The thing is, I am intensely intrigued by this whole idea of intercultural experience. When you look at it, we're basically talking about having an impact in the evolution of culture and that means generalized global evolution of humanity!!! Which is a pretty cosmic idea, when you think about it! So I look at myself, I look at my kids, but then I think, WAIT! Let's go back... because I realize that if I look at my grandparents, and their parents, well, talk about interculturalizing and going global!! And I think of my grandmother telling us to "cut off the lights"! How that cracked us up (she was from Russia; is that how she envisioned the act of turning off the light??)
Then I remember at the beginning of my life in Mexico (D.F. at the time), when I was living with my MIL, learning Spanish through a dictionary and telenovelas (Muchacha Italiana Viene a Casarse and Pacto de Amor)... how, one day, when she saw that I was bummed out, she asked me what had happened and I said, "... es que Car está encabronado conmigo." She didn't even bat an eyelash! Wonderful woman. (though she must have mentioned something to her son about explaining to his lady about unacceptable language, because he later told me that there were certain ways of expressing things that I really shouldn't use around most people...)
And you know, I never got it about "usted". I took advantage of the fact that people would indulge me and let me address them as "tu". It was YEARS before I really consciously tried to maintain a conversation in the polite mode with anyone. Even today, I immediately try to get onto a "tu" level...
Sometimes I wonder if sooner or later that whole usted thing will go the way of thee and thou... but then will it happen with the French and their Vous, or with the Germans and their Sie....? I don't know, but I think it's interesting to note that because of so much inter-country gadding about, all of our languages, customs, traditions, and even our basic ideas about life are rubbing off on those who are just trying to stay in one place and have an uncomplicated existence. We're all affected by it. So we go back and forth, up and down on the yes/no, love/hate, global/save-our-culture seesaw of conclusions and of course we're always right no matter which side we're on.
So sometimes I can't wait for the peso to merge with the dollar and for Spanish to merge into English, and, as step one: for Spanish to be more relaxed, with people meeting each other for the first time and saying - Hola, como estás? (asking a direct question to me so I don't end up looking around to see who they are referring to... and with no upside-down question mark at the beginning in the written version).
I see all this happening in my daily life, where, at work, people are really laid back and the e-mails flow without a lot of usted-ishness and double punctuation. And English is so all-around, that I can go whole days without speaking more than a few lines of Spanish!!
But then, something'll happen and I'll be back on the other side of the coin, treasuring how people defer to each other and how nice it is to be able to keep your distance while being polite at the same time (¡!) and how, when you're reading, you know it's a question from the beginning because that upside down question mark points it out. So then I staunchly defend the Cemita against the burger... or at least the Bufalo against the McDonald's burger... And I write a poem or song to myself in Spanish just for the delicious melody of the language...
When I was growing up, there was alway the "assimilation" question... (I'm not going to explain it, but anyone who's been through it knows what I'm talking about...) Should we? How much would be okay? Why were we so cautious? Was it because we were trying to protect our customs and traditions? Was it fear of the unknown? Was it unwillingness to change, wanting the comfort of having predictable lives and a comfortable routine? Was it the desire to be in control?
Today, in a completely different set of circumstances, I still find myself needing and wanting to assimilate, and yet, secretly rejoicing in being different... Wherever we go, people inevitably ask us where we're from - we're such a strange-looking and even stranger-acting family. Car always answers: "Soy un ciudadano del mundo."
I simply tell people - with a very straight face: "La luna."
6 comments:
But Minshap, in English we use you, which is actually Usted. Thee means tu, and is the informal. I used to play faire, and one of the things we did even if it was incorrect was address the patron (customers) as thee and thou even though that was actually familiar. So in English we got more formal and Spanish is getting less formal.
In my opinion language forms culture or maybe culture forms language, but you never really understand a culture until you speak their language. The keys lose themselves here, stuff just happens, that is a key into the Mexican psyche.
regards,
Theresa
I think you've found your blog voice.
Congratulations and WELCOME!
And that's why Hubby calls you "moon mom".
*smile*
Fned.
theresa: you are absolutely right, and I know it's true that the thee form was supposed to be the informal, but somehow, it's never sounded informal to me! In fact, it's always sounded not only extremely formal, but also much too complicated to use on an everyday basis... and in "complicated" I mean just pronouncing the words within a stream of words... "you", "your" and "yours" flow much smoother than "thee" "thou" "thy" and "thine"... And that's how "usted" and all the conjugations of the verbs applied to it seem to me... COMPLICATED! Anyway, isn't the whole point of communication to make your point?? So why do we always want to complicate things???
fned: OH! THAT'S TRUE! You see? He gets it about nationalities (or should I say "universalities"?). Must be from looking at the world through the eye of a camera!
theresa: I forgot to add the most important part: maybe what happened was that we realized that the "informal" was really too formal (as you said when you referred to playing "faire" (??) so we decided to just stick with the 'technically formal' way, since it seemed to fulfill both functions!
It was explained to me that the reasons Americans dropped the thee form, was because we are all equals therefore we address each other as you, since thee was for inferiors.
When I said play faire, it is because I was a participant in several Renaissance Pleasure Faires. I can't remember exactly but the saying is everyone is thee to the Queen but God and her horse. Because I spoke Spanish all the thee,thou,thine all made perfect sense to me, I didn't understand why it was so hard for other people. Talk about cross cultural.
regards,
Theresa
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