossy, but her style definitely does not invite question. She is commanding, in the way that military officers are commanding. She is still unstintingly polite; she is kind and friendly, but she is just different.
I did not learn Spanish in the same halls as she did. My Spanish is grammatically incorrect, rough-and-tumble ad-hoc mixture of vernacular and modismos (and more than just a few vulgarities) that I learned from talking with farmers, hunters and fishermen. The place where I learned Spanish uses profanity pretty liberally, and more than once I have had to apologize for my coarse language when dealing with members of polite society.
Ordering food in a fancy restaurant here has me halting and stammering. But grab a taco from the back of a pickup truck and I revert to different roots, and my whole approach to life is different.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a tie between language and personality that I have observed, and I love it. It pleases me greatly that we are different people when we speak differently. And now that I am on home turf, my personality changes with my language.
I got into a traffic jam after work, and a Cheshire Cat grin took over my face. I am shouting at other drivers in my free range Spanish, completely devoid of content and rancor. I am driving with precision that I never use in my rule-constrained home in Mississippi, and my entire body responds to the stimulus. I am alert; I know where every other driver is and how long the hood of their car is. I know when they have left me enough space to push my way in, and when I have to cede right of way. I have no idea where I am going, but I am internalizing my map as I go, using landmarks to guide me and signposts to slingshot me through intersections.
A CAT scan, administered at just that moment, would show a very different person than had left the work trailer just moments earlier. That person is a little more vulgar, a little freer...
And that cabrón is fearless behind the wheeeel.
I am behind the wheel in San Juan, screaming with absolute glee at the top of my lungs at the idiot in front of me that just came to an inexplicable full stop in the middle of the intersection. And in mid-stream profanity, it really hit me.
I am back home.
Lemme 'splain.
No. There is too much. Lemme sum up.
My wife is the quintessential southern lady. She does not leave the house without makeup carefully arranged, and follows rules I never had to learn. If you think Steel Magnolia, you have the right picture. And then she begins to speak Spanish.....
And her entire personality changes, and she becomes La Patrona. The result is not bossy, but her style definitely does not invite question. She is commanding, in the way that military officers are commanding. She is still unstintingly polite; she is kind and friendly, but she is just different.
I did not learn Spanish in the same halls as she did. My Spanish is grammatically incorrect, rough-and-tumble ad-hoc mixture of vernacular and modismos (and more than just a few vulgarities) that I learned from talking with farmers, hunters and fishermen. The place where I learned Spanish uses profanity pretty liberally, and more than once I have had to apologize for my coarse language when dealing with members of polite society.
Ordering food in a fancy restaurant here has me halting and stammering. But grab a taco from the back of a pickup truck and I revert to different roots, and my whole approach to life is different.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a tie between language and personality that I have observed, and I love it. It pleases me greatly that we are different people when we speak differently. And now that I am on home turf, my personality changes with my language.
I got into a traffic jam after work, and a Cheshire Cat grin took over my face. I am shouting at other drivers in my free range Spanish, completely devoid of content and rancor. I am driving with precision that I never use in my rule-constrained home in Mississippi, and my entire body responds to the stimulus. I am alert; I know where every other driver is and how long the hood of their car is. I know when they have left me enough space to push my way in, and when I have to cede right of way. I have no idea where I am going, but I am internalizing my map as I go, using landmarks to guide me and signposts to slingshot me through intersections.
A CAT scan, administered at just that moment, would show a very different person than had left the work trailer just moments earlier. That person is a little more vulgar, a little freer...
And that cabrón is fearless behind the wheeeel.
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