Languages: doin' it as they do in the Discovery Channel

I was chatting with someone from the U.S. the other day about an assortment of topics, and the evolution of language came up. This is one of my favourites, as many people know. We discussed how the younger members of our societies seem to be losing certain finer distinctions of language, how this makes us (both in Spanish and English) feel we're experiencing a kind of degradation of our respective languages, and how this is, after all, a natural and even desirable consequence of change.

We both had a problem, truth be told, with young Americans using the past tense instead of the past participle and saying for example "I had went" (gasp!), as well as forgetting there's a subjunctive mood, and with Argentine teens (and so-called professional journalists) using the conditional/potential mood in place of the subjunctive in conditional clauses ("Si lo sabría te lo diría" instead of "Si lo supiera te lo diría").

One of the myths of language is that of purity. And it's a dangerous myth, like any ideal involving purity or perfection, especially when in reality they're nowhere to be found. If there were such a thing as "pure" in language, there would be no Spanish or English. Spanish has a ton of words from Latin, of course, but it's not Latin — the original words have been mangled, lost, redefined, their sounds changed and merged into other or split into different sounds, the grammar being greatly simplified, the vocabulary supplemented by thousands of foreign elements.

There's a sizable contribution from Arabic in there too, from alcohol and azúcar (sugar) to café and zanahoria (carrot), and Germanic words from the time when the Visigoths took over, and words from French, English, Basque, and many Native American languages from Nahuatl in Mexico to Quechua in the former Inca territories and Guaraní along the littoral of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, and of course technical terms reborrowed from Latin and Greek (often recognizable in many other languages). English, well, you know about English. So if you listen to some purist claiming he or she speaks "the good ol' language" and chiding the youngsters for polluting it with foreign words and degrading it with neological grammar, you know that's all ridiculous.

I had an interesting conversation with another friend later, also about language, but in a philosophical/religious setting. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

¿Por qué in English?

¿Por qué escribo este blog en inglés?

La pregunta no me sorprende. Mi idioma nativo es el castellano, y vivo en un país y una ciudad donde no son mayoría los que pueden entenderme si escribo en otro idioma. Me juego en contra, se diría además, al escribir en inglés desde y sobre una ciudad que no es internacionalmente conocida, que no es un destino turístico, que no tiene fama excepto la muy difusa de ser la cuna del Che Guevara.

Fueron precisamente esas cosas las que me decidieron a escribir en inglés. La comparación con Buenos Aires es inevitable. La capital de nuestro país tiene muchos bloggers, y más que unos cuantos son extranjeros angloparlantes. Se hace y le hacen también mucha publicidad a Buenos Aires para un público internacional. Rosario tiene comparativamente pocos bloggers, y ninguno, que yo sepa, en inglés, salvo yo. Creo que lo que pasa en el interior de Argentina es tan importante como lo que pasa en la capital, que ya tiene demasiados privilegios como para concederle, además, que sea la única visión de Argentina que llegue al exterior. Creo también firmemente que el futuro de Rosario como ciudad turística está en juego en estos años, y que hay que ayudarla; que también vale la pena difundir lo que pasa en esta provincia, tan rica en recursos y en emprendedores y a la vez tan pobre en instituciones y en representación ante el mundo.

En cuanto a lo personal, supongo que si puedo escribir de mis convicciones y opiniones, no está mal escribir sobre mis hobbies y distracciones. Si puedo hacerlo sin traicionar mis raíces como argentino hispanoparlante, llegar a un público amplio y de paso practicar mi segunda lengua, ¿por qué no?.


Why do I write this blog in English?

The question does not surprise me. My native language is Spanish, and I live in a country and a city where the ones who can understand me if I write in another language are not a majority. I'm going against my interests, you could say, by writing in English from and about a city that is not internationally known, that is not a tourist destination, that has no fame except the vague claim of being the craddle of Che Guevara.

It was precisely those things that prompted me to write in English. The comparison with Buenos Aires is inescapable. Our country's capital has a lot of bloggers, and more than a few are English-speaking expatriates. Buenos Aires also gets lot of advertising targeted to an international public. Rosario has relatively few bloggers, and none in English, that I know, except myself. I think that what happens in the interior of Argentina is as important as what happens in the capital, which already has too many privileges and shouldn't be additionally granted the one of being the only view of Argentina that reaches the world abroad. I also firmly believe that the future of Rosario as a touristic city is at stake these years, and that it has to be helped; and that it's worth making things known that happen in this province, so rich in resources and enterprising people and at the same time so poor in institutions and in representation before the world.

As for the personal stuff, I suppose if I can write about my convictions and opinions, it can't be wrong to write about my hobbies and pastimes. If I can do that without betraying my roots as a Spanish-speaking Argentinian, reaching a wider audience and in passing practise my second tongue, why not?