Get your own

Maybe I'm just a little crankier than usual today, but reading the papers, magazines, and even the academic stuff, I'm shocked at how much English the Argentines interject into their Spanish. And it's getting tiresome.

Part of the reason may be they have a different and more limited vocabulary, such that there is, for example, no direct translation for something like "accountability". This of course also has all sorts of interesting cultural implications and, by extension, socio-legal implications. So, for example, when reading a paper in Spanish on the judicialization of politics and social accountability in argentina, it'll say la judicializacion y "la accountability" -- and then proceed through the ENTIRE paper to refer to "la accountability". The lack of a spanish word for the concept was confirmed in one of my interviews -- where it was suggested that the closest word they do have is responsability or responsabilidad, which isn't quite the same.

I suspect the use of the word is also a tag or an academic label used by the author to associate her work with other work being done on accountability. A self-serving short cut, if I am being unkind; an effort to generate a subfield replete with its own jargon, if I'm being kind.

This goes for newspapers and rags and the news and tv/radio/daily conversation generally. So, for example:

* Someone might be concerned about his or her "look"
* Or, "que HOT" or "una chica HOT"
* Or, "el ranking"
* Or, "vea los LIVE"
* Or, "Pelo y make-up"
* Or "relax bajo el sol"
* "20% off"
* "piel sexy"
* "25 beauty trucos"
* "vamos shopping"
* "El show"
* "El judicial activism"
* "un leading case"

Etc. And it's not always because there isn't a direct translation or at least a suitable one. Live for example would be en vivo and leading cases are known as casos testigo or casos paradigmaticos. Hot, caliente. Judicial activism, activismo judicial. So what gives? Am I turning into a fascist? I don't think so. When speaking Spanish I often slide back into English because it's able to catch nuances better and I can, therefore, express myself more completely. Sometimes I'll slip into Spanish or Italian or Portuguese because there's a word there that works better or catches exactly what I'm trying to say. But when there's a Spanish word that works just fine, I use it. Everyone who knows me knows I freely mix and play with my languages, but for some reason the way it's being done here bothers me. Quizas I'm just being duplicitous.

Anyway, the subte strike is over just in time for holy week (I guess the strikers wanted to get out of the city too). And I suspect most everyone will be out or off tomorrow. I'll pick things back up on Monday, do a little reading in the meantime.

B.