Citizens of the world...

    In a previous blog entry supporting the need for an SHL track independent of the SSL track, I expressed concern for what was being sacrificed in order to achieve this goal. Indeed, I'm still not thoroughly convinced that separating the Spanish tracks is the most effective way to achieve the goal that we should ultimately be after, but in the absence of a better solution for the short term, I've decided to cast my lot with the split programs. I would like to take the space offered in this blog to discuss what I view as the greatest sacrifice resulting from the separation of the two programs.

    As the title of the blog would imply one of the goals that I would harbor for SHL, indeed for education in general, is the inculcation into students the desire to interface with humanity at large, and to bring an end to destructive nationalism, religious sectarianism, and discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, gender, social class and sexuality. Of paramount importance is that we view everyone else, first and foremost, as human beings worthy of our respect and compassion. This is a tradition that dates back a couple centuries B.C. with Socratic Thought. It was further elaborated (at least written about more prolifically) by Seneca and other Greek and Roman Stoic Philosophers as a necessary component to citizenship. The model of the university in its modern iteration is intended to foster that same spirit of preparation for citizenship. By giving the students who come to this campus a breadth of experience in multiple disciplines, we are engaging in an effort to produce roundly educated citizens.

    When we separate the programs in our department we are walking a very fine line. The arguments most commonly lodged in defense of the separation are those of decolonization and cultural affirmation. But these motives are vulnerable to criticism as being divisive and subversive in the aims of the pursuit of common humanity being instilled by the rest of the university. After all, the liberal approach taken by most American educational institutions, one which I tend to agree with, is that only a human identity that is greater than all our subordinate divisions can truly illuminate the need to reflect on one another's experiences across all those divisions. This is the same reason we cannot oblige a heritage language learner to enroll in the SHL classes nor can we exclude a non-Hispanic from enrolling.

    The ideal I would rather see is one in which the education system in New Mexico did a better job at being multicultural/multilingual from K-12 and at the post-secondary level. This is the true path to adequate preparation of citizens prepared to deal this our pluralistic society. Martha Nussbaum writes, "understanding of various nations and groups is a goal for every citizen, not only for those who wish to affirm a minority identity. The goal of education should not be the separation of one group from another, but respect, tolerance, and friendship-- both within a nation and among nations. This goal should be fostered in a way that respects the dignity of humanity in each person and citizen".

    So my decision to support the division of Spanish into two tracks is the result of dissatisfaction with the rest of the system, and not with the idea that having two tracks is the natural way to go. In the ideal situation I would do away with different levels that teach the "same" learning outcomes. Spanish would only be Spanish and it would be taught in a way that fosters a critical approach to intercultural learning as a vehicle to creating in the students a sense of the world citizenship that Socrates and the Stoics so vehemently argued in favor of. This is not to say that I don't already try to foster that sense in my SHL classes, but there is also a competing need to attend to other extralinguistic concerns engendered by a system that has not taken a multicultural approach to education.

Creating indelible language experiences

Today the Spanish 112 classes will be going to East San Jose Elementary School to share their libros infantiles with Sr. Cervantes' second grade class. Just as the students in the SUSHL program are a diverse group with varying abilities in relation to Spanish, so are the students of the dual-language program at East San Jose. Some of these kids are immigrants who have just arrived, others are 2nd-20th generation heritage language learners, while others come with no particular ties to the language (cultural, linguistic, familial, etc.). This last group of students is in the process of creating these ties to the language through the teacher, their interaction with the heritage speakers, and the overall experience they get from being in such a program. This is an environment where SSL learners and SHL learners are put together in the same classroom to learn from each other break down cultural barriers and negative myths. Is this possible at UNM? Perhaps it is easier with children, because both are in the position to develop their language abilities in first and second languages.

Returning to the topic at hand, scholar on education and language acquisition, James Gee, promotes the concept that teaching is all about creating wonderful learning experiences. I look forward to going to East San Jose and observing how all groups of language learners, regardless of age, interact with each other. It is my hope that through positive, indelible experiences with the Spanish language, students will be reconnected with their heritage language and culture, and ideally feel confident and motivated to continue their journey of language maintenance!

On KANW...

    I'm blogging today to tell you that I'm a fan of New Mexico music. Not just a fan, maybe even a junkie. This announcement may be of little surprise, and possibly of even less value to your day as you carry out the ever important, end of semester self-flagellation ritual we grad students pride ourselves in performing twice a year. Nevertheless, I feel I have to say it. In the course of some of our conversations regarding Spanish in New Mexico we have talked about the importance of contextualizing language into our pedagogy. It is important, we have concluded, to teach from a perspective that has some degree of personal relevance to our students. The book that Dr. González Velásquez wrote is important, we've agreed, because it has the names of places in New Mexico, and frames a fair amount of the conceptual knowledge from the local vantage point. And in the course of that discussion a couple different people have said that this is the same reason we listen to New Mexico music, because it relates to us at the local level. I contend that while it does do that, it does a whole lot more.

    That is why I have to write this blog. Because this morning I woke up and popped in a Tiny Morrie CD, served myself a fried egg over leftover Sadie's red chile chicken enchiladas and thought about the mythical aspect of New Mexico that haunts you when you leave this place. I smelled it as I walked out of class yesterday...the same smell that almost brought me to tears while I was watching a movie in a shopping mall theatre in Veracruz and a scene of the night in Albuquerque as seen from the West Mesa came on. A smell came out of a movie?...you're probably asking yourself. All I can say is yes. It was probably Frontier or El Patio I was smelling then and yesterday, but it was a combination of burning comal, green chile, tortilla and crisp air of Fall or Spring. It was searing childhood memories of matanzas, familia, working with horses and cattle, irrigating fields, and throwing parties all over New Mexico (well, from Albuquerque north). And most importantly it was Tiny Morrie singing "Sangre de indio". "...si supieras lo mucho que te amo, que hasta lágrimas lloro por ti."

    By now you're probably thinking, "holy cow, the end of the semester is really getting to Ricardo". But the truth is that this is really the rush of emotions that goes through me when I listen to this music. I don't listen to it to feel connected, to remember that I have a sense of place. I listen to music because it forms part of the myths and cultural memories around which my entire life has been built. "But the music isn't even that good," some of my friends have told me. Then don't listen to it, I've responded. Growing up in New Mexico/Southern Colorado was that good, was that haunting, has left that long of an impression on me. And the meter to which the magic was moving came blaring out of crappy, Kmart-special speakers crackling out tunes from Al Hurricane, Red Wine, Darren Córdova, Mezcal, Perfección, and probably a whole page worth of other artists I could bore you by listing. We don't listen to KANW because it makes us feel good that they mention our town. We listen to this music because it is the soundtrack of our existence, regardless of what anyone else might think. It is music lived, breathed, created, experienced by and for la gente de la tierra de mi chante...órale.

How can we better understand and serve HLLs?

"Most teachers have not been trained to work with students who already speak
or understand the target language or who have a strong connection with it. Similarly, language teachers brought in from countries where the languages are spoken have little or no idea about bilingualism and about the language competencies
of heritage students who have been raised in this country." (Valdes, 2001) The previous quote got me thinking about the fact that our training sessions at UNM for teaching Spanish are a few days long and they occur days before we embark in the task of teaching Spanish to college students in the Basic and Intermediate levels. While on the job, we take a methodology seminar for one semester. My questions are: Is this enough teaching training as to be fully immersed in teaching or be able to apply approaches to bilingualism and language competencies of heritage students ? Should TAs interested in teaching SLLs also take a a class on how to teach HLLs since HLLs in many cases opt to attend SSL classes?

Redesigning teaching practices?

I have read in more than one source that programs for HLL lack a standardized methodology/approach of their own. Take as an example Valdes 2001: "What is needed in order to support this growing interest in developing heritage/immigrant language resources is a coherent body of pedagogical theories about what can be
accomplished in a classroom setting relative to out-of-school acquisition, functions, and rewards." Since there aren't yet national/state standards regarding methods/approaches to better teach heritage background students, can we assume that there is no interest in this group or that standards for SLA apply to this group as well? How far beyond the focus on the 5 Cs: Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons, Communities can we go when teaching HLLs?

Un comentario solamente...

Esperemos que lo que acaba de pasar en Arizona nos ayude a entender de manera tangible que no podemos seguir trazando líneas que nos separen y nos etiqueten bajo leyes discriminatorias. Es de gran importancia hacer algo al respecto ya sea por medio de cartas, de blogs, debemos dar nuestra opinión, esta ley afecta no sólo a la población de Arizona sino a todos. El hecho de que algún miembro de la policía o cualquier otro oficial tenga una "sospecha" NO ES RAZON para que se trate a las personas como criminales. Imagínense uno de nosotros una noche yendo al super a la carrera que sólo traigamos licencia y dinero y nos pare un oficial y nos pida una identificación que determine el estatus migratorio, en muchos estados la licencia no es ID que sirva para este propósito vas a ir a la cárcel, y te van a deportar antes de hacerte un juicio, ¿es esto legal? Sé que no debemos escandalizar ni exagerar la ley, pero si pensamos en lo que hace Joe Arpaio en su cárcel no es difícil de suponer que se pueda llevar esto al extremo.
Bueno compañeros es sólo un comentario....

Arizona: New Linguistic Order

Just as I had expected it from Arizona, the law passed. Recently I have been seeing the news and the chaos created with the new law is big in so many ways but since we are speaking of language this law is big for that too. It is my belief that there is a hidden agenda with this new law. Now many of the immigrant families are now fleeing the state of Arizona into other states. One of the states that is going to have a major impact is New Mexico. Being a neighboring state of Arizona a lot of the immigrant families are going to end up in New Mexico. For New Mexico, at least in language terms, this is good. A whole new wave of Spanish is going to settle in the state. The linguistic borders have moves once again. I say that the linguist borders have moved because if you remove all those immigrant families from Arizona you are one step closer to English only. The exposure to the Spanish language is reduced by more than half making again English the superior language. Now what is scary is that all states would start to adopt this kind of law. I personally do not think so. We Spanish speakers are a drug and the others are dependent on the ecstasy of our language. Now I would be great to conduct a study since now to show the impact of this law in New Mexico linguistic dynamics.

heritage learners

I wanted to post a question that I had about the definition of heritage learners of a language; it was one that I asked for Wednesday's class, but we didn't get to discuss it. A couple people have already answered this, but I was wondering what the rest of you thought.

One of the basic requirements of being classified as a heritage learner is that the student must have some kind of personal connection with the language in question. Usually this means a cultural or ethnic background of which the language is a part. What about people who do not have the ethnic characteristics generally associated with the language, and also grew up as monolingual speakers of another language? Could these people be considered heritage speakers if people from the community in which they grew up (friends, classmates, etc.), spoke the language in question? Do any of you SHL TAs have students like this in your classes?

On Heritage Languages…

    All of us who grew up in the American public school system learned early on that Patrick Henry, in courageous defiance, uttered the phrase "Give me liberty or give me death". The context in which this speech was delivered was not without parallel to our current context. Of course, Henry delivered this line as part of a greater appeal to the Virginia government to join the cause for American revolution, and its legacy seems to permeate the very fabric of our existence. Before we are able to understand the concept of what could potentially be impediments thereto, the dogma of freedom and liberty are pushed upon us until we all feel the urge to chant call and response across the centuries with Mr. Henry himself. The problem with the liberal pursuit of freedom carried on and praised in the American cultural tradition by the likes of Thoreau, Steinbeck, Emerson, Whitman, Abbey and others is the failure to acknowledge the subjectivity of experience that comes with "freedom". It is curious the way we perceive things is rarely universal. What may be free to me (blogging contently on my Zimmerman library computer) is definitely not free to the guy who looks strikingly like my uncle, earning considerably less, but diligently completing his tasks sweeping the floor around the computer station. By the same token, the way I teach Spanish to the people who have grown up in similar circumstances to my own will necessarily look different than when someone else teaches Spanish to a general population class in SSL, or even if I myself teach Spanish in the SSL context.

    So where is this all going, you may ask (assuming you've made it this far). The parallel that can be drawn from this seemingly tangential aside is that Heritage language instruction was born out of the same circumstance. It was born out of the realization that what looked like a "good way" to learn a language in one context was not meeting the needs of a large population who had lived experience with the language in other contexts. In her latest publication, Kramsch calls for, "an ecologically oriented pedagogy that approaches language learning and language use not just as an instrumental activity for getting things done but as a subjective experience, linked to a speaker's position in space and history, and to his struggle for the control of social power and cultural memory". If we dissect such a statement, we realize that there are powerful implications. Language, in Kramsch's view is not adequately attended to by a "natural method" or a "communicative approach" because language and life are necessarily experiential. The language we use is a reflection of our existence. This is not something that is unique to SSL or SHL per se, but it is a discussion worth toying with for the purpose of my current blog.

When we've talked in class about who can be SHL vs. SSL teachers, and what qualitative differences exist between the two programs offered by our department, there is an important distinction to underscore. That distinction is not which program does better at attending to the type of pedagogy called for by Kramsch. I believe that both programs take great pride in trying to instill the spirit of Kramsch's goal into their instructors. The difference is a foundational philosophy. The field of SLA research can talk about "what we know" as a discipline and discuss patterns of language learning, metrics regarding common tendencies in language acquisition, and methods that have been fine tuned to enhance the intake/uptake/acquisition of conceptual language knowledge. I will be the last person you will hear downplay the importance of this type of research. I think that it informs language instruction universally, and can and should be incorporated into any method for teaching heritage languages. Where I find a deficiency in the SLA discipline for attending to Heritage language pedagogy is that it has generally regarded a language in the context of a code to be learned and mastered instead of a lived experience. It is comforting to know that the field of Pragmatics takes this lived experience of language as a point of departure and is beginning to make inroads in the SLA community at large. Unfortunately, however, it is not something we are seeing in the textbooks yet. (It is important to note that Heritage Language textbooks are generally not much better at attending to Pragmatics.)

The difference we see in SHL is that it takes for a point of departure the notion that language is an inextricable component of a person's existence. Indeed, language is the most formidable system we have to make meaning and communicate ideas beyond a basic sentimental/emotional level. As noted in Kramsch's citation, SHL pedagogy emphasizes the link in language to " a speaker's position in space and history, and his struggle for control of social power and cultural memory." We see this on a daily basis in SHL. When I first heard the term decolonization I was skeptical in that I viewed myself as a child of the Patrick Henry tradition, always having been free to think, read, write whatever it was that suited my family, community and heritage in the best interest of the collective. It turns out that this is not the case. It is amazing to me that subjects such as civil rights, Chicano history, New Mexico history and circumstances that lead to our becoming a state and designing our constitution the way we did have quickly been forgotten. Things as recently as the Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid in the 1960s have all but been forgotten by the New Mexico education system. Land grants, though they figure prominently in New Mexico's history, are not something highlighted in our history classes. Instead we get civil war battles at Glorieta, Billy the Kid, the Pueblo Revolt, and Oñate as topics we learn. The point to all this tirade, is not that we need to radically change the education system (perhaps we do, but not for the purposes of this blog) but rather that control of social power and cultural memory is linked to language in the most essential ways. Furthermore, the maintenance of this control is premeditated, measured, and comprehensive.

Indeed it is only through programs like SHL, only available at the University level, only available to those who were successful at mastering the tradition of liberty as preached by Patrick Henry, that people are even granted access to an alternate perspective. In my class this semester, only people who had taken Chicano studies knew who Cesar Chavez was, only two knew of Corky Gonzales and Reies Lopez Tijerina, and none of them knew that the national guard was called out in the 1960s to restore order in Tierra Amarilla. This is the reason why there needs to be a separate track. I have myriad concerns about what is being sacrificed to achieve this, but this is one of the few tools we have to attempt to mend the link between a birthright language and our collective subjectivity as "manitos". Our position in space and history remains a mystery because we have not demanded control of our cultural memory at an institutional level. Did we ever stop to ask ourselves what led to the differences (I don't even have to mention them because you know what they are if you grew up or spent enough time in Burque) between Rio Grande / Highland / Valley when compared to Albuquerque Academy / Sandia Prep / La Cueva? Probably not until you got to college, had become conversant in the rhetoric of the American revolution, and were already harboring ambitions of moving to that side of town and sending your kids to the latter kind of schools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf9ZbduiwkM&feature=related

Wow, I thought after our conversation in class today you guys might appreciate this. It is a bit old from 2008 but put in perspective some of the views out there.

Descolonizacion = Dualidad

Al parecer Nuevo México ha pasado por dos estados de colonización. Colonización por parte de los colonizadores españoles y colonización por parte del estado Norte Americano. Ahora la descolonización se da al intentar recuperar la lengua. ¿La pregunta es, descolonización de cual parte de esta sociedad hibrida? Al parecer esta descolonización también crea una inestabilidad lingüística cual afecta el estado presente de la lengua en el norte del estado. Todavía siento que existe una gran dualidad y un gran rechazo en establecer el español Nuevo Mexicano como HL.

Inductive grammar

After reading Damian's article, I felt very enlightened. I like how he outlines comprehensive input and how to approach grammatical points on page 21. This is an inductive approach, that seeks to find out what students know first, BEFORE introducing the grammatical point. Students are presented with the form and go through exercises where they make observations and compare what they see with what they already know. To be honest, I have never consciously approached grammar in this way, but it makes sense. I'm wondering what a sample lesson plan would look like that would be organized around this approach. This would be a very interesting and popular workshop for TAs.

¿¿¿Soy circunstancial o electivo???

Después de leer el artículo de Valdés acerca de los bilingües electivos o circunstanciales me puse a pensar que tan "circunstancial" es cuando se les "obliga" a ser bilingües, y se les obliga porque no olvidan su idioma materno y a su vez se le hace aprender el idioma dominante.¿Es valido este concepto de Valdés? Cuántos niños hay que se les obliga a interpretar para sus padres ellos no eligieron ser bilingües lo son porque han estudiado en este país y a la vez sólo se les habla español en casa, es circunstancia o es casi obligación. Y en realidad cuáles son los bilingües electivos, ¿los turistas, los intelectuales, los de la clase alta? Es un artículo muy bueno que explica las diferencias entre un grupo y otro pero en la vida real creo que estas divisiones van mucho más allá que estas dos categorías. Yo soy de los dos, pero también fui forzada a aprender el inglés si quería conseguir la ciudadanía o si no quería ser discriminada por mi lengua.

Census Issues

While the Census is a helpful tool, I think many people are afraid this is just another method of using socio-economic stats against certain minority/majority groups. As a result, I sometimes question the integrity of the information that is obtained through this method. While this is one of the best tools we currently have to obtain valuable information for research in sociolinguistic trends, we must be conscious of the validity of some of the information and factor that into our research.

An example of the negative attitudes toward the Census is the activist group in Roswell that was trying to boycott the Census and was advising immigrants that they should not participate. I think this paranoia should be taken seriously especially when trying to determine how long (i.e. how many generations) a family has been here. Another example is the income bracket they claim to be in which is sometimes either overestimated or underestimated for various reasons. I mention this because in a few articles we have read, these two items seem to be factors in how the investigator is concluding why certain groups retain the language.

I am not against the Census in any way, in fact I think it provides valuable information. However, I think we need to be realistic in just how many people may be hesitant to be truthful if they even fill out the forms at all. The hispanic population seems to be exponentially increasing but many of the members of this population go unaccounted due to fears of self-identifying for fear of deportation.

intergenerational transfer

Today's discussion about intergenerational language transfer was really interesting to me. The point was brought up that younger children generally speak less of the home language than their older siblings. I do not disagree or intend to refute this point, but it made me think of an interesting anecdote that I read recently. As part of another class I am going through several transcribed interviews from the famous NMCOSS project, and I came across someone who had two grandsons. This informant claimed that the reverse situation appeared to be happening in his or her family; the YOUNGER of the two boys was more fluent in Spanish than his older brother. This observation intrigued me, and especially after today's class.

Why is Spanish so important?

At the beginning of the semester, I posed the question of why everyone was making such a big deal about Spanish, while seemingly ignoring other minority languages in this country. I still maintain that in a perfect world each language would be highly valued and be put in the spotlight of linguistic literature and research to the same extent that Spanish has. However, I also understand that Spanish is native language of many citizens of this country, and this large population is probably the reason that Spanish is receiving so much attention. I also want to say that Spanish holds a special place in my heart as a native New Mexican. Even though I didn't learn the language from my parents, I still feel that it forms a core part of my identity, and I hope to pass it on to my children someday. I don't even know what I'm trying to say with this blog entry, but I guess it boils down to the fact that I am of two minds. On the one hand, Spanish is a treasure that definitely should not be forgotten or lost. On the other hand, I wish that other languages received the same amount of attention and value as Spanish. Maybe there are parts of the country where this plays out, and I hope so.

En fin...

I would like to elaborate further on the article by Bills and Vigil 1999. We have repeatedly read articles on language attitudes and language shifts. In the end, what is the conclusion? Spanish has fought to be maintained, yet we do not hear of other languages having this issue, or are we just not listening? For example, native U.S. languages exist but due to barriers that were built by the natives in order to protect and conserve the culture, prohibit us from having access or learning it. If others were permitted to learn the native language, how would this have changed or affected language variety in New Mexico? Would there have been more integration of languages? Would we be learning their language in schools? If no perseverance of maintaining Spanish in the U.S. was needed and the language was finally accepted and considered just as prestigious as English, would this fight of maintenance continue? Do you think it will ever be considered just as prestigious? Do you think language attitudes towards Spanish would change? We see the continuous influence of ‘Mexican Spanish’ and English in the US, what do you think will happen in 20 or 50 years? Furthermore, for the reason that the U.S. is home to more than one language and culture, I do not believe that one “mother tongue” exists. In my opinion, there is no ‘mother tongue’ expect when taken literally. We all speak the language our ‘mothers’ raised us with, including of course the influence of language contact in relation to where you were raised, therefore, in my opinion there is no official ‘mother tongue’. At last, when will there be in end to people having to fight for ‘their mother tongue’?

Spanish......

Una vez más me encuentro con el sentimiento contrariado de ver una variación del español la cual no conocía. Es un poco difícil para mí entender que se quiera etiquetar todo lo que se habla, sé que es en nombre de la "ciencia"; sin embargo, las relaciones entre estados, entre países, entre razas, entre humanos, etc siempre ha existido no importa qué lengua se hable. Para mí es más significativo ver cómo se han hecho esas relaciones, cómo se ha logrado la comunicación aun hablando distintos idiomas o dialectos. (No es un ataque aunque lo parezca) Sólo lo menciono porque para mí estos contactos de la lengua por sí solos son relevantes y poder apreciar que aun hablando un mismo español existan diferecias tan marcadas podemos comunicarnos y sobre todo podemos aprender de unos y otros.

On gender assignment

Can gender assignment be considered an analogical process?
I thought I should share the following which are two thought provoking articles on the role of intuition in gender assignment in Spanish:
Native speaker intuitions as a basis for determining noun gender rules in Spanish. by Diana Natalicio available at the Southwest Journal of Linguistics and the article: "Spanish Gender Assignment in an Analogical Framework" by David Eddington

Also, from our class discussion questions/comments : While it makes sense that terminal phonemes play a part in the assignment of gender to English-origin borrowings, I am surprised that the phonology of the words in other aspects apparently does not have much influence on assignment, especially in the case of similarly pronounced synonyms. It seems to me that a Spanish speaker who regularly says el aeropuerto might, in English, be primed to say el airport, since the words begin in a phonetically similar way. Similarly, someone who says la electricidad might say la electricity.

Medieval Linguistics

Damian has stated that those of us who are Spanish medievalists are some sort of linguists and I find this to be correct. While the linguistic transcriptions that are done now days are mostly from the spoken form to the written form the are those of us who still remain focusing on transcribing from old Spanish to modern Spanish. Those of us who have done transcriptions have focused on the transcription style from the University of Wisconsin Medieval Studies. Now, what we medievalists are missing is the actual phonology of the era. Personally I would love to have heard the way they pronounced the words and how they carried out their language but those times are gone and probably that sort of data will never be available. Medievalists always have to juggle words and styles, because all the scribes had their styles, in order to make sense of the literature. Sometimes we even have to transform ourselves into a person from that era. Manuscripts are extremely challenging but they expose every possible clue to the era, including the sociolinguist changes.

Late-bloomer

Although we weren't able to get to this in the class discussion. I still crave your comments. El article de Brown me impactó bastante. I feel like pronouncing nosotros and asina with the unique /s/ reduction that is so characteristic of these high frequent lexical items. If I did this, would it be a form of emblematic pronunciation, in reference to the parallel term “emblematic Spanish”? Quiero decir, no me críe hablando español, ni aprendí a hablar con un acento nuevo mexicano. Sin embargo, ahora que puedo hablar en español, platico con mis abuelos y con mi tío. Mientras más hablo con ellos, más me doy cuenta de que sí hablan al estilo nuevomexicano descrito por Brown. I know that some of you have mentioned that it could be offensive trying to imitate the dialect of a particular group, but would it be offensive for me to try and imitate the dialect of my own family members? I feel like I'm starting to pick up certain traits a bit late, pero mas vale tarde que nunca, que no.

Acuérdate que eres polvo...

Me encanta el próximo artículo que estamos leyendo para esta clase. Siendo del sur de Colorado, y siendo mis abuelos maternos de Taos, el lenguaje a que hacen referencia para mí es algo tangible, enredado en memorias y sentidos, índice de niñez que despierta al oír algunas de las palabras como cuerpo(blusa), túnico(vestido), y hasta "cuara" por la moneda estadounidense. Sin embargo, hay una cosa que siempre me ha molestado con respecto a los actitudes "orgánicas" hacia mi lengua madre. Lo que más me estorba es que diga la gente que hablamos el español de España, traído directamente a la Nueva México por los conquistadores, actitud que, aunque técnicamente correcta, resiste a ver a la situación en su totalidad. Otra asunto de la misma visión borrosa, aunque quizás más comprensible, es que la falta de conocimiento de la historia de la gente de nuestro pueblo invita interpretaciones y extrapolaciones sin bases históricos, y en unos casos no tan raros, meras invenciones. Este artículo, si bien se promulgara por las comunidades y se enseñara en las escuelas públicas de esta región, se comprobaría muy útil en el remediar de ambas quejas.
Para empezar, ya ni siquiera se usa el español en forma cualquiera como lingua franca entre los de mi generación. Cantamos rancheras, comemos frijoles y tortillas, y sin lugar a dudas tragamos tequila, pero el español como forma de comunicación auténtica entre los jóvenes (y ya menos jóvenes) de San Luis se ha desvanecido. Tuve que enfrentar a esa realidad cruda este verano al asistir a la reunión/aniversario de diez años de graduación de Centennial High School. Para conmemorar a nuestros compañeros de clase (eran tres) que habían fallecido desde que graduamos, firmamos marcos para sus respectivas familias y se los regalamos de parte de la clase, compartiendo allí mismo mensajes breves los que quisieran. Resulta que uno de los que fallecieron (que en paz descanse) fue amigo y vecino mío que murió poco después de que nos graduáramos en un choque automovilístico. Sin entrar en más historia, es relevante que mi amigo, se llamaba Juanito Rael a propósito, y yo hablábamos mucho en español y espanglish. Pues, cuando escribí mi mensaje en el marco, en español de costumbre, mis compañeras de clase me acusaron de "showing off" por el hecho de que escribí en español...muestra clarísima de que no sólo se ha muerto el idioma en los de mi generación, pero que la presión de no usarlo persiste. Además cabe mencionar que de los pocos compañeros de clase que tengo de descendencia anglo, ninguno estaba en la reunión. Es una realidad trágica que, en mi opinión, proviene de la falta de conocimiento de nuestra historia.

Compartiré más a continuación porque este sí que es un tema que me provoca mucho feeling.

View on Hiatus Resolution

I decided to post my questions on Matthew Alba’s article since even though I did not enjoy reading it, it provided some interesting information. First of all, I did not understand the importance of hiatus. Hiatus is defined as the occurrence of heterosyllabic adjacent vowels either at the word boundary (la-escuela) or at the syllable boundary (re-al) (251). The repeated example of ‘la escuela’ is not an occurrence that is particular of Spanish in my opinion. I think this happens in all languages. Researchers realize that hiatus occurs in many languages, but it is not tolerated, therefore resolution usually will occur. Would you agree with this claim, especially when I think examples such as wanna go, gonna go are a maintained reduced form and we can see that here reduction is done to simplify the expression. It is further stated that unreduced forms tend to be accessed/used more often than reduced forms. It is difficult for me to agree with this statement since I think the expressions as those mentioned above are high-frequency that should be or are accessed or used more often than the unreduced form. Therefore I thought this article should be categorized more of an informational article rather than actual research. I do not think resolution versus maintenance can be determined; it is simply the flow of speech.

On Silva Corvalan's last reading

Since we didn't get time to go through all of the questions last week, I thought I'd bring this one up to you all via our virtual round table:
Do we all agree with the author’s claim that “the hastening of changes in the direction of the regularization of paradigms, and the loss of one or more competing structures with closely related meanings is in any(*) way motivated by the bilingual’s need to lessen his cognitive load when having to communicate rather frequently in two or more languages…”?
(*)Just a side note: This “any” sounds deceptive to me in an affirmative sentence.

On combined classes or independent SHL

Since last class, I've been thinking about the ability of a non-local teacher to teach SHL classes. If a teacher is not local, is not fully familiar with the Spanish of a particular region or community even, how will he or she be able to discern the difference between a mistake and variation? Is there any way to account for this?

La luz por fin!!!!

Es la primera vez que después de leer un artículo termino entendiendo lo que leí. Este artículo de Clegg y Waltermire es en mi opinión muy claro y explica lo que están buscando y cómo hicieron su estudio. Además es un estudio interesante y relevante. Curiosamente en una clase de literatura se mencionaba los artículos y su género, y ahora ver que en inglés el artículo no define el género, pero que al usar estos sustantivos del inglés el hablante le asigna un artículo y con ello un género me surgen preguntas. Una de ellas sería ¿esta asignación de género se hace de manera automática? ¿cómo es que el cerebro decide que género es? En el artículo se habla de que la asignación puede ser por tres factores: biológico, sinónimico o por la terminación de la palabra. Es muy interesante ver cómo funciona el lenguaje y nosotros sin darnos cuenta alteramos o modificamos los sustantivos y logramos normalizarlos dentro del habla diaria. Este artículo sí me gustó!!! :)

Linguistic wave patterns: The ECG of linguistics

Well, I am going to try to explain my theory of linguistics as a sound wave. It seems that language has a perpetual motion effect that continues no matter what. Of course language is not a single wave but a multiplex set of waves that run parallel like a current. A single wave is composed of a mid point plateau, upper ascending, top climactic point, upper descending, plateau, lower descending, low climactic point, lower ascending, plateau an so on. The midpoint or where the plateaus happen is the points of change within one language. For example, if there is an extension of estar this would be marked as a plateau because it is a change to the established rule. The length of the wave segments marks the time it takes for the change to occur or the length of time it takes for the decline or uptake of a linguistic doing within the language. Now in the English language this same wave pattern happens and when something like codemixing happens the waves intermingle overlapping in the high and low climactic points. I think of this whole thing as the ECG of linguistics. Hopefully I can develop some kind of software where I can map speech. Hopefully this does not create a “so what” feeling but it is more a scientific approach that can actually be used in application.

Extensions, code switch, calques...

Throughout the semester we have read several different articles that sometimes seemed repetitive and subjective. However, as the semester progresses and we delve into the purpose behind the articles, I am able to understand better (than I did at the beginning of the semester) why the people who write these articles and do the research are so passionate about the work. I feel that there will always be some sort of personal interest in any type of research, but this is what drives investigators after all.

I am able to be less critical than I think I was at the beginning of the semester. I have been able to get valuable information from these articles for the classroom, and while I wish the articles were written for this audience, I understand the reason they are not. Perhaps more linguists will pay attention to the value of the information these articles contain and how that could transfer to the classroom or maybe even write a book or two like the one Potowski wrote about heritage learners. While I realize getting the research out in the Academia world is important, they are forgetting that the research they are doing could be making a greater difference if directed to a more complete audience.

SSL and SHL together

Wednesday's discussion about integrating SSL and SHL classes recalled an experience that I had in an elementary school Spanish class. It wasn't major or even necessarily negative, but you know how certain things stick in your mind better than others? Well, that's what happened to me in this case, and it is something that I've thought about every once in a while over the years. As a child, I had no idea that there was even a difference between SSL students and SHL students, because we were all taught together by one teacher who rotated around the school to the different grade levels during the week. I will be the first to say that I learned textbook Spanish and standard grammar; no mention was really made of dialectal differences, and I agree that it is something that would have been extremely useful in my future language development. The only difference I remember learning was in the pronunciation of the letter "y." We were taught that in some places this letter is pronounced like the "s" in "measure," but that only one person in the room should really use it, since she had family who spoke like that. I remember asking myself, even then, why the rest of us shouldn't use that pronunciation if we chose. I realize that the comment was innocently made, and that this was over ten years ago, but I think that students should be able to speak the way that makes them most comfortable. (Of course, academic language should be stressed in the classroom, but variation should not be discouraged.) That is why I am so glad that both SSL and SHL have recently made leaps and bounds in their teaching methodologies and philosophies.