Quiero compartir una historia que me sucedió hoy. Estaba muy
tranquila comiendo en un restaurante y de la nada una persona me comenzó a
sacar platica. Bueno realmente esa persona quería decir lo que pensaba más no
creo que estuviera interesada en escuchar lo que yo pensaba jaja. Comenzó a
decirme que tenia no se cuantos hermanos y que uno de ellos se acababa de ir a
España a estudiar español. Yo rápido pensé y por qué a España pero no tuve que
preguntarlo para saberlo. Rapidamente me dijo que ellos son de Republica
Dominicana y que cuando llegaron aquí a Nuevo Mexico se dieron cuenta que la
“poca” gente que habla español no lo habla bien y que el mejor lugar para
estudiar es España. Yo me quede como grrr, rápidamente sentí que tenia que
decir algo y le comencé a decir pero la persona tenia sus ideas tan arraigadas
que lo único que causo es que me dio tristeza saber que también hay personas
que desprecian el español NM :(
6 may 2012
PR :)
Después de haber tomado esta clase creo que en todas partes puedo
aplicar lo que aprendimos. Este fin de semana estuve en un lugar donde había un
grupo de personas y me fue imposible no pensar en lo que estaban diciendo. Uno
de ellos mencionó que él era puertorriqueño pero no igual que los que estaban
en la isla porque él era puertorriqueño neoyorquino, que sus padres lo habían
traído cuando era un niño. Dijo que el se sentía “RARO” y que era difícil su
situación. Que por vivir aquí en los Estados Unidos ya él no podía ser igual,
que ya había olvidado un poco el español pero que intentaba hablar con sus
abuelos para poder estar conectado con “su gente.” Me pareció muy interesante
lo que estaba diciendo y ganas no me faltaron de decirle que su situación es
más normal de lo que él imagina. Me sentí feliz de saber que hay personas que
valoran el español y que están orgullosos de su cultura :)
4 may 2012
Resolana - Colcha!
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| Annette Gutiérrez Turk teaching students the colcha stitch. |
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| Robin |
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| Carmella colcheando :) |
I thought you all might enjoy these photos I took at a Resolana a couple weeks ago. Both SSL and SHL students (and their teachers!) had a lot of fun learning how to do the "colcha-stitch" from a knowledgeable and very patient nuevomexicana! Annette's family has been in NM for many generations - close to 20 if I remember correctly. We all started to get the hang of it by the end, but we didn't do a quarter of the work she had done. She dyes and prepares all of the wool she uses through a multiple step process that requires days and hours of labor. Thankfully, many of our students said they planned to go back home to their abuelitas and ask them to teach them more about this beautiful art form. The older generations need to pass it down to us younger folks otherwise, it will die out...
3 may 2012
Bilingual Artists and The Effect on Language Maintenance
So I "dabble" with music in all aspects. I write lyrics (raps), make instrumentals, and experiment with mixing genres. I have always liked to make it when I have free time, make it to relieve stress, and about a year ago to memorize stuff needed for tests lol.
One of my Spanish professors for 302 was really into poetry and music and was telling me a good way to use spanish is to write poetry and use it in a beat I make. I really liked this idea because some of the artists I like do the same thing (Pitbull, Baby Bash, Romeo Santos, just to name a few). For me its just to help me work on my pronunciation and language maintenance but these mainstream artists are making a huge impact with their use of Spanglish.
It used to be that artists speaking spanish would make albums for that audience and if it became successful then maybe songwriters would translate the lyrics to english (extremely difficult to do, I tried doing that with one of my songs in english to spanish and spent the whole semester trying to figure out rhyme schemes to match what I was saying in English). But with that in mind, I think artists like (Shakira and others) started making albums that were in spanish or english specifically, and wrote lyrics for the songs that could easily be translated to keep the pattern nearly identical. But now that Spanglish is being used in these songs artists are taking advantage of this!
Since these artists are having success on the radio and switching between the two dialects it makes me think people are now willing to accept Spanglish as a language and use it. To me spanish sounds much smoother than English (I think its because Spanish has the highest peaks of pronunciation in the middle of words or phrases, where as English seems to have a harsh pronunciation at the end of the word) and even better when it is mixed in a song! On the other hand, it could be that people only like the beat of the song and do not pay attention the language switching that is taking place. Either way Spanglish is getting poured into the one of the biggest markets (entertainment) and is having major success.
Whether this music is playing in a night club with "Anglos or Mexicans" who cant speak/understand a lick of either language they are still enjoying the music. Could this lead to those people wanting to learn how to speak the other language so they can enjoy the lyrics? What about people who know some of the language, either one, is it maintaing the language in a bigger perspective?
Anyone have thoughts about the use of Spanglish in music or the entertainment realm? Sorry if this is somewhat disorganized but it just had me thinking!
Justin Aragón
One of my Spanish professors for 302 was really into poetry and music and was telling me a good way to use spanish is to write poetry and use it in a beat I make. I really liked this idea because some of the artists I like do the same thing (Pitbull, Baby Bash, Romeo Santos, just to name a few). For me its just to help me work on my pronunciation and language maintenance but these mainstream artists are making a huge impact with their use of Spanglish.
It used to be that artists speaking spanish would make albums for that audience and if it became successful then maybe songwriters would translate the lyrics to english (extremely difficult to do, I tried doing that with one of my songs in english to spanish and spent the whole semester trying to figure out rhyme schemes to match what I was saying in English). But with that in mind, I think artists like (Shakira and others) started making albums that were in spanish or english specifically, and wrote lyrics for the songs that could easily be translated to keep the pattern nearly identical. But now that Spanglish is being used in these songs artists are taking advantage of this!
Since these artists are having success on the radio and switching between the two dialects it makes me think people are now willing to accept Spanglish as a language and use it. To me spanish sounds much smoother than English (I think its because Spanish has the highest peaks of pronunciation in the middle of words or phrases, where as English seems to have a harsh pronunciation at the end of the word) and even better when it is mixed in a song! On the other hand, it could be that people only like the beat of the song and do not pay attention the language switching that is taking place. Either way Spanglish is getting poured into the one of the biggest markets (entertainment) and is having major success.
Whether this music is playing in a night club with "Anglos or Mexicans" who cant speak/understand a lick of either language they are still enjoying the music. Could this lead to those people wanting to learn how to speak the other language so they can enjoy the lyrics? What about people who know some of the language, either one, is it maintaing the language in a bigger perspective?
Anyone have thoughts about the use of Spanglish in music or the entertainment realm? Sorry if this is somewhat disorganized but it just had me thinking!
Justin Aragón
2 may 2012
Reduction of /s/: NM Spanish vs. Mexican Spanish
After I finished my presentation I remembered there were a few more things I wanted to add haha. The main thing was that they survey was based of Labov's work on the social stratification of department stores in New York. Instead of looking at the social stratifications of the local stores in ABQ, I looked at the social factors which could influence the reduction of /s/.
The second thing I wanted to mention was that: The dialect varieties of Spanish in NM have not been studied as much as other areas, so it was difficult to prove if the Spanish spoken in Albuquerque’s Mexican “geared” community stores favored or sustained the dialect used in Mexico. This is not to say that the results in this study incorrect but possibly infer that the numbers have a correlation to Lipski’s idea that dialect variations have made it difficult to differentiate them.
Also, I wanted to go into more detail on the data that was found for the 3 main factors (gender of employee, age of employee, and the 1st vs. 2nd response) but it would have taken too much time.I will be posting my paper on either this blog or my other blogger page so you guys can take a closer look on these results.
I hope you all enjoyed my presentation! This was my first time doing this kind of research so I was not sure how it would come out! If you guys have any questions please leave some comments or suggestions!
Thanks,Justin Aragón
The second thing I wanted to mention was that: The dialect varieties of Spanish in NM have not been studied as much as other areas, so it was difficult to prove if the Spanish spoken in Albuquerque’s Mexican “geared” community stores favored or sustained the dialect used in Mexico. This is not to say that the results in this study incorrect but possibly infer that the numbers have a correlation to Lipski’s idea that dialect variations have made it difficult to differentiate them.
Also, I wanted to go into more detail on the data that was found for the 3 main factors (gender of employee, age of employee, and the 1st vs. 2nd response) but it would have taken too much time.I will be posting my paper on either this blog or my other blogger page so you guys can take a closer look on these results.
I hope you all enjoyed my presentation! This was my first time doing this kind of research so I was not sure how it would come out! If you guys have any questions please leave some comments or suggestions!
Thanks,Justin Aragón
1 may 2012
La presentación de Karla y Ruben
I just thought I´d take a quick sec to blog about some questions I didn´t have time for. Me gustó mucho la presentación sobre Linguistic Landscape en Nuevo México. Por supesto me gustaron mucho las otras presentaciones también, pero quiero blogear sobre esa.
Pienso que es un proyecto interesante. Siempre miro los signos en Walmart y Lowes etc cuando están en español porque pienso que la politica bilingue de una corporación (demostrado por los signos y públicos) nos enseña las opiniones de una companía pero también de la región en que se queda. También estoy de acuerdo con Karla y Ruben con la idea de que el tipo de español (especialmente si no es un dialecto real ni el estándar) muestra si a la companía le importa la gente en el area en que viven sus clientes. Pienso que si no es un dialecto real, que es un desprecio a la gente.
No sé, pero estaba pensando después y durante la presentación, y eso es lo que pienso.
Pienso que es un proyecto interesante. Siempre miro los signos en Walmart y Lowes etc cuando están en español porque pienso que la politica bilingue de una corporación (demostrado por los signos y públicos) nos enseña las opiniones de una companía pero también de la región en que se queda. También estoy de acuerdo con Karla y Ruben con la idea de que el tipo de español (especialmente si no es un dialecto real ni el estándar) muestra si a la companía le importa la gente en el area en que viven sus clientes. Pienso que si no es un dialecto real, que es un desprecio a la gente.
No sé, pero estaba pensando después y durante la presentación, y eso es lo que pienso.
29 abr 2012
Otro video que
estaba queriendo compartir desde hace algunos días es este. Primero que nada es
un resumen breve de lo que es el español y el por que de su gran trascendencia
sin embargo me parece interesante que en todo el video no se mencione en ningún
momento la gran cantidad de personas que viven en Estados Unidos y que hablamos
español. Creo que de alguna manera no se le está dando la importancia que se
merece. Es necesario que se tome en cuenta que el español, aparte del inglés es
el idioma que está uniendo naciones no solamente de habla hispana pero en
general (no solamente en Europa como lo dicen aquí). Si se menciona el español
de Cataluña por que no se puede mencionar el de Nuevo México, si ambas tienen
historia y trascendencia :)
http://youtu.be/jHDF34hRBU0
Investigación
Al estar haciendo el trabajo de investigación
final para esta clase, me puse a pensar como es que en otros países se valoran
tanto otros idiomas. Me pareció interesante ver como es que en Tokio por
ejemplo los anuncios no oficiales son multilingües. Esto nos muestra que existe
una solidaridad en la población. En lo que he leído me di cuenta que estos
anuncios no solo están en cierto sector de la ciudad pero por todas parte.
Mientras tanto, aquí en Albuquerque (siendo el español un idioma con tanta
historia en esta área) hemos encontrado que hay segregación en este sentido. En
el norte de la ciudad no hay esta variedad de anuncios bilingües (o sea que se
esta dando por hecho que no es necesario incluir a esta población de habla
hispana), mientras que solo en el sur de la ciudad encontramos anuncios monolingües
del español y bilingües. Seguiremos investigando…
27 abr 2012
My friend myrlin (rapper/poet) from Arizona
Hey Class,
So this is my friend Myrlin Hepworth from Arizona. He has lived in three places during his life: New Mexico, Idaho, and now Arizona. He is a really good poet and brings up a lot of questions in his poems about culture identity. Reminded me of the conversation we were having yesterday about "what do you consider yourself?"
I am going to post the link to the radio show he was on, it is kind of long but you can download it or just listen to it all on the link! Hopefully you all will enjoy.
So this is my friend Myrlin Hepworth from Arizona. He has lived in three places during his life: New Mexico, Idaho, and now Arizona. He is a really good poet and brings up a lot of questions in his poems about culture identity. Reminded me of the conversation we were having yesterday about "what do you consider yourself?"
I am going to post the link to the radio show he was on, it is kind of long but you can download it or just listen to it all on the link! Hopefully you all will enjoy.
http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_12916173
here is a direct link to his poems page and the poem I was talking about!!
http://soundcloud.com/myrlinpoetics/ritchie-valens
here is a direct link to his poems page and the poem I was talking about!!
http://soundcloud.com/myrlinpoetics/ritchie-valens
Around 6:30 and 23 min are his two sections where he raps one of his songs and does a poem!
Justin Aragon
Community involvement
This morning Damián, Miguel, Sam and I took about 50 of our Spanish 112 students to East San José Elementary school. This was our second semester taking our students there to read children's books to them in Spanish. As you all know, we teach this level without a textbook. Instead, we use Spanish and bilingual libros infantiles! For their final project, they are required to write, illustrate and bind a children's book and take it to the elementary school to read to 1st and 2nd graders. As with last November, today's visit was another hit! It is so neat to see our students interacting with these kids. Everyone of our students comes out of the classroom beaming not only because the kids are so cute but because they just carried out multiple conversations with these kids in Spanish!
It is also so uplifting to see these 6 and 7 year old kids so incredibly bilingual. As we talk in class about language maintenance, its great to see that these young kids are maintaining the language and that our students are learning (and sometimes relearning) the language in an authentic setting. All of the signage around the school is in both languages and the teachers all speak in both languages to their students. Many of my students kept commenting on how cute the school was and they wished they had gone to elementary school like East San José when they were little so that they could be bilingual now as well. Many of the kids corrected my students as they spoke, but my students took it well and knew that they were only trying to help.
One of the most rewarding parts of the experience was when one of the 1st grade teachers pulled me aside and said that she really appreciated having us there because it is great for these kids to look up to college students. She said many of these students come from broken families whose brothers and sisters normally do not attend college. She said the school is always looking for volunteers and college-age role models! I told many of my students this information and they asked a few people about volunteering next school year. Hopefully they will!
As we were leaving one of the little boys even said to a group of girls from my class, "You may speak funny, but at least you can still read." :) I guess we did well when we read exactly what we had written in our books but when it came to "freestyle" conversation, we spoke funny! I think child honesty is the best!
It is also so uplifting to see these 6 and 7 year old kids so incredibly bilingual. As we talk in class about language maintenance, its great to see that these young kids are maintaining the language and that our students are learning (and sometimes relearning) the language in an authentic setting. All of the signage around the school is in both languages and the teachers all speak in both languages to their students. Many of my students kept commenting on how cute the school was and they wished they had gone to elementary school like East San José when they were little so that they could be bilingual now as well. Many of the kids corrected my students as they spoke, but my students took it well and knew that they were only trying to help.
One of the most rewarding parts of the experience was when one of the 1st grade teachers pulled me aside and said that she really appreciated having us there because it is great for these kids to look up to college students. She said many of these students come from broken families whose brothers and sisters normally do not attend college. She said the school is always looking for volunteers and college-age role models! I told many of my students this information and they asked a few people about volunteering next school year. Hopefully they will!
As we were leaving one of the little boys even said to a group of girls from my class, "You may speak funny, but at least you can still read." :) I guess we did well when we read exactly what we had written in our books but when it came to "freestyle" conversation, we spoke funny! I think child honesty is the best!
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