Unless you are one hundred percent fluent in Spanish, expect the Mexicans around you to know more English than you do Spanish. Bob, a friend, retired to Mexico and opened a small maintenance business. He didn’t need to know the simple or common Spanish words for chair, table, or car for his investment. He instead needed items from hardware stores that most of us don’t know the words for in English, much less Spanish. Items like the little band that tightens around tubing to hold it, or that type of latch that goes inside a kitchen cabinet or the thing-a-ma-bob needed so the gas light will work correctly. So, put yourself in my friend’s shoes when you know little Spanish, but need to purchase these or similar small repair items or parts a few times a week.

For six years Bob slowly grew his business. He used a nearby hardware store. The owner, Alfredo, worked with him each time he came in. My friend drew pictures of items. He described various pieces in a loud voice, ever hopeful the English word with sufficient volume would resemble the Spanish word, allowing Alfredo to quickly understand what he needed.

Over the years Bob’s Spanish improved and his purchases from Alfredo took less time. One spring morning he needed some hinges for a door and stepped into Alfredo’s, ready to place his order.

Alfredo looked up from the newspaper spread across the counter and asked in perfect English, “Whadda ya’ think the Cubs will do this year, Bob?”

Bob froze, dumbstruck for a moment. “You speak English and let me struggle to buy hardware for six years?”

“You learned Spanish didn’t you?”

Bob discovered Alfredo had lived and worked in greater Chicago for twenty years before returning home to open his hardware store. He’d learned English and adopted a baseball club.

Not all Mexicans who speak English hide it for the reason Alfredo did. Many know English, but because pronunciation is so important in Spanish, they feel it is equally important in English. They don’t want to speak incorrectly. Those people hold back for different reasons than Alfredo. I often find when I’m struggling for a word while speaking Spanish, my Mexican friends, regardless of social class or education, will often offer the word in both languages to help me while remaining too cautious to screw up English even a tenth as much as I butcher Spanish.

I’ll leave you with a joke my friend, Juan Carlos, related before you ponder the funny to odd incidents you have had while speaking Spanish:

What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks one language? Americano [Estadounidense]

William B. “Bill” Kaliher has traveled Mexico at every opportunity since 1964 by car, bus, train and motorcycle. He has written for the Mexican Ministry of Tourism. Although known for his Mexican travel articles he’s sold work to over 600 publications including The World & I, The Pragmatist and Down Memory Lane. as well as online magazines such as MexConnect.

His book, Mexico by Motorcycle: An Adventure Story and Guide, has garnered mainly five-star reviews, been covered in several magazines, and recommended by expats who have resided in Mexico for years. Perhaps, the top compliment was by a reviewer who wrote, “This reads like a novel.”

Related articles on MexConnect

• Linguistic and cultural language puzzles in Mexico
• Did you know? Anglo vs. Mexican sayings
• Helpful Hints On Learning Mexican Spanish

The post So, you know Spanish and Mexican culture concerning languages? A bit of advice appeared first on MexConnect.

Mexican History

“Classical” is one of those terms often bandied about with little or no comprehension of its original meaning. As a graduate of two Classics departments, the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland, and the University of Toronto, Canada, there is no doubt in my mind that the term refers primarily to Greek and Latin language and literature, although I would have no difficulty in applying the term to other forms of literature. If I were asked to define “classics” in English literature I would not hesitate to begin with Shakespeare. However, what constitutes a “classic” to my way of thinking may be thought worthless or unimportant from someone else’s point of view.

It’s a matter of definition. For example, in a more or less homogeneous non-literate society, such as a North American Indian tribe, there is, or was, a general consensus on what constituted the “best” art of story-telling. All the people recognized the content and style, even the language, as something apart from ordinary speech. But in a complex heterogeneous society like ours, there is little agreement on what is the “best” literature or even the correct standard level of speech. Nevertheless, in its wider ramifications, the meaning of the term “classical” is of some importance. For example, is there some special relationship between the structure of a “classical” language and the level of culture or civilization of its speakers? To begin to answer the question, let us look at the evidence of “classical” languages in the Americas.

The Maya have been popularly described as the Greeks of the New World, the Aztecs the Romans. But what are the criteria for defining American Indian languages as “classical” in the sense that this term is applied to Greek and Latin language and literature? Both Nahuatl, a Mexican language, and Guarani, a South American language, are described in the literature as classical languages; and yet there is no comparison between them either in the number or type of texts available or in the period in which they were written. One criterion requires that the texts be relatively free of European influence. Immediately this gives rise to more questions than it answers. For example, how would this definition apply to the Yucatecan Books of Chilam Balam, which are full of Christian and foreign references, including corrupt Latin?

Certain indigenous languages share common characteristics that justify their description as classical languages. The criteria would include, for example, a large body of texts, the use of language as a literary medium, a special form of the language characteristic of the upper levels of society, relative freedom from Spanish or Portuguese borrowing, and association with a particular location. On this basis, the most obvious languages which, at present, qualify as “classical” are Nahuatl, Yucatec and Quiche. The Quechua language spoken in Cuzco, Peru, would qualify as a classical language because of its cultural and historical importance in this location, although we have no extensive indigenous literature from the early period of Inca history. Likewise, the Guarani language of Paraguay would qualify, at least with regard to the texts dating from the early missionary period, as opposed to later forms of the language spoken elsewhere.

By far the largest body of written literature we have is in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish Conquest in 1521. The history of Aztec or Nahuatl literature really begins in 1492, when Antonio de Nebrija wrote a detailed grammar of Spanish, the first such treatment of any European vernacular. Previously only Greek, Latin, and Hebrew had been considered worthy of attention by grammarians. Naturally Nebrija based his grammar on the Latin model, for it was thought necessary to establish the value of the vernacular by comparing it with Classical Latin grammar. The other, more ominous reason – at least for the Aztecs – was the Spanish conviction that all subject peoples must learn Spanish. This fitted in well with the self-appointed mission of the Catholic Church. The early Spanish missionaries wrote grammars and collected vocabularies not to preserve native languages and culture, but rather to enable them to convert the Indians more easily by understanding their language and ways of thought and action.

Fray Andres de Olmos (1547) wrote the first grammar of Nahuatl only twenty six years after the Conquest. Many others followed. The missionaries also discerned that some Aztecs spoke “better” Nahuatl than others. Therefore they sought to establish a standard of Nahuatl based on upper-class speech. Today, most professional linguists do not recognize any absolute standards in spoken languages. From the purely linguistic point of view, a native creole would be of equal importance with the standard form of speech, a view which I find somewhat debatable.

Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family of languages under the subheading Aztec(an)/Nahuatlan. This includes not only the present day Nahua dialects of Mexico but also such northerly languages as Hopi, Northern Paiute, and Shoshone. The stylistic features of Classical Nahuatl, especially metaphors, are clearly marked. For example, in atl, in tepetl (“water” + “hill”) signifies “city.” Complementary, sometimes synonymous, sentences produce a fullness of expression that contribute to the elevated style, as in in poctli ehuatoc, ayahuitl onmantoc (“the smoke rises, the mist spreads outwards”). Repetition, often in the form of formulary language, is a characteristic feature of epic poetry and saga around the world. In Classical Nahuatl, too, it serves as a literary embellishment and an aid to memory, as in Cuix nel timotlatiz? Cuix timinayaz? Cuix canapa tonyaz? Cuix teixpampa tehuaz? (“In truth, shall you hide? Shall you conceal yourself? Shall you go off? Shall you flee?”). Although we are here dealing with written literary texts, such as the Florentine Codex, the extant texts are undoubtedly based on an underlying oral tradition in which the composer or reciter would rely on such stylistic devices in the course of composition or transmission.

Classical Yucatec belongs to the larger Mayan family of languages. This is further broken down into Mamean, or Mamean-Ixilian, which includes Yucatec or Maya proper, Lacandon, and other Mayan dialects. It was spoken by the inhabitants of the Yucatan peninsula from about the middle of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century. Classical Yucatec comes from this period and is the literary medium for the culture of the ancient Maya. While there are some dialectal differences between the classical language and the modern language, the latter differs only minimally from the language of the classical period.

Most of our knowledge of Classical Yucatec comes from the Yucatecan Books of Chilam Balam. As in Classical Nahuatl, repetition is common, often in the form of semantic couplets in which the second half of the phrase repeats or echoes the first half. From the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, we have what I would call an example of the prophetic style: Emom caanil ual, Emom caanil tz’ulub, Caanil utz’ub. Some of the difficulties of translation and interpretation may be illustrated from this reference to what appears to be the paraphernalia carried by the High Priest. M. Edmonson translates: “Descended was the high fan, descended were the high branch and the celestial incense.” R. Roy’s version is similar but the choice of words leaves some doubt as to the precise meaning: “The heavenly fan, the heavenly wreath and the heavenly bouquet shall descend.” I prefer the second translation because it more closely echoes the rhythm of the original with the repetition of caanil (“celestial”). However, another difficulty is that the early grammars and vocabularies of Nahuatl were written in 16th century Spanish. Consequently some Spanish words in the early colonial records may be rare or obsolete today, another challenge for the translator/interpreter of these often obscure esoteric texts.

Classical Quiche belongs to the Quichean family of languages, which includes, among others, Cakchiquel, another possible classical language. It was spoken in highland Guatemala, around Totonicapan, El Quiche and other areas in the centuries before and after the Spanish Conquest. Classical Quiche was a fairly homogeneous language whose speakers were unified from about the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century. Modern Quiche, which is spoken in the most important state in the highlands, differs mainly in the addition of Nahuatl and Spanish elements. As for other indigenous languages, missionaries early on trained the Indians to write their own language in Roman transcription. As a result we have the Popol Vuh, one of the most outstanding native documents to survive the Spanish war machine. In his edition of the Popol Vuh, M. Edmonson rearranged the original text into semantic couplets. While this is certainly one of the main stylistic features of the Popol Vuh, he went too far in attempting to force every line into a semantic couplet, even when there is no real justification for so doing. However, there is no doubt about the highly polished elegant Quiche style; for example, the human body is described as “the dust, the earth, the flesh” ( ka pokolahil, k’uleual, ka tiohil = pokolah + uleu + tioh).

Cakchiquel, another Mayan language related to Quiche, is not generally classified as a classical Indian language. However, the Annals of the Cakchiquels is an important historical document written in a language that some linguists consider the most advanced of the Mayan languages. One early translator, D. Brinton, thought that the linguistic structure of Cakchiquel reflected “remarkable native powers of mind.” While I certainly agree with his assessment of the intelligence of the writer of the Annals, it is not clear what relationship, if any, there is between the grammatical complexity of a language and the level of culture or civilization of the people who speak that language. However, the Theory of Linguistic Relativity is beyond the scope of this article.

Among other Indian language of the Americas which may be described as “classical” are Quechua and Tupi-Guarani. Although we do not have any written texts from the classical period of Inca civilization, the Quechua language spoken in the Inca capital of Cuzco is nevertheless described as “classical.” Unfortunately the knotted quipu was severely limited as a source of information because it depended too much on the interpretation of the user. The Inca drama Ollantay is evidence that the Incas cultivated the literary arts long before the arrival of the Spaniards but very little genuine native literature survived Spanish oppression.

Tupi-Guarani, a native language of Paraguay, is also spoken in Bolivia and Brazil. With well over a million speakers, it is classified under the language family of Tupi, which includes Old and Modern Tupi, and Old and Modern Guarani. Guarani is considered a classical language, although most of the textual material is in the form of grammars and vocabularies written by Spanish missionaries whose basic purpose was, as always, to convert the natives to Catholicism. All other textual material is of Catholic content. The Spaniards were not interested in preserving native culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that studies in Tupi-Guarani are slanted towards linguistic analysis rather than literature. This is in stark contrast with Nahuatl and Maya texts, which are of interest for their cultural content as well as their linguistic value. If Quechua and Tupi-Guarani can be classified as classical languages on these criteria, I would add, among others, the Iroquois Book of Rites, which has a history not unlike that of the aforementioned languages.

Comparison with the Greek and Latin classics reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses of the studies done so far on classical languages in the Americas. While we do have more or less serviceable translations in English of such texts as the Popol Vuh and the Annals of the Cakchiquels, they lack the detailed linguistic analysis and the commentaries that we find in the critical editions of Greek and Latin texts. Consequently we are at the mercy of the translator/interpreter because we cannot adequately check the accuracy of the translation or the interpretation. One obvious result is the very different readings one finds, especially in the more esoteric religious and mythological texts in Nahuatl and Maya. For example, we have several different editions of the Cantares Mexicanos, a collection of Nahuatl poems. The German scholar Schultze Jena appended an analytical word list to his edition of the Popol Vuh that gives the forms as they appear in the original Quiche text along with a detailed linguistic analysis of each form. By comparison, A. Garibay’s edition, while a major achievement for its time, lacks such critical analysis. Translations of the same passages by Jena and Garibay are so different that the casual reader might think they came from different sources.

Classical Nahuatl is one of the best-documented Indian languages we have but even here there are serious gaps in our knowledge. From the standpoint of modern linguistics, the early Nahuatl grammars were deficient in phonological analysis, presumably because the early Spanish grammarians were in contact with living Aztecs with whom they could converse and could thus pick up the sounds of the language. Fortunately, the sound system of Nahuatl is relatively “simple and transparent.” Even so, there is a pressing need for critical editions of all these texts.

The study of the classical languages of the Americas has come a long way since the cultural devastation wrought by the Spanish invasion. However, if we take the Greek and Latin classics as a standard, there is still a long way to go. We cannot all be Nahuatl and Maya scholars, but I am appalled at the careless, non-critical way in which some popular writers use the available material. They give no references and sometimes simply paraphrase an English translation, which they then pass off as original research. The classical languages of the Americas and their users deserve better.

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Did You Know…?

I’ll break your jaw! (Chalco)
In the umbilicus (Xico)
Place of the squashed serpent (Coapatongo) [1]

Mexico’s place names or toponyms provide a rich and fun source for linguistic analysis. Indigenous peoples spoke languages that had no formal alphabet. They developed complex symbols (hieroglyphs) for place names that used combinations of up to three different kinds of elements: pictographs, ideographs and phonetic symbols. When the Spaniards arrived, they asked the locals what places were called, and then wrote the responses they received as best they could to match the sounds spoken by their unwilling Indian hosts. This introduced some inevitable distortions, partly because of variations in how the same place might be heard and written by different scribes.

Like anyone with poor hearing or a poor grasp of the local languages, the Spaniards tended to hear what they wanted to hear and write what they thought they had heard regardless of its actual meaning. For instance, while unlikely to be true, it is sometimes alleged that “Yucatán” actually derives from Maya Indians responding “I don’t know” when asked to name a nearby town.

Over time, many place names morphed in ways that make them barely recognizable today to any time traveler returning from the early colonial period. Numerous new place names were created and added to the gazetteer. Some existing toponyms were totally changed to reflect the importance of particular individuals, events or dates.

The place names with the most obvious meanings are those which are 100% Spanish in origin. A Spanish-English dictionary will quickly reveal the origins of the names of hundreds of places in Mexico. The following Spanish adjectives are commonly found in compound names:

• nuevo/nueva = new [Nuevo León]
• alto/alta = high or upper [Altavista = high view]
• bajo/baja = low or lower [Baja California]
• grande = large [Puerto Grande = large pass]
• chico/chica = small [Costa Chica]

The four cardinal directions also often form part of the place name:

• este = east [note, though, that oriente is used for east when describing a street, e.g. Hidalgo Oriente #123, not Hidalgo Este #123]
• oeste = west [poniente is used for streets]
• norte = north
• sur = south

As a geographer, I am naturally more interested in place names that reveal something of the geographic character of the place. The Spanish language has a plethora of words describing topographic features in the natural landscape. Spanish is similar to English in that landforms are named not only according to their shape or morphology, but also according to their relative location. In English, for instance, both a plain and a plateau are surfaces that are relatively flat; the former is lowland while the latter is upland. Spanish is even richer. In an article published in 1886, Hill describes how the published names on maps meaning “hill” or “hillock” include no fewer than 22 different words in Spanish, as opposed to only 16 words in English.

Common Spanish toponym elements related to relief and drainage include:

• cerro = hill
• sierra = elongated mountain range with sharp crest [cf cordillera = mountain range]
• peña = craggy hill [Peña de Bernal]
• loma = hill in middle of plain
• lomita = hillock (small hill)
• mesa = flat-topped (table) hill
• cumbre = summit or peak
• pico = sharp peak
• montaña = mountain
• valle = valley
• barranca = canyon
• gruta = cave
• cenote = limestone sinkhole
• agua = water
• arroyo = brook
• río = river
• lago = lake
• salto = waterfall
• cascada = waterfall
• ojo = spring
• caliente = hot [Aguascalientes = hot waters]
• presa = reservoir (and dam)
• ría = [cf río] ria (drowned river valley)

Coasts and coastal navigation were absolutely vital to the Spanish explorers and settlers, and so it is not surprising that they labeled coastal features with considerable attention to detail:

• mar = sea
• salinas = salt flats or salt works
• golfo = gulf [50+ km across]
• bahía = bay [smaller than gulf, generally less than 25 km across; bahías are largely absent on Mexico’s Gulf coast]
• ensenada = small bay or embayment
• puerto = port, and water approaches to a port [inland, puerto = pass or gateway]
• boca = mouth of a river
• playa = beach
• cabo = point or cape
• punta = point or headland
• isla = island
• ribera = bank or shore

As forests were cleared and inhabited settlements grew, more and more Spanish-language elements entered Mexico’s place name vocabulary:

• barrio = neighborhood
• colonia = quarter or district inside a town
• rancho = hamlet
• pueblo = village
• villa = town
• ciudad = city
• capilla = chapel
• puente = bridge
• balneario = bathing place or spa
• calle = street
• callejón = dead-end street
• hacienda = estate or large farm
• estado = state
• puente = bridge

Numerous other Spanish adjectives and words added richness to the diversity of names. Many place names incorporate elements depicting colors:

• blanco/a = white [Villa Blanca = white town]
• negro/a = black [Piedras Negras = black rocks]
• azul = blue [Agua Azul = blue water]
• verde = green [Cerro Verde = green hill]

Certain other terms marked locations thought to hold metallic riches and color-coded accordingly:

• plata = silver [Plateros = silversmiths]
• oro = gold [Santa María del Oro]

There are hundreds of other Spanish words used in place names, but here, we’ll limit ourselves to just three more:

• Heróica = Heroic [Heróica Zitacuaro]
• vista = view [Buenavista = good view, Vistahermosa = beautiful view, but note that some places thus named demonstrate a decided propensity for wishful thinking]
• escondido/escondida = hidden [Puerto Escondido = hidden port]

When creative juices dried up, early Spanish settler often resorted to copying names employed in Spain, even if they were not especially appropriate to the new location. For example, Guadalajara = dry stony river. The name is derived from the Arabic word “wadi”, and was used only because Guadalajara, Spain, happened to be the birthplace of Nuño Beltran de Guzmán, founder of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Numerous Mexican place names [Matamoros, Morelos, Hidalgo, Ocampo] emulate the names of famous individuals. A large percentage of place names incorporate saints’ names. San José is the most popular, followed by San Juan, Santa María, San Pedro, San Miguel and San Antonio. Saints’ names are often combined with additional elements such as famous people [San Miguel de Allende] or indigenous words [San Antonio Tlayacapan].

Still other place names commemorate an important date or event. Barra de Navidad [= Christmas Sandbar] on the Pacific coast was first explored on December 25, 1540. Elsewhere many settlements are named 20 de noviembre [November 20, Revolution Day] or 5 de mayo [May 5, the date of the Battle of Puebla].

Among major cities whose names have a clear etymology are:

• Torreón = big tower
• Veracruz = true cross [verdadera cruz]
• El Paso = the pass

But even more fascinating, to me at least, than Mexico’s Spanish-derived place names are its indigenous toponyms. Perhaps the single commonest indigenous suffix used as a place name element is -tepec [Chapultepec = hill of chapulines (grasshoppers); Jocotepec = hill of guavas]. Other suffixes derived from Indian (mostly Nahuatl) words include:

• -apan = in/near water or river [Tequisquiapan]
• -atl = water
• -calco = in the house of [Nopalcalco = in the house of nopals (prickly pears]]
• -can = place [Coyoacan = place of coyotes]
• -cingo, -tzingo = (small) place of settlement [Chilpancingo = place of small wasps or small place of wasps, the Nahuatl word order allows either interpretation]
• -huacan, -oacan = place where they have [Michoacan = place where they have fish]
• -pan = in/on
• -ro = place [Copándaro – place of many avocadoes]
• -tepetl = mountain [Popocatepetl = smoking mountain]
• -titlan = near [Oztotitlan]
• -tla = abundance [Mapaxtla = abundance of mapaches]
• -tlan = in or near [Ocotlan = near the pines; Acatlan = near the cane]

My favorite place names are those that are entirely unexpected. One of the sharpest curves on the Mexico City to Cuernavaca highway is called La Curva de la Pera [= the curve of the pear]. While the derivation of this name may seem fairly self-evident, why would anyone call a 90-degree bend near Zitácuaro, Michoacán, La Curva de la Gringa? (see picture)

Inevitably there are also some anomalies. My favorites in this category include the railway stations of Honey in the state of Puebla (named for a famous railroad engineer) and Wadley in the state of San Luis Potosí. The latter is particularly strange since the letter w does not belong to the Spanish alphabet. I’ve never been able to identify the origin of the name Wadley with any degree of certainty, but for one possible explanation, see Mexico has many “Est”raordinary railway places.

Sources:

• Driver, Stephen L. Spanish as a Language for Geographical Expression. CLAG (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers) yearbook 1990, pp 3-14. [https://sites.maxwell.syr.edu/clag/yearbook1990/driever.htm]
• Griffin, Paul F. Geographical Elements in the Toponomy of Mexico. The Scientific Monthly, vol 76, #1 (January 1953), pp 20-23.
• Hill, R.T. 1896. Descriptive topographic terms of Spanish America. The National Geographic Magazine 7(9):291-302.
• MacAodha, B.S. Some major elements in Spanish placenames. Geography. 1979. Vol 64, pp 17-20.
• Macazaga Ordoño, César. Nombres geográficos de México. 1979. Mexico City: Editorial Innovación S.A.
• Manrique Castañeda, Leonardo (coord). Atlas Cultural de México: Lingüística. Mexico: SEP/INAH/Planeta. 1988.

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