The New Spanish

I had an insight while reflecting upon an experience in the Rome airport, waiting for our flight to Madrid last week.  My insight has to to with the future of the Spanish language.  A few seats away from us a group of Spaniards were talking.  I couldn't hear quite what they said, but I could pick up a continuous stream of isolated words: joder … coño … puta madre … hostia … coño … joder … puta madre … 


Speakers of Spanish will recognize these words as a series of obscenities.  "Why were they cursing?" you might ask.  I glanced over at the group.  They did not seem frustrated with the inconveniences attending to travel by air.  They did not seem put out by a delay in their departure time.  In fact, they did not seem to be grumpy in any way.  To all appearances, they were simply whiling away the time with pleasant banter.  Pleasant banter punctuated by words whose English translations – were they to appear in this paragraph – would subject my blog to an "adults only" filter of some kind.

Now, those of you who know Spain and Spaniards, I am sure, are not in the least bit surprised.  You know that this is simply how many Spaniards talk.  But as I reflected upon this, my first encounter with Spanish after spending a week hearing nothing but Italian, I was struck by the high frequency of the obscenities, and I had the insight to which I have alluded.   I assure you that it is a novel one.  My ready access to the Biblioteca Nacional has allowed me to peruse the pertinent secondary literature, and I can inform you that I have found no scholarly articles of monographs that advance the argument I will put forth in the paragraphs that follow.

The Spanish people, I argue, are engaged in a linguistic experiment of the most radical kind.  They are attempting to develop a language in which one expresses oneself solely and entirely in obscenities.  Yes, this is what is going on.  Slowly but surely, "clean" words are being eliminated from the language, and their functions are being assigned to a slew of obscenities.  Eventually, only the obscenities will be left, along with some indispensable connecting material like articles and prepositions.

But you might wonder how anyone could express the entire range of human experience exclusively through obscenities.  You will find your answer in the threefold character of Spain's great linguistic experiment: permutations, context, tone.

1. Permutations.  The volume of individual obscenities is considerable, but it certainly does not even begin to approximate the size of the "clean" lexicon.  This limitation is addressed, in part, by combining the obscenities in a variety of permutations.  For example, one can say me cago en la leche, or me cago en la hostia.  Both of these are set phrases that utilize the first person singular conjugation of the verb cagarse, "to defecate," but predicate to this verb different objects, leche, or "[your mother's] milk," and hostia, or "[communion] host."  In this way, Spanish obscenities function like regular language, but unlike regular language, the range of allowable predicates is smaller than the range of syntactically correct predicates.  Thus, one cannot say me cago en el coño.  Not to my knowledge, at least.  One can also abbreviate such expressions, or supplement them.  Me cago en la leche, for example, is really an abbreviation for me cago en la leche de tu madre, which in turn can be extended into me cago en la leche de tu puta/putissima madre, or even me cago en la leche de la putisima madre que te parió.  The wide, but not unlimited, range of permutations allows for a greater number of set expressions than there are individual obscenities.  Competent speakers instinctively know how the different permutations nuance meaning.
2. Context.  Many obscenities acquire their precise meaning from the context in which they are used.  Is the speaker talking back to the television news?  Is he congratulating you on the birth of your baby?  Is she expressing disapproval of your work performance?  Context is what allows these obscenities to signify in ways that have nothing to do with the literal meaning of the obscenities themselves.  Competent speakers will choose the correct permutation for the context in question, thereby communicating meaning with little or no ambiguity.
3. Tone.  Without a doubt the most important, and most elusive of the three characteristics.  The tone in which an obscenity is uttered can radically affect its meaning.  For example, me cago en la leche, when uttered quietly, with a sigh, can mean "I do not think that I can withstand the soul-crushing burden of my meaningless existence anymore," but when uttered explosively and dramatically, can mean "What kind of idiot thinks to park his car here!?!?"  Once again, competent speakers will know how to vary tone, even subtly, to achieve their communicative goals.

Now, you may be saying to yourself that these three characteristics are common to obscenities in many languages, not just Spanish.  But the point is that, in the emerging "New Spanish," these rules will not just govern the use of obscenities, a marginal form of speech, but will govern all language use, since the obscenities will be all that is left.

As the rules of obscene language become the rules of language itself, tone and context will assume unprecedented importance.  Print media will disappear entirely, since it will not be able to function in this new setting.  Imagine a newspaper headline reading ¡Obama jodido!  In the absence of tone and context, it will be impossible to tell what, precisely, is being reported.  Has Obama lost an election?  Has one of his legislative initiatives been defeated?  Has he suffered a serious back injury?  The New Spanish will be able to communicate all of these various meanings, but only through oral communication, utilizing precise tone and drawing upon the specific context to underwrite the communicative project. 

Are there specific impediments to this experiment?  Two stand out, to my mind.  One is the continued use, by many Spaniards, of words that are not obscene.  Just today, while enjoying my cafe con leche in the cafeteria of the Biblioteca Nacional, I tuned in to the conversations around me, eager to identify and enumerate the obscenities in circulation.  During the 5 or 10 minutes that I sipped my beverage and munched on my small jamón sandwich, I heard not a single one!  The second, more serious impediment has to do with the verb "to be."  Most action verbs can be replaced by obscene ones, such as cagarse and  joder, but I do not know of an obscene substitute for the Spanish verbs ser and estar.  Later this week I plan to take the Metro to Spain's prestigious think-tank, the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) to inquire as to the public resources that are being dedicated to resolving this problem.  I suspect that the percentage of the CSIC budget devoted to researching obscene alternatives to ser and estar is not inconsiderable.  

But while the trip to the CSIC is obligatory, it is not where my heart draws me.  I want to leave the library, march down the avenue to the stately headquarters of the Real Academia Española, and immediately apprise its membership of what is afoot.  I shall direct myself without hesitation to the office of its illustrious director, Dr. Victor García de la Concha, burst into his office, and set forth my argument just as I have done here.  "Do something, your Excellency!  The New Spanish will spell disaster!!" I will cry out.

I fear, however, that it may already be too late.  The director will listen to me, aghast, and then respond with a simple, Joder.  

Roman Holiday

Long-time readers of the blog will remember my long-ago posts about our trip to Andalucía, when we saw Córdoba, Seville, Cádiz, the pueblos blancos, and Granada in seven days.  The trip was wonderful, but quite the whirlwind, and we were quite conscious that we were only getting to see the biggest attractions in each place.  So when it came to planning our trip for Christmas vacation, we decided to take a different strategy.  This time we had nine days, and we would spend them all in one place, taking things slowly, relaxing along the way.  We asked the Kid where in Europe he most wanted to go, and he immediately said "Rome!"

There were two reasons for this preference. One was that the Kid had studied Rome in third grade, with his mom/teacher, and had learned all about the Roman Republic.  The second was that, back in 2007, Zoë had taken me to Rome for three days to celebrate my 40th birthday.  Three years later, the Kid was still resentful about being left behind, and wanted to "catch up" with everything we'd seen.  I won't bother to try to determine which of these motivations weighed heavier in his mind.

The trip was made possible by Zoë's amazing mutant power, which allows her to find the best airfares, hotels/apartments anywhere.  As in Barcelona, our savings came at a cost.  We flew Ryan Air, whose seats do not recline, and who nickels-and-dimes you for everything.  The most astonishing thing on sale?  Scratch tickets.  The money goes to charity.  We think it's the employee retirement fund.  Our apartment was roomy and attractive, but on a ground floor / basement, and ended up being rather damp.  Still the prices were right, and the location of the apartment could not be beat.  Right near the Castel Sant' Angelo, on the Roman side of the Tiber, 10 minutes walking from the Piazza Navona.

I will not burden you with a blow-by-blow account which few of you will read anyway.   Those of you with interest, time to waste, or papers to grade, can spend time looking at my Ricardo's Rome Google Map.  There, I have marked everything we saw, and just about everywhere we ate.  You can click on the icons to see our reviews/reactions/advice.  The map is meant to be part journal, part resource for any of you planning your own trip to Rome one day.  For the rest of you, here are the highlights:

• We saw 18 churches, including St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.  For a full list, see the Google Map.  The Sistine Chapel, of course, was sublime.  I found myself very moved by it, just as much as the first time I saw it years ago.  St. Peter's was also spectacular.  It's not beautiful, but stunning.  What caught us all by surprise, however, were the Roman and medieval mosaics that you can see in Rome's oldest churches, like the Basilica of Cosmo & Damiani, or the Basilica of Santa María in Trastevere.  For pics of some of these, see Facebook.  We ended up going from one church to the other, on a mosaic hunt.
• We have long been fascinated by relics.  Not for devotional reasons, since we're all a pretty secular lot, but for the perverse fascination with this sort of fetishism.  We saw loads of cool relics, including the skull of St. Agnes, pieces of the manger, and the teeth of St. Martial.  Then there were the reliquaries containing cool relics that you couldn't see, like the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul, Peter's finger, and pieces from the table of the Last Supper.  Who knows if any of this stuff is actually what people believe it to be, but the ambiguity is one of the things that  make them so fascinating to us.
• We saw ruins.  Lots of ruins.  The Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Baths of Diocletian, etc.  The ruins in Rome proper were stunning, but what made our experience with all this really special was the day trip we took to Ostia Antica.  This was once Rome's port city.  It ended up getting buried by mud and silt over the years, and has now been mostly excavated, allowing you to visit a Roman city, as you do in visiting Pompeii or Herculaneum.  Ostia, though, is not crowded.  Oftentimes we found ourselves alone, wandering among the buildings.   Highlights included the theater, the tavern, the mill, and the latrines.  The Kid and I got to sit on 2000-year-old toilets.  "Sit," that is.  Notice there is no "h" in that word.
• We ate.  No splurge dinners to fancy Rome restaurants.  Just good, solid, affordable Roman food throughout the trip.  Lots of great pasta and pizza, and amazing gelato.  Great carbonara, artichokes in oil, fried zucchini, and some really good desserts involving marzipan, cheese, and fruit.

Now, attentive readers will have noticed a contradiction between the list above and the plans as set out in the first paragraph.  Did we take things slowly?  Relax?  Not at all.  You see, Rome is inexhaustible.  We are not, but we did our darnedest to test the limits.  My hip started to hurt.  Zoë's feet were killing her.  But we had a big fistful of naproxen sodium and we powered on.  Our last day we had an hour to kill before our transportation picked us up, so we went to the Castel Sant' Angelo and slowly, agonizingly trudged up its ramps and stairs to take in the view.  You can't tell from the picture we took there that we are all utterly and completely drained.

The best part of it all?  Witnessing the Kid's enthusiastic and engaged responses to everything.  He was thrilled as he entered the Colosseum (although later he found it a letdown).  He wanted to take pictures of everything in the Egyptian rooms of the Vatican Museums.  He was clearly moved by the Sistine Chapel.  He could not get over the fact that he was walking on the same roads that Roman emperors had walked upon in the Forum.  He wanted to take in every detail of every church.  He learned to distinguish at a snap between Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics.  He developed a preference for Bernini over Borromini.  He loved the pasta and gelato.  All in all, I think we made up for leaving him home three years ago.

The worst part of it all?  Enduring the Kid's enthusiastic and engaged reactions to everything.  Those of you who know my son know what a talker he can be.  Everything he sees and experiences comes accompanied by constant verbal commentary.  Sometimes he has wonderful things to say, like when he walked into a church, looked around, and said, "This is basically a Renaissance church with a Baroque altar, right?"  In our nerdy family, this is like scoring a touchdown.  Sometimes, though when the hour is late, and everyone is tired, it's all a bit too much for Dad with his sore hip and Mom with her aching feet, particularly if the naproxen sodium has begun to wear off.  I'll leave you with one example, a conversation had while exploring the crypt of the St. Peter's Basilica:

Santiago: I was just thinking.  When the Pope signs a check, does he use his Pope name or his real name?

Mom: Who pays for anything with checks these days?

Dad: Please, mi hijito, can you stop talking for the next ten minutes, and just look at the stuff?