Lack of perfection won't stop Spanish speaker
Don't let language get in the way
by Rodolpho Carrasco
February 1, 2001
in Pasadena
Star News
Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif.
I didn't grow up speaking the Spanish language. Not exactly. My primary link to the language, my Aguas Calientes-born mother, died when I was seven. After that, my sister Yolanda, who raised me, correctly perceived that a young Chicano with neither an education nor English-language fluency would not go far en Los Estados Unidos. She encouraged me to learn Spanish, but demanded that I master English.
Today my command of Spanish is fleeting. In my work as a director of a youth center, I communicate clearly enough with Spanish-speaking parents, but that is not to say that they don't grimace when I mangle words and sentences. To these parents, it is actually encouraging when I struggle with Spanish, because they themselves are constantly struggling with English. Somewhere between the two languages we meet, forgive each other, and press on.
Yes, I speak Spanish, but not well enough for any person or organization to invite me to speak at their event. At least, not until now.
In December I received an invitation to officiate a wedding in Mexico City - in Spanish.
The
invitation took me aback. The requestor, Elizabeth, is a family friend
from Mexico who is getting married in March. She interned at Harambee
Center in 1998, and my wife, Kafi, and I have visited Elizabeth at her
home near the presently-erupting volcano, Popocatepetl.
"Really?" was how I responded to the invite. "You hear how I speak Spanish."
"Ni importa," she said. "Hablas bien, Rudy." No worry, you speak well, she said. I felt assured. Plus, I thought, I can probably memorize the Spanish-language wedding handbook.
This is some crazy stuff. In the past I've imagined that one day my Spanish might improve to the level where I address NALEO or MALDEF in part Spanish, part English. But never did I think that someone would entrust me with something like their wedding. In Mexico, no less.
"Y Lalo? Que piensa de todo esto?" I asked about her fiance, what he thought of all this. "Esta bien. Contento." He's fine with it, she said. Then she just looked at me, awaiting my next incredulous question.
Were I younger - say, just out of college - I would be agonizing at this moment about whether I could really do it. But those days are behind me. If Elizabeth thinks I am up to the task, then I am. The bride's opinion is the only one that matters.
I'm tickled by the entire circumstance, and compelled to find out if my little breakthrough is related to current events. Let's see. Here's a few:
A recent news story says that Amherst College is offering a first of its kind course in Spanglish, titled, "The Sounds of Spanglish." Despite heavy criticism from both Spanish-language and English-language purists, course instructor Ilan Stavans says that Spanglish, the interchange of Spanish and English, is "the poetry of the people" and deserves a place in academia.
In politics, the incoming Presidents on both sides of the Rio Grande have taken visible and forceful steps toward la otra lengua. U.S. president George W. Bush used Spanish throughout his campaign and drove the Republican Party to new levels of Latino voter outreach.
Mexican president Vicente Fox, in a November interview with a California newspaper, acknowledged that Mexican immigrants in the U.S. want their children to learn English and achieve the American dream, then stated that he had "no desire to interfere in the powerful processes that tie Mexican immigrants to the United States."
Closer to home, I was recently asked by a local African American businessman if Harambee would consider hosting Spanish classes for Black children.
"It's important for us to get along," he implored, "and it's good for our children to learn Spanish just like the Spanish-speaking kids are learning English."
It's a sentiment I've heard from other African Americans in the community, too.
Maybe my situation is not unique. Maybe it is a new day on the language front. Perhaps the fear of people who speak other languages, along with the ridicule of those who don't speak those other languages well enough, perhaps these things on their way out.
Then again, I may be reading too much into it all. As the youth at Harambee like to say, "Calm down."
What is indisputable is that I have stumbled upon the great fortune of having a role as a Spanish-speaker in a public Mexican ceremony, and I owe it to love and friendship.
This circumstance is a reminder to me of something I learned years ago: Those who consider it a sin against ethnicity and culture for a Latino to speak Spanish poorly deliver friendly fire.
Elizabeth was puzzled when she first met me and heard my lack of fluency. But she didn't attack, shame, and drive me away from her. She laughed, just as I laughed at her pronunciation of English. We both improved, her at English, me at Spanish.
Now,
years later, I will journey with my wife and eight month old son Samuel
(right) to the Valle de Chalco, within view of the volcano, where I will
have the honor of uniting Elizabeth to her husband, because neither Elizabeth
nor I allowed lack of perfection to get in the way.
END
OTHER ARTICLES BY RODOLPHO CARRASCO
