Cultura

It’s Not News to Us

Born in the USA: The secret downside of espeaking Spanglish

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primos“Wow, it’s so cool you can speak Spanish,” people tell me after they hear me on the phone with my mom.

I say thanks and try to shrug it off, but I worry that letting them think that gives a mistaken impression.

I mean, yes. I can speak Spanish.

My parents taught me Spanish when I was growing up in California because it was the only language they had to give.

Like a lot of children of immigrants, I grew up in a Mexican immigrant bubble – my tias and tios spoke only Spanish. My baby primos spoke Spanish with me when we watched Plaza Sesamo and ate conchitas.

Mas…Born in the USA: The secret downside of espeaking Spanglish

Grammar vigilantes are on a mission to correct Quito graffiti (photos)

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They may not be the heroes that Ecuador needs or deserves but they sure do get pissed off when you don’t know where a comma goes.

Since January, vigilantes in Quito, Ecuador have been correcting mistakes in the city’s graffiti.

These guerillas use stencils cut from pizza boxes to add commas, question marks and, ah yes, even accent marks to imperfect street art around town.

The members of Acción Ortográfica Quito take their pseudonyms (or superhero names) from punctuation marks: Diéresis, Tilde and Coma.

Diéresis, a 30-year-old lawyer/vigilante, told The Guardian in an interview, “Grammatical errors cause stress. We only make texts comprehensible that otherwise would not send any message whatsoever.”

Mas…Grammar vigilantes are on a mission to correct Quito graffiti (photos)

Wassup with San Diego college guys in ‘cholo pantalones?’

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pantalonesheaderOzzie Monge unearthed this little tidbit of San Diego State University history — a bizarre attack on Mexican attire that ran in the student newspaper in 1922.

Foreshadowing Donald Trump, the students are quite sure about Mexico. “There,” they explain, “poverty is a profession.”

In Monge’s words:

Racism and Anti-Mexicanism at San Diego State College in the 20’s? Say it isn’t so….Anglos hating on Mexicans, hating on Indians, yet they proudly declare that their school is Del Sudoeste (a product of the imagined, romanticized Spanish past – and Eurocentrism) and will later take on the moniker Aztec from the imagined, romanticized version of the conquest they developed.

Mas…Wassup with San Diego college guys in ‘cholo pantalones?’

South Carolina KKK Confederate flag march is better with tuba (video)

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tubakkkEarlier this week, in Columbia, South Carolina, Confederate-flag-waving Ku Klux Klan white wingers paraded downtown. The paramilitary-garbed haters were joined by an uninvited sousaphone player who provided ironic musical accompaniment. (A sousaphone is the marching band variety of tuba that wraps around the player, making it easier to carry.) Enjoy the tubalicious music (is that Wagner?) AND the play-by-play commentary from a woman who may also be the videographer/uploader. “Stupid is as stupid does,” she notes. “This is a family tree with no branches.”

Mas…South Carolina KKK Confederate flag march is better with tuba (video)

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