America Misunderstood
// April 6th, 2009 // General
Why people abroad have this frightening image of us?
We export equivocated “foreign” culture.
You may be surprised to find out how often and why “AMERICA” is so misunderstood by so many people around the world.Misunderstandings result from the peculiar way we see the world and from the peculiar way the world sees us. “How come?” you may say, “American films, books, and television programs are well known all over the world.” Exactly, the fact that we downpour our culture on so many peoples creates most of those misunderstandings!
The causes for misinterpretation vary. However, we provide almost all of them. The world sees us through fun-house mirrors provided by us. Through similar mirrors we see the world and even ourselves in a peculiar way, too. The most noticeable of these fun-house mirrors is our language.
After listening to claims and complaints from people all over the world, 
I found out that English, our English, causes most of these misunderstandings. “But English is almost universally spoken!” you may say. Basic English yes! English, no. In fact, most English speakers do not believe that those who are not native to the language will ever get to learn it well. Furthermore, being a language, which is not mutually intelligible with any other, English instills in us a sense of alienation characteristic to such languages.
England created the English language, but the USA was the nation that turned it into the richest language on earth and a formidable communication tool. It was our nation, open to changes, immigration, new mores and new ideas that made English universal. We have ethnic groups from every corner of the world and each of them has contributed to make English what it is today.Nevertheless, absorption has been too fast sometimes, leaving no room for analysis. Once the majority accepts a simple word or phrase, that word — or phrase — freezes, allowing no correction or adjustment in spelling, meaning or pronunciation. Rectification rarely happens in English. This inability to rectify and correct words is the dark side of the English language. The expression “coining” clearly describes what usage does to a new word or phrase: it makes it metal solid. Incorrigible usage gave us a multitude of traditional errors nailed them so deeply into our minds that no one can hammer them out of our heads.
Contrary to most European languages, English develops rather freely under the suggestions of a few dictionaries. Other European languages follow the dictates of official language institutions or “academies” to cleanse usage periodically. The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, for instance, controls Spanish. This institution has affiliates in every Spanish-speaking country in the world (including the U.S.A.). Consequently, it takes decades for European academies to accept a new word, and even longer to include its acceptation in their official dictionaries. In fact, by the time their Academicians allow a new word in their dictionaries the word in question might have fallen in disuse. English, on the contrary, keeps on adding words to its already enormous list. But the absorption of words from other languages is so fast that seldom the original spelling changes (façade, cañón, marijuana). In some instances, those dictionaries don’t copy the spelling of a foreign word correctly. However, once usage sanctions a word, no matter how wrong its spelling or its meaning may be, no further change can done. The fact that English seldom tolerates spelling changes, regardless of how much they are needed, became historical when Theodore Roosevelt wanted government documents printed with a simplified spelling.
For that purpose, he suggested a list of words with simplified spelling proposed by scholar Brander Matthews. Roosevelt got in serious trouble with Congress and finally, he had to give up his quest for a more logical approach to spelling or else. All he wanted was to simplify the tuf spelling of a few of words.
Teddy Roosevelt gave up his dreams of seeing words like knife, tough and laugh, spelled nife, tuf and laf. However, not all the words in Matthews’s list were lost. Theater and center, are universally accepted today. Thru, nite and rite are words often seen on highway billboards and printed ads, however, never in formal written English. They all belong to that notorious list written by a man who wanted logic to prevail upon usage. Too-fast absorption and reluctance to change accepted usage are not only linguistic habits. They can also be applied to our handling ideas, classifications and other pieces of knowledge. Years and years of contact with other cultures (please notice that I didn’t say foreign cultures) gave me this idea of listing the most common misinterpretations that exist between the world and us. This list will help you understand why people you don’t even know, or people who don’t know you may be nasty to you, just because you happen to be — American. The word America itself is the best example. You may find this surprising, but the fact that you call yourself American bothers a lot of people — especially those who share the same hemisphere (America) with you.
Why? Because they think you stole the name “American” from them, descendants of the discoverers and conquistadors of America (the whole continent, not only our country).
How was it that our country “stole” the name of the Hemisphere?
Who suggested the name “United States of America”?
Few people ever notice that our country has no real name. The United States is not a proper name per se. You may call it a collective or descriptive name, but united states could refer to any group of states anywhere in the world. This ambiguity was apparently corrected by adding America to United States. Instead it was then when an ambiguity really started, because people mistook the name of the continent for the name of our country. This is how it came to be that we call the U.S., America and the people living in the U.S. are
Americans.
At the forming stages of our nation, an attempt was made to name our country Columbia, after Columbus. That is why the location of its capital was then called District of Columbia. Some may even remember a song titled Columbia, Gem of the Ocean. Some sculptors erected statues honoring Columbia, suspiciously similar to the Statue of Liberty (often seen in Columbia Picture logo). However, for some unknown and unclear reason, the name Columbia was dropped like a hot potato All references to its proposal and refusal — but especially to its refusal — was lost in reference books and encyclopedias.
It is pure speculation whether this lack of information on such an important matter as the naming of a nation was a cover up or if it has something to do with the fact that the United States was first mentioned as Columbia in a poem dedicated to George Washington, written by a woman, or the fact that she was black, or the fact that she was a Senegal-born slave from Massachusetts.
However, nowadays few people know that Phyllis Wheatley was behind that suggestion. Lacking a real name, the nation and its nationals took it spontaneously out of its last word of the one artificially given, America. Usage sanctioned it and froze it forever. “So, big deal,” you may say; but, have you ever bothered to ponder what happened then to the other millions of Americans? Well, our choice tagged them with an adjective forever. Spanish Americans or Latin Americans were never again Americans, despite the fact that the name America originally applied only to the southern part of this hemisphere. The adjective American, used to describe the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere, became by usage, exclusive for those born in the United States of America.
To an American, this was no big deal. To the people south of the border, it was. They saw how Americans composed songs to their America, cutting it off from theirs and taking over its name. Vigilant Latin American intellectuals frowned at the ever-growing misused word americano among their own people and decided to do something. They had to give us a name. However, since our nation didn’t have one, it was difficult for them, too, to come up with nationality noun and adjective. However, upset people can be persistent. Soon they made up an adjective and noun: estadounidense (same for Spanish and Portuguese) — Unitedstater. Actually a more appropriate name would have been and would be US Americans or EU americanos.
Teachers, grammarians and writers force-fed this awkward word down the throats of their people, until every self-respecting Latin American used it — in his writings at least. However, the word estadounidense was more difficult to pronounce than americano. People stuck to americano or norteamericano (again — the same words in Spanish and Portuguese, although in the latter, it is spelled with a hyphen, norte-americano) in their every day oral language. The word estadounidense was not a smart choice. In our Hemisphere, there were other “United States.” These are the United States of Mexico and the United States of Venezuela. The USA pressing, they changed their official names. The United States of Brazil had it changed to Federal Republic of Brazil — República Federativa do Brasil. But since there was no other option, Unitedstater would do. However the perfect fit would have been as I said before EU americano, US American.
They call us other names, too. Everybody knows Latin Americans have coined other — not very kind — words to give Americans a proper national name. The most widely known is gringo, abused by Mexicans in derogatory form. Gringo means foreigner in other Latin countries, in Argentina, for instance. They also use the word, yanqui (in Spanish) or ianque (in Portuguese) applied not only to Yankees, but to all Unitedstaters whether from the North or the South. This analysis may sound like a trivia game. I can assure you it is not trivia
to Latin Americans. They see this misunderstanding as a serious name snatching with total impunity. Furthermore, the culprit never tires of rubbing it in every day, every hour, every second. How? The U.S. produces enormous amounts of books, musicals, films, TV programs, etc., and dumps a huge surplus not only on the rest of the world, but especially, on our Latin neighbors.
To make things worse, these constant dumps, usually poorly translated, have the name America stamped on them, offending people who hate our use of this term — day after day after day.
The popular musical West Side Story, shows a group of Puerto Rican
immigrants usually interpreted by white Anglo American performers singing out how happy they are to be in America. We see them happy to be in (the United States of) America. Everybody else in the world interprets it differently. The show presents Puerto Ricans as if they were natives of Africa or of some other unknown continent, not born in an American island as they actually are. As a matter of fact, Puerto Ricans are American twice. They are Americans because they are born in America (the continent) and they are US Americans
because they are U.S. citizens by birth. The words of Bates’ beautiful patriotic song America, the Beautiful reminds you of the beautiful landscapes of our country, of course. You sit back while listening and you can almost see every land of the U.S.A. from sea to shining sea. However, what everybody else in the world sees are the landscapes of what we, also in error, call “the Americas” from Argentina to Alaska.
The Americas is our second most absurd product of usage. Should we use the term Anglo America, for instance, and then the term Latin America, the plural Americas would make sense. However, if we have one America on the one side and then one Latin America on the other, the plural makes no sense at all. To picture this discrepancy more clearly, let’s call everyone who is white just human and let’s call everybody else “something” human, like “black humans, yellow humans, Spanish humans”? Do you understand now why Latin Americans feel so suspicious about it? That which to a US American is the result of accepted usage, to a Latin American or to a European is, in the best of cases, carelessness. If the lack of a clear geographical definition begins by affecting our own hemisphere, no wonder nobody in the world has any trust in our geographic knowledge.
An Italian friend of mine recently criticized an ad of defunct Panam an
American airline who took pride in classifying itself as representative of the United States. In its ad, Panam included Tel Aviv (in Israel, a Middle Eastern country) as one of its European destinations. He pointed this out to me, “I understand that an everyday citizen, who sees Israel within the European cultural framework, be confused, but an international airline?” Not few international companies fail to see the way others see us from abroad. This is sad, because just by doing a bit of research, we Americans could give a more sophisticated image, as we do through our technology in consumer goods.
It is no surprise that Unitedstaters divide the regions of America following peculiar patterns different from those used by the rest of the world. For most of us, Latin America is everything south of the border. America is the United States — some even exclude far-away Alaska and Canada (with a group of people who “should speak English instead of French”).
Well, this division is wrong. America is the name of the whole hemisphere, not the name of our nation. There is no such thing as “the Americas,” except in a poetic sense.
Otherwise, it is the absurd combination of one America (with no adjective) with one Latin America. Latin America includes all countries whose languages originated from Latin: Spanish, French and Portuguese only. Latin America excludes the English- and Dutch-speaking countries. Jamaica, for instance, is not part of Latin America, as some may erroneously think. Although surprisingly to some people, this term includes French Canada. Hispanic America includes only Spanish-language countries. People tend to view Hispanic America excluding Brazil,. However, the whole Iberian peninsula — including Portugal — was called Hispania in Roman times. Therefore, Brazil and Brazilian are also part of Hispanic America. Haiti, French Canada and any English-speaking Caribbean island or country is excluded, though. Iberoamérica (a term used only in Spanish and Portuguese) applies only to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, with strong family ties. It is actually synonym of Hispanic America. Angloamérica (Anglo America) is the English-language America (this term, seldom used in English, is increasing in use in Spanish and Portuguese). It covers English-language Canada, USA, Jamaica, Belize, the former British Guiana and all English-language islands in the Caribbean. If you think they overreact, here is a US American reacts in a similar circumstance before what he considers a wrong classification. White English- speaking people in Dade County strongly rejected the term “Anglo.” Anglo was an attempt to define the ethnic roots of the South Floridian population. This term meant English-speaking people. However, since it would dump English-speaking whites and blacks into one classification, white Anglos didn’t like it. But they don’t object being called Anglos only if it meant whites or called “whites” as opposed to blacks and Hispanics. And at the same time, they are doing to others what they don’t want others to do to them. In fact, they dumped into one category, Hispanics, a culture that embraces people from all races, white, black, yellow, etc., but is not a race in itself). Whites who object to the term Anglo, do it because they want to weed-out English-speaking blacks and to place them under a different category: American blacks or black Americans (!). It is not easy to replace with logical terms those fostered by usage. However, if we acknowledge their existence, maybe we can undo some misunderstandings or, at least, not get upset by other peoples’ reactions. The term “American” among is not clear either. The actual meaning of the word American, as usage has it, describes a white person, preferably blond — although not necessarily so, as long as he or she has a light complexion.
American is not an Indian (and I don’t know why he cannot be an Indian American). An Indian would be an Amerindian or an American Indian, but a Black person would be a Black American or an American Black, according to which may be more important. Some blacks now, are calling themselves African-American, ignoring the fact Africa is not only black and that black skinned people are not one race, but almost one hundred races with completely different culture. It is like Europeans calling themselves European American, instead of using the European country of origin name, like French American, etc.
Despite the fact that he has been living here for generations, even before the West turned US American, a California or Texan Mexican is not an American either. He is a Mexican American or a Hispanic American or Chicano.
Usage is constantly pouring new ethnic classifications by combining
American with other national adjective: Italian American, Polish American, Cuban American, etc. A most intriguing term is, no doubt, “Native American.” For some, it means someone born in “America.” For others, it means an American Indian, excluding Spanish-American Indians. Actually, native meaning a race “originated in America” is not valid. According to anthropologists, no race originated in this continent. Indians came to America from Asia through the Bering Straits. This divisive linguistics will remain. There is nothing we can do about it because it is sanctioned by usage and the majority.
AN ISLAND LANGUAGE
English is not mutually intelligible with any other language.The
alienating effects of the word “alien”. English sprouted in an island. Nobody outside that island understands them and vice versa (unless he or she goes through an adequate learning process, of course). English, Icelandic, Japanese, Welsh, etc., belong in this category.
The island languages of the United Kingdom go one step further; they are not mutually intelligible even among themselves. You have to be a native to the language to speak Irish or Welsh, tongues extremely difficult even for the Irish and the Welsh. In continental Europe, except for Basque or Hungarian, one language is usually related to the other. Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, for instance, are mutually intelligible. This means that if you speak Spanish, you don’t need to know Italian to enjoy a simple conversation with an Italian. Nobody understands an English-speaking person when asking “What is this?” unless he knows English. However if a Spaniard who says “¿Qué cosa es esto?” will be understood by an Italian or by a Portuguese because the phrase is similar in those two languages, i.e. “Chè cosa è questo?” or “Que coisa é isto?” For a Spaniard to communicate with a Frenchman will take longer, two or three weeks, maybe, but he’ll get there in two months without giving up his language. (I saw a friend from Brooklyn having a harder time trying to communicate with a man from South Carolina). Instant communication also occurs between German and Dutch, and German and its dialectic variations, which are much tougher than North Carolina’s dialectic variation in the States. Scandinavian languages are to German, what French is to Spanish, Portuguese or Italian. Another group of mutually intelligible languages is the Slavic linguistic family. One can compare Polish, Bulgarian and Russian to Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, and Czech as the equivalent of French, in the previous example. Lamentably, if you speak only English, you speak English and understand English and nothing else. Consequently, every other language is a foreign language, and this leads us to another misunderstanding.
FOREIGN? IN YOUR OWN HOUSE?
The meaning of “foreign”
By not being able understand any other language, English speakers tend to become xenophobic, and automatically ignore anything that is not said or written in English. They get frustrated if surrounded by people speaking other languages. This seldom occurs among those who speak mutually understandable languages. They are naturally predisposed at least to try to catch the meaning of what the others are saying. They are naturally endowed by a challenging curiosity learned as children when guessing the meaning of words they heard in songs and stories or when in contact with people of similar languages.
The above would not matter much, but for the fact that English is the official and natural language of powerful countries — ours on top of the list. The whole world listens carefully to whatever we have to say.
Our linguistic xenophobia may also derive from one overused word:
“foreign.” The American Heritage Dictionary gives the word foreign several meanings. It is the third the one that I find most prone to cause misunderstandings:
1) adj. located away from one’s native country.
2) Of, characteristic of, or from a country other than one’s own.
3) Alien.
Alien is described as:
“1) Owing political allegiance to another country or government, foreign
(?)…
3) Being inconsistent or opposed; repugnant; adverse.”
Before we go on, we must consider the verb alienate, too.
“To cause (someone previously friendly or affectionate) to become
unfriendly.”
We may say that our international policy has been doing a pretty good job at reaffirming this (3). Is that why we call it “foreign” policy?
What does foreign mean in that phrase? Does it mean that our policies are of, or from a country other than our own? Alien? With all my respects for the excellence of the American Heritage Dictionary,
usage has imposed another meaning to “foreign” not found in its pages:
everything that is not expressed in English. That is why Shakespeare is not foreign, England is seldom referred to as a foreign country, Sophocles’ works are not foreign, Descartes is not foreign and even Don Quixote is not foreign, because they are read in English.
Should we follow the dictionary’s definition, then English is foreign and so is almost everything else in America (both the United States and the Hemisphere). Only the autochthonous pre-English or pre-Spanish cultures and their languages are American (whether the United States or the Hemisphere), everything was brought in from Europe, Asia or Africa (or the moon — remember the rocks?).
On the other hand, wouldn’t it better to say that everybody and everything now being born, produced, originated or invented on this side of the world is American. TV, airplanes, telephones, etc., are more American than apple pies, which, by the way, are not.
The term “foreign language” is not only redundant, but it also contains touches of xenophobia. Why not simply say, for instance, “I would like to learn another language,” instead of a “I would like to learn a foreign language.” The latter immediately places you miles away from the culture you would like to approach. It also predisposes anyone toward the language in question, making him feel it much more difficult. Foreign implies rejection — as in the phrase “a foreign body.”
It’s easy to see, how such an implication may change an otherwise
nice guy into an educated bigot. We are not alone in this confusion. English-speakers elsewhere do it, too. I was aghast to hear English- speaking Canadians refer to the French language of Québec as a foreign language. “How can you say that?” I asked them.
“French is not only as native to Canada today as English is, but also, it was there first.” South Floridians or Westerners also refer to Spanish as a “foreign language,” ignoring the fact that Spanish was the first European language ever heard in those regions. In fact, Spanish was the first European language heard in the United States. The linguistic shock of my life occurred during a visit to Augsburg where I witnessed an incident some European friends had told me was frequent and I didn’t believe them. I was in the lobby of the hotel, when an American woman, in a very sour tone of voice told the bellboy, who had dared address her in German, “Don’t talk to me in a foreign language. Can’t you speak English?” Anyhow, the reality is that if we are to call every other language in the world foreign, we are not only saying something that is wrong, but we are also saying it in a way that alienate other peoples from us. And this brings us to another facet toward what foreign means. We dub foreign films with an accent. The rest of the world does not. I remember how well Toshiro Mihune (sometimes transliterated Mifune) spoke German in a film I saw in Düsseldorf. Dubbing films with an accent hinders the understanding of the dialogue and it is extremely distracting. Why do they do it? Usage — a convention: in a movie or play speaking with an accent is to be interpreted as if that person were speaking another language (?). No wonder lots of people end up thinking that Italians in Italy speak English with an accent. However, if the film has a classic (Latin or Greek) theme its characters speak with a superb British enunciation. Applies also to classic plays. Language is not the only factor. There are many others.
THE WAY WE MEASURE THINGS
Two liters cokes
Million, Milliard, Billion
A scholar may be able to explain someday how was it we began to misname this figure: 1,000,000,000. Someone might have mistranslated “milliard” from French during the fervor provoked in us by the French Revolution. Maybe, it was just a booboo that stuck. Whether this scholar is able to find why or when we started to call it “one billion” or not, the fact remains. Usage imposed this error, and it will stick for good. It matters not that everybody else in the world, including the British call it “one thousand millions.” Then, we naïvely ask the world “Why are we so often misread, misinterpreted and misquoted?” Calling this figure “a billion” has caused billions of misunderstandings, especially in international trade. It can only be matched by another usage of ours: the way we abbreviate dates. Any American will tell you that 10/1/87 is clearly October 1, 1987 and that is all that matters. However, in England, this would be the tenth of January, and so on in the rest of Europe. We may too often hear this phrase: “They (Americans) are always trying to be different.” We know it’s not true. We are not trying to be anything. We just follow usage even if the whole thing was started up by an idiot. Another source of international conflicts is our stubborn, deep-rooted refusal to convert to metrics. The way we cling to the old measuring system is awesome. I’m sure that in my lifetime I will never see the day when inches, feet and gallons would be replaced by centimeters, meters and liters. And if that ever happens, I doubt if our people would go even farther and accept commas to replace periods and periods, commas when writing large numbers and fractions. For instance, would we give up writing 1,456.23 to write 1.456,23 as the rest of the world does? If 1,000,000,000 Chinese changed, why can’t 300,000,000 Americans? Must we wait, to change to metrics, for a rock singer to start praising the size of his sexual prowess in centimeters? I remember that for a brief period of time we started to pump gas in our cars by the liter. All of a sudden, the system was reversed. Protests were enough to kick out a system that nobody welcomed in the first place. On the other hand, Cokes and Pepsis keep their two-liter plastic bottles. For some incomprehensible reason, most of the people consider a liter too little and a kilo, too much. They would hate to balance things up just by saying 2 liters or half a kilo. If kids only knew what usage makes them go through in arithmetic at school, by not using the metric system, they’d revolt. This emotional attachment to the old measuring system causes havoc but also profits in international trade. Conversions abound, yes, but also ways to cheat on conversion (a 0.2 fraction multiplied by millions can give you a lot of pounds from kilos or vice versa). Maybe this is one of the reason why it is little pressure for a real change. We have advanced in computers, robots, etc. Good start to measure with them using the metric system. Why don’t? Diskettes, word processor screens, fonts, etc., they all measure in inches. These new products have little excuse for not starting from scratch using the metric system — overwhelming traditional usage. Repeated usage becomes a tradition. Fortunately, we replace tradition frequently. Despite our attachment to hidebound traditions, new things come up every once in a while.
In spite of that, popular and modern TV, for instance, is full of old clichés and conventions, especially in the realm of sitcoms. Don’t forget that our TV is watched all over the world with love by people who are shocked at certain contradictions, such as…
CONVENTIONS OR CLICHÉS?
TV, movies, and the press specially
US TV vs. European TV
The United States of America is not at all an isolated country with a third rate language. Therefore, all minor errors and misunderstandings our media create do matter elsewhere in the globe. They matter because we are ahead in many important fields. Our cultural media, especially movies and television, are known in every corner of the planet. But they are also fun house mirrors, which, in most of the cases, project an artistically distorted image of us. We take it for what it is; but people abroad tend to take it literally. Let’s take a peek. “Who says we don’t watch what we do,” some might say. He may even add “Not only do we have plenty of freedom, but also a critic under every stone.” That may be right.
But are we aware of our clichés, conceptual errors, and things like that? TV and movie producers and directors, for instance, while shooting a scene, go through excruciating extremes to make sure that all props are right. They also watch that nothing accidentally appears out of sequence. However, few waste time to check for ethnic, language or geographic errors. In fact, ethnic slurs are actually the twilight zone of the art and entertainment industry. Ethnic slurs along with all kinds of clichés creep, crawl and reproduce in a fertile environment. In all fairness, we must point out that this traditional carelessness is noticeably decreasing nowadays. Perhaps it is the result of a more sophisticated attitude of the U.S. audience; perhaps, it is the result of an increased refinement acquired by today’s more knowledgeable traveling Americans. (American tourists are not viewed as peasants any longer, as they were in a recent past). Lately, an increasing number of films and TV programs use subtitles in the scenes in which people talk other languages. This adds realism to the work. In the past, as I had already stated, the convention was to use dumb phony accents to signify that the performers were talking other language (Remember the phrase “Say it with an accent, Ethel, you’re speaking Spanish…” — in the I Love Lucy, hacienda/British play episode). Since we love to criticize — sometimes viciously — nobody pays attention to the fact that American TV is constantly grilled by your everyday American critic. In fact, we tend to be too harsh on television. I hear people from other countries saying: “You don’t know what you have.” Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t. We often hear phrases from our fellow Americans like “There’s nothing to watch on television tonight.” In reality, we have more choices than anybody else in the world. Compared to ours, European television stinks (maybe Italy, Spain and England excepted — maybe). Save a few good classics, European programs are so boring! It is no surprise to me that they go wild for soap operas like Dynasty or Dallas. They badly need USA imports, which may have other defects, but being boring is not one of them. Boring programs don’t have a chance to survive in our country — dumb programs, maybe, boring, never. As importation of American programs in Europe and other places in the world increases, so does our responsibility. If the producers of exportable programs show no interest in excelling professionally, they will contribute to export a deplorable image of the USA.
THE CLASSIC CLICHÉS
Ethnic and language clichés
Food clichés
Our films and programs are overrun with clichés. To find some of them, let’s start with one of the most popular television comedies ever created: I Love Lucy. Its reruns are religiously watched by millions everyday, not only in the States, but also in many countries all over the world. The series also starred Cuban-born Desiderio Arnaz. One would have thought that he could have given us a good ethnic idea of how Cubans really were. Wrong. With all his money, power, popularity, know-how and savvy, Mr. Arnaz, acclaimed for introducing important innovations in our television industry — like using more than one camera on live programs — couldn’t rid the show of simplistic clichés about Cubans. He even allowed writers (directors?) to use
Mexican instead of Cuban expressions to conform with the confused image Americans had of Latin Americans. Desi himself did it — quite often.
In one episode, while telling Little Ricky, the bedtime story “Red Riding Hood” he described the food in Red’s basket as “tortilla, burritos, tamales.” Desi Arnaz knew well he was talking about Mexican food. He also knew that Mexican food was (and is) practically unknown in Cuba. But he had to do it, because those were the words his American audience understood at that time, not frijoles negros, plátanos maduros, etc. Other examples of linguistic mélange in I Love Lucy occurred often. Ricky’s mother spoke with a Mexican accent and so did his relatives in Cuba during Lucy’s turbulent visit, including his fat, cigar-smoking uncle, who, besides his thick accent, also exhibited a distinct Mexican mannerism. U.S. Americans don’t notice this, but the other Americans do. “They can’t tell us apart!” they say. Racial stereotyping may be seen in the same series. Lucy once said to a then color-blind audience that Ricky’s big eyes were brown — as
Spanish eyes are expected to be — in reality his eyes were green. Stereotyping ethnic groups is common on television as it was in the
movies. The roles of Indians were played by whites, for years and years. Latin Americans were frequently played by Jews, Italians or just by any dark-haired person at hand. Was it carelessness when looking for actors? Was it prejudice? If there were no professional Indian performers, why didn’t the Hollywood scout for raw talent and train them, as in the case of white actors and actresses? Our inability to distinguish physical differences in our own people blows the mind
of audiences abroad. We may have an excuse for not being able to clearly understand foreigners, but ourselves? Hispanics, in a way, were lucky. In spite of the fact of some Italians and Jews often played the role of Mexicans, Cubans and other Latin Americans,
Spanish-speaking characters were somehow privileged compared to other ethnic groups and nationals. Spanish characters spoke Spanish, deplorable Spanish, but Spanish. Performers, depicting other national groups, seldom spoke their languages.
This goes on. Television Germans don’t speak German, Japanese don’t
speak Japanese — they mumble nonsensical gobbledygook. Even the Chinese and the Japanese accents are often confused (and the rule of thumb is so easy: Japanese can’t pronounce the L, Chinese can’t pronounce the R.) Still the Chinese champion Felix convinced not to wrestle in one episode of The Odd Couple spoke English with Japanese accent. Do you remember Get Smart’s Dietrich (not Barney Miller’s Dietrich, whose German was real) or Kommandant Klink in Hogan’s Heroes? What about Harvey Korman’s German and Tim Conway’s Japanese in the Carol Burnett’s Show? Yes they sounded funny — to us. Sometimes, the language or the ethnic group is completely fictional, as in Latka’s case in Taxi or the cousin in Perfect Strangers. This is imaginative and funny — not offensive while covering a wider range, because it applies to almost any new immigrant.
TELEVISION MORALITY
Gambling
Sex and the future in science fiction
Language and accent confusion are not the only things that puzzle our international audience. Other clichés or conventions appear to them — and to us if we care to take a closer look — as contradictory and absurd. I have heard dozens of complaints of foreigners who cannot understand why sitcoms repeat unrealistic behavior patterns, to project phony moral principles. They seem more astonished, especially when they well know how imaginative our TV can be. Some foreigners consider coincidental conventions as something prearranged or imposed by network censors. They claim, that was the reason why Ralph Crandon was never allowed a break in his TV life, no matter how insignificant. He just couldn’t get out of his miserable, poor environment or change his job. Ralph couldn’t even move out of his crumbling apartment. He wasn’t allowed, the poor fellow, to win a worthwhile prize without complications. Ralph Crandon was forced to be nothing but a born loser in the Honeymooners series. I have tried to point out some exceptions. For instance, I Love Lucy broke away from convention when the Ricardo family moved out New York and into a much better home in Connecticut. The family prospered. “Ah,” they say, “there must be some truth in what we say; after the Ricardos moved to a better place, the show died off.” Superstition? It must have been a miracle what occurred in Taxi when one prospering
character, Jim, the seedy guy, turned millionaire, and did not lose his money after two or three episodes. Non-American viewers also point out other rules. Prize winning or gambling? You’ve got to be kidding! That is moral no-no. Puritan morality? Maybe. That must have been why poor Lucy couldn’t get one penny out of her winning streak in Montecarlo, during the series of episodes that had set Europe for background. Then I realize that the only interesting justification I’ve seen on TV for losing at gambling was the one given in the Montecarlo episode of the series Bosom Buddies. In this episode the main characters get some money from an insurance company and lose it in Montecarlo. Still, some American watchers couldn’t help feeling a bit confused. None of my foreign friends liked this episode. Was this again the same type of TV morality that lead to that sad (but excellent) Honeymooners episode? The one in which Ralph Crandon loses his
well-deserved chance to big money on a TV show because he couldn’t identify Swanee River, played by Norman. The most remarkable example of a double-standard morality was Captain Kirk of Star Trek. He took pride in despising any creature more evolved than him. Well analyzed, Kirk was an arrogant character. He was a trigger-happy twerp who showed no pity destroying any invention before anyone capable could determine whether it was beneficial to humanity. And all those actions built him a popular image. If you have any question about Kirk’s attitude, just remember Planet M113. Salt supplies were depleted on Planet M113. There was only one native life
form left on the planet. It was able to turn itself into whatever shape it wanted. In order to survive, this creature needed salt. The only way it knew to get it was sucking it out of the bodies of Kirk’s crew. It did it out of desperation for survival. Did Kirk understand the needs of the creature? No. He was out to get it and to kill it. Curiously, in an unexpected end, Mr. Spock compelled McCoy to shoot to kill, exterminating a species. Spock was a supposed strict follower of the
principle of respect and non-interference, the questionable prime directive of the Star Fleet. Not in this case he was. In another episode, Kirk’s friend Gary Mitchell acquired supernatural powers (always depicted as despicable, including in the new series, The New
Generation). Kirk found no other solution but eliminating him. Unemotional Spock seeded the hate and advised Kirk to kill Gary. (By the way, Data is a beautiful, unemotional character; Spock was not. He often showed feelings and even rudeness as in Star Trek, the Movies).
Dr. Robert Corby invented a way to make man immortal. He had found a way to transplant he human brain to an almost perfect artificial body. Thus, man’s mind could live a long lasting life — no sickness, no need for food and with limitless energy. Corby tried to force Kirk, yes. But a victorious captain, Kirk thought it wise to destroy the androids. No wonder people abroad think we hate scientists and intellectuals. This constant putting down of genius, scientists, intellectuals, etc., with words — not translatable — like egg-heads, etc., is almost not only insulting abroad, but it should be insulting here, too. Our society should value our minds.
THE FEMALE FACTOR
Gilligan Island, full of them
People from other countries (those who remain there and never even visit us) think that our movies and television programs push the female sex mystique beyond the limits of the universe. While Marian (after the virgin Mary) countries, especially Latin/Catholic ones, worship virgins and chaste women, we tend to overgrade the liberated female, they say. “A romance is a must in most cases and in few films or programs are women absent. Furthermore, they are presented as sex starved, wicked creatures.
If there’s an adventure film, the hero must have a female clinging to him, like a leech, everywhere he goes. Women looked forced into the plot and that bothers.” That’s the least of what they say. They also say that we have lewd tastes (and most of them missed Deep Throat!). When they complain that “women are always present,” they’re not suggesting that women shouldn’t appear at all in these programs. They get the impression that we force a woman into all plots, whether it fits or not. For instance, if an American producer makes a film about a group of men stranded on an island, he feels that it is his red-blooded American duty to include, whether or not it actually fits into the plot, a native girl during their stay in the island or a girl coming in the rescue boat or a flash-back. Even in military, or all-male jail films, they must show flashbacks of soldiers or inmates thinking about their sweethearts, again whether or not they fit into the plot. Sylvester Stallone is notorious for daring not to comply with this convention. “You, Americans,” a young Hindu fellow told me “push women so hard that no wonder there are so many gays in your country. I think I would be gay, too, if I had to face a woman everywhere I went.” (!?) To a degree, his complaint was about a forced romance is inserted in every plot, and it seems to be true? Although the female presence is not necessarily forced in — I think.
It might be a reflection of a society where women have a high public prominence. In some lands, they rule only behind the throne.
The reason why foreigners think women participation or sex plots are
overemphasized may lie in the fact that most “foreign” films treat all kind of subjects with a normal flow. Romance, love, or sex comes naturally, not imposed in the plot out of commercial consideration. We can say that yes, romance and sex are usually a must in most American plots, such a must that when no woman appears, they are replaced by man-to-man affairs. Of course, here also there are some rules to follow. In any decent American homosexual plot, sex must be emphasized over love. Male rape scenes, grotesque sex, are OK. However, no affection must be shown. Especially on TV, no kisses, no tender scenes, no touching, no holding hands, not even sexy looks at each other. Other countries boast a variety in the subject of the films they produce. There are films about children, about boys, about girls, and about boys and girls; there are films about adolescence, friendship, soldiers, religion, animals, etc., with no forced-in romance or sex.
“Neither do they try to put a woman in heat as a hook for horny viewers, if it is not called for,” said a friend of mine from French
Canada. Sex was mildly treated in Gilligan’s Island, where the female sex symbol, Ginger, was clearly directed toward the audience and overlooked by the wimpy male characters of the show.
Except for a few unrequited kisses, none of them paid serious attention to Ginger’s gorgeous looks, in any of the episodes. But then again, Gilligan’s Island was a pioneer in American TV. It was one of the few that wrapped up the story, breaking the trend started by Lost in Space, a series that left its characters lost forever in space.
I don’t know who approved the final episodes in which Gilligan and the rest of the castaways were rescued, but I thank whomever did it for not leaving me frustrated, and I think millions of TV fans thank him (her?), too. I can only say, it was terrible, though, that they waited so long that they had to replace Ginger. I would have rather seen the last episode with Ginger lost at sea, or killed or something than seeing someone else in the role Tina Louise played for such a long time. Without her, the rescue of the castaways lost credibility. Tina was practically a relative to her viewers. We were lucky with Gilligan’s Island, for there was never a wrap-up episode for the old Star Trek series nor a nice end for Battlestar Galactica. Nobody ever got to know what happened to the aliens in The Invaders. I just hope they didn’t win. Did they? Another way to never end a story is stretching their plots beyond the limits of good taste. Among these examples, American soap operas are outstanding for knitting one story to another. Mexican soap operas finish in a few months, the same goes for Argentinean, Italian, Brazilian, and Chilean tearjerkers. Movies are notorious for another convention, the eternal-monster pattern.
They keep on coming back to stab, kill and mutilate in order to scare you (Halloween, or Friday the 13th); beastly animals (Jaws) that are immortal; aliens with a high rate of reproduction (Aliens); greasy copies from nostalgia (Grease), etc. These phenomena are very “American,” although films in series are found elsewhere.
In France, for instance, they had Fantomas, shown here dubbed. Besides not taking the characters out of the mess the writers put them in, another thing that puzzled another friend was making actors and actresses play double roles, or play themselves aged.
GETTING OLD AND DUPLICATED
Cloning characters
A German friend of mine, who studied Psychology with me at City College, New York, once asked me seriously if there was any rule on TV that forced sitcom stars to appear aged at some point. I hadn’t noticed it until I saw Lucy and Ricky do it in the leg-jiggling episode; Lucy, in the Hawaii trip and others. Soon I realized that practically everybody else who is somebody in the industry did it. He asked me why most of them had to play double roles, too. Again, he caught me by surprise. I had never thought about it before, but the fact that in
most sitcom comedies at a point in the series, the star (or co-star sometimes) has to play his or her part and another role at the same time. Jackie Gleason did it (he played Ralph Crandon and himself); Barbara Eden played Genie and her sister, and Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha and Serena in Bewitched. Fred Gwynne played Herman Monster, his alter ego, and the English counterpart. Don Adams in Get Smart, etc. And so on. They all are good examples of conventional duplication. There is a myriad of double characters on TV. In Gilligan’s Island several of the castaways had a double. “Yeah, you may call it the Betty Davis Syndrome,” I jokingly answered my friend. And this takes us to double standards, and what better field than…
POLITICS…
Ah, this is a jackpot. Reporting from a bar abroad, with dictators’
interpreters. Twenty volumes won’t suffice just to index our misunderstandings in international politics, created, carried out, performed or neglected by “American.” And this is, I repeat, at an international level only.
At a domestic level, we are talking big megabytes! I’m just concerned about how the people abroad interpret out attitude toward politics. That is fun and democracy. However, others think that our democracy, when practiced at international levels, turns wishy-washy. Our national decisions are not of a dictator’s. Elected presidents under Congress supervision make decision. They say our president’s hands are most of the time tied-up by Congress. Is it for better or for worse? Difficult to say.
On the plane to Madrid, a Spaniard told me it was difficult even for him to understand the detachment he had noticed in the U.S. media toward their government. And I said even, because Spaniards are notorious for their paradoxical relationship with religion and politics, which often swings from reverent to viciously irreverent. “You hear political commentators, journalists and even politicians repeat all the time the phrase this country instead of our country as if the speaker or writer had adopted it or were just visiting it; this administration — as if it were voted in by the Chinese. This supposed objectivity is phony, and contributes to alienate the people from their elected government and their fatherland.” He continued:
“Coño, your media give more time to Russian politicians and to Russian commentators than they give to your own president!” “I think you’re exaggerating.” “I don’t think so, I think that you don’t realize how serious this is. You’re more disrespectful to your president than to anyone else. Anything he says, no matter what, is automatically challenged by some arrivista (opportunistic) politician to get free publicity.” (He made this comment long before he witnessed the day the networks refused to broadcast the President’s speech on the aid to the Nicaraguan guerrillas. Most people abroad interpreted this refusal as an arrogant, disrespectful conduct toward the President by censorial media monopolies, not to Ronald Reagan, but to the elected president of the nation. Even people who normally would like to see Reagan hanged resented it criticized it. American journalists are harshly criticized abroad for ignoring the language of the country they are reporting from. They constantly claim it is that the reason why American journalists write their reports from the bar of his hotel. They get informed, they say, about domestic politics through bilingual bartenders. And this would be the best case. They may be skillfully manipulated by trained government interpreters, especially by leftist groups.
Journalists are usually attracted to them by their typical American sympathy for the underdog and this is profitable to some political interests. Or as the case of foreign journalists in Cuba, who wouldn’t dare to report the truth, and sheepishly accepts to be fed with governmental phony news and statistic in order not to lose their beach and sun privileges.
The regime persecutes, jails, tortures and represses the population and no foreign journalist reports anything that would upset the Communist Regime afraid of losing their comfortable position in a tropical paradise. Not speaking the local language is a real handicap for a journalist. He has to rely on interpreters who may or may not be honest when delivering their version. They are also unable to get a general picture, because this is usually provided by street talk. You’ll notice how scarce this is, when they report back home. Some may consider this criticism a dangerous generalization. But by missing this important communication tool — language — some journalists create more misunderstandings. Criticism here in the States is sometimes vicious, but criticism abroad can be quite vicious, too. And the Spanish press is no exception. So, I pointed out to him one example. Lola Flores, perhaps the most famous and most loved Spanish singer and actress in Spain, made a serious mistake. She posed nude for Interviú, a “general interest” magazine sprinkled with nudity. So? Well, Lola is no Spring chicken. Offensive wrinkles showed in those pictures. The Spanish press reacted viciously. Another magazine, El Jueves, published on its cover the picture of the behind of an atrociously wrinkled elephant. The headline read: £EL CULO DE LA LOLA! (Lola’s Ass!). And that was the kind part. The articles and cartoons that filled it were what we usually classify as too much! They showed graphics of what they called her internal organs. And this type of satire goes on also in politics. The things satiric writers get away with in Spain are unthinkable of in the USA. And this can take us to “freedom” — as others see it.
FREEDOM — LIBERTY?
A difference only Anglophones understand
Freedom is not free
We call our country “The Land of the Free” and we are right, however we erroneously tend to think that freedom exists only in the USA, and that is not true. Yes, there is a considerably large group of totalitarian regimes in the world. But there are also a few democracies.
Here again we get mixed up in the twilight world of semantics. This may sound chauvinistic, but freedom exists only in English. In any other language, the word is liberty (libertad, liberté, libertà, liberdade, Freiheit, etc.) and there is a big, important difference between the two words. Freedom, if we look it up in the dictionary, has several meanings: “the condition of being free of restraint, liberty of the person from slavery, oppression or incarceration, political independence. However, the most important definition, the one that really sets us apart from the rest of the world, is: “possession of civil
rights and immunity from the arbitrary exercise of authority.” Liberty, on the other hand, is “the condition of being not subject to restriction or control, the right to act in a manner of one’s own choosing or the
state of not being in confinement or servitude.” Not easy to find a clear difference, huh? but for the last part about the civil rights and abuse of authority. That is actually what makes the big difference
between our democracy and other democracies around the world. “Free of restraint” has peculiar interpretations. Actually, everyone is free to do everything he wants (and can) anywhere in the world (as a Cuban refugee put it: as long as you are willing to pay the price). Abuse of authority and lack of civil rights create an atmosphere of distrust. This leads to corrupt businesses, excessive bureaucracy, police abuse, etc. In countries that do not practice freedom, honest businessmen have to bribe officials, from customs inspectors to presidents, in order to gain some profit. The cost of bribes, of course, is passed on to customers, thus creating a never- ending vicious cycle where everyone, but the rulers, is victimized.
When we talked about freedom, there is no wonder that we are often misread. We enjoy freedom. And I would bet, we know what freedom is, despite the statement, often heard abroad from refugees coming to our shores: “You don’t know what you have!” Many peoples abroad are subjugated by the abuse of authority. It comes from every angle in their society: their government (federal, state, municipal) and from churches and other religious institutions. They admire our freedom, but not fully understanding our meaning of it, as restraint from abuse of power, they don’t know how to make it work. They only have one word and that word does not include this definition. No other language defines freedom as freedom from abuse of authority and lack of civil rights. They miss they point because they get distracted by the sexual freedoms that we also enjoy. People abroad interpret our freedom as unrestrained sex. This particular fashion of freedom mesmerizes them with our picturesque sexual revolution or the availability of pornography.
They seldom see our sexual freedoms as a consequence of having civil rights. They see it as some kind of social allowance. As any American can tell, this is obviously not true. Large segments of our population practice sex rules and mores that match the ones in fashion during the Middle Ages. If they tolerate (up to certain limits) liberal thoughts, it is only because they must respect civil rights. And from here, we could jump onto another fascinating subject…
RELIGION. TO EACH HIS OWN
Monotheism: totalitarianism
Polytheism: democracy
I agree with those who claim that the supposed virtues of monotheism have been grossly overrated. Monotheism is actually a rigid pattern for dictatorship and no matter what its followers say — it stands opposed to any really democratic philosophy. In a nutshell, monotheism demands that you blindly obey one unchallengeable ruler, who admits no discrepancy and casts eternal pains onto dissidents. Its god teaches you that to eat from the tree of knowledge is a sin.
If we say that democracy flourished in polytheistic societies, not among believers of one, powerful, overbearing god, how come we enjoy democracy in the United States of America — a monotheistic country? Because this USA of ours only seems to be a monotheistic country. In fact, it is essentially polytheistic. Including those self-proclaimed atheistic, most of the countries of the world are one-religion countries, where dictatorships abound.
Spanish-speaking countries are a good example. They are Catholic in a notable majority. This means they have only one version of their god, hence they are monotheistic. In the United States, on the contrary, luckily, no religion is fully practiced by an overwhelming majority. Protestant sects, alone, number way over 200. The “one” god in each of them suddenly becomes a different god. Consequently, we have an unusual phenomenon. In fact, we have hundreds of gods, bearing the same name, but hundreds of gods nonetheless. Therefore, in reality, we are polytheistic, not monotheistic as we are taught to believe. We must also check out the other non-Christian beliefs that abound in our lands, especially in California. Every kind of worship that exists in the world has a counterpart in the United States, from voodoo to Buddha, Siva or Krshna, and so on. With so many conceptions of what God is supposed to be, how can we call ourselves monotheistic?
Understanding that most of the countries of the world have one
predominant religion (hence they are monotheistic) and we do not have a predominant religion (polytheistic), it will be easier for us to understand why the tendency toward dictatorship is so strong in other places, not here. If Islam split in hundreds of sects, democracy would be the law of the land in the Arab countries. I would venture to say that if Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland each divided into a few sects, the war would have to end. It is no secret that monotheistic religions — including Nazism and Communism: one book, one leader — have sparkedL the greatest wars — and still do.
I even think that Judaism benefited a lot by splitting into orthodox and liberals. Further splitting will make their religion and their country more flexible, more tolerant (more Tel Aviv than Jerusalem). The funny thing is that, despite the fact that “America” has more religions than any other country in the world, people abroad think we are heathens. They think we take religion lightly, but they fail to see how easily their religions can spark the worst extremes of fanaticism.
Catholicism exerted a tremendous control in Latin countries, a control that sometimes expresses itself strongly sometimes subtly. Young people in pre-revolutionary Cuba grew up thinking that classical music played on the radio during mournful occasions were really dirges, because mournful occasions were not a few. For every anniversary of a dead patriot or for every day of the Holy Week, the people were compelled to listen to classical music all day and night. They were not officially forbidden to listen to lively music, but they had no choice.
The Church and of course its followers in key places controlled the radio and they wouldn’t allow lively music — a heresy. Kids were admonished if they dared to make music of their own or even to tell a joke on Holy Friday. This situation flipped to the other side of the coin, after the Revolution. Then the godless official religion encouraged kids to have fun, dances, and parties in front of churches during the Holy Week just to annoy the parishioners. Most Middle East religions, including Judaism, Christianity and especially Islam condone a horrendous tendency humans have toward masochism.
All pleasures are irrationally considered sins. Pain is morbidly said to be the best way to reach the Heavens — where, paradoxically, they are supposed to enjoy eternal pleasures. Isn’t this an unusual reward for people who were taught all their lives to enjoy pain on earth? Despite the influence of all these religions, thanks to the ancient Greeks, our American society is basically hedonistic. And we behave as such. We like to have fun, and enjoy life. And why not? It is nothing surprising that our exuberant love for life seems sacrilegious in the eyes of those fanatics who exult pain and suffering, martyrdom and sacrifice. Understand this basic difference between love for pleasure and love for pain and you will understand Khomeini and his blind followers, priests of the dark side of the force, who probably inherited their love for pain from centuries of tortures so common in their Persian history.
“THÕSE FUNNY LITTLE THÎNGS ON LÉTTERS…”
They used to take the umlaut from Hägar the Horrible
And instant coffee Café Français had no accent and no cedilla, no anymore
Not long ago, US Americans never worried about those funny little marks people sharing our alphabet place on some letters. Today, as our sophistication and knowledge of other cultures grow, we are paying more attention to them. An ever-increasing number of newspapers and magazines (not only The New York Times or Time magazine) care about the proper spelling of non- English words and about those funny little things on letters. (Yet, not even Time has been able to spell Walesa (to pronounce vawensa) right with the Polish crossed L and the comma under the e — and neither could I with my Macintosh until system X came on if it were not for the symbol + kerning function of Microsoft Word at that time.) How do other people see our ignoring their accents? Here’s how. “I fail to understand why North Americans are so careless about our ñ and our accents,” commented an Argentine sitting next to me on the plane headed for Buenos Aires. “The name of one of the ships that discovered America was La Niña, for goodness sake, with a very noticeable ñ in it,” he said. I tried to explain to him “that English doesn’t have accents.” “It doesn’t, huh? What are then those marks your dictionaries print to teach you how to pronounce a word?” I counted 21 on-the-letter marks (long, short vowels, even umlauts, etc.) right there, in the American Heritage Dictionary he handed over to me. Then, he told me an interesting story about Spanish accents and American interference.
“Your people damaged our language’s almost perfect system of graphic accents,” he concluded. “It was your fault…” “Mine?” I almost took it personally. Contrary to English, Spanish is almost phonetic. This asset enormously facilitates its reading, especially when complemented by a perfect system of graphic accents. Phonetics and accents allow anyone to pronounce right any Spanish word without having to look it up in a dictionary — provided, of course, that the word in question was spelled and with the proper tilde. As a consequence of our carelessness, presently, most Spanish-language newspapers and magazines skip the accents on upper case vowels. Such practice is now erroneously believed to be a grammatical rule. This absurd practice has lingered on into the computer world.
How did the American industry create this monster? By selling Linotypes (after their trademark) to Spanish speaking countries. These machines provided accents only on lower case vowels. We manufactured those symbols in order to print English phonetics. Now, since phonetics uses only lower case, our manufacturers never bother to create accented upper case vowels. When their customers complained, rumor has it, manufacturers thought this complaint could be profitable.
When Latin customers ordered accented upper case vowels, American suppliers charged extra for them, since they had to manufacture those letters from scratch. Facing unwanted overhead costs, most Latin publishers, especially of small newspapers and magazines, stopped using accents on upper-case vowels. However, they bought upper-case Ñ’s, since their omission often lead to embarrassment (año means year; but ano means anus) or confusion (campaña means campaign; but campana means bell). Now the computer messes up those funny little things on top of the letters again. We have been producing computers for quite a while, but until now, American printer and computer manufacturers haven’t been able to come up with at least one intelligent set of international accents. Despite the fact that it is extremely easy to create such a system. When the American Standard Code for Information Interchange or ASCII was created, the provincial point of view prevailed over the fact that American computers had also a future in other countries. Consequently, its creators omitted any but the common English keyboard symbols, as of a typewriter. This was a deplorable overlook, especially when within the ASCII there was plenty of room to include the most important symbols for almost all European languages. Later adaptations like that of the Apple’s ImageWriter, for instance, an excellent, fast printer otherwise, fail to provide an intelligent set. ImageWriter allows the user with ñ and Ñ and £ and ¿, but what about the accent? “For the Spanish accent, you can use the apostrophe,” reads its manual. The paradox of this instruction is that the accent must be placed on a vowel in Spanish, not next to it, as this printer prints it. Furthermore, the apostrophe doesn’t look like an accent. To place the accent on the vowel, a backspace (control H) has to be entered through the word processor. This makes typing extremely difficult. Then add that the user doesn’t see the letters with accents on the screen. What he sees is a bunch of weird symbols, making editing and correction a real pain. Macintosh system made it work. However, using the English keyboard, one must press three keys for an accent. (Option e-and a for a “á,” although it has the Macro function that allows keyboard layout changes. However, the default font lacked at the beginning important international symbols, as shown in Times, one font that has a complete set. This was corrected later. MS Dos was limited. It too Windows, especially Windows 98, to produce a reasonably good international set. For people in other countries where we export this system — this is serious. It affects their language directly and, since we are the manufacturers, we are accused of being careless and arrogant, acting in a sort of “I don’t give a damn” fashion — that is not necessarily true. Let us put ourselves in their shoes to understand how upset they can get. Imagine that our typewriters were manufactured in Brazil and they didn’t bother to adapt the keyboard to English. We would have to put up with not been able to type the letters y, w or k, since these letters are not used in Portuguese. Or, if one Brazilian company did finally include those three letters, they placed the upper case Y where the lower case y is supposed to be, and the lower case y where the upper case Y must go. Funny, ah? You’d raise hell if they did that to you. Well, that is exactly what a lot of companies do to Latin American users when they export their systems, like ImageWriter, Epson, etc., with the ñ in upper case and the Ñ in lower case! Something that can drive anybody up the wall — unnecessarily. And then we ask ourselves “why do they misunderstand us?” And going back to tradition, usage and all that. What about spelling of foreign, oops! names?
WHY DO WE SPELL “MARIJUANA” WITH A “J”
Pronounce it like “H” when Spanish spells it “marihuana” and pronounce it mariwana?
X-RATED WORDS
We must say that this actually falls not under America misunderstood, but under America misunderstanding when we adopt words from other languages. For instance, nobody really knows how the word marijuana (spelled marihuana or mariguana in Spanish) got into English with a ‘j’ — supposed to be Spanish and thus pronounced. Today, you may find marijuana in Spanish because it has been recycled through English and brought back in American magazines, books, etc. No matter what, its misspelling has been sanctioned by usage and will remain — forever.
When Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra wrote his famous novel Don
Quixote de la Mancha, he spelled Quixote with an x for one good reason: the x was pronounced sh at that time. So, don Quixote was really pronounced don Keeshoteh. English — and Americans not so long ago — used to pronounce the knight’s name Kwiksote (as in quixotic, etc.). Nowadays, the tendency is to pronounce it — despite the x in English — as the modern Spanish Quijote. One Spanish king changed the Castilian pronunciation. The x was replaced by j with the kh sound it has today in most of Spanish-speaking countries.
This was done, rumor has it, in order to detect who was speaking Castilian and who was speaking Catalan or Galician (bilingualism was forbidden) in order to punish those who did not use Castilian, the official language. Also, to make it easier for the millions of new subjects in the New World to learn Spanish. (By the way, you can see how this idea of legislating languages does not work. Catalan and Galician are still kicking in Spain today and so is French in Canada. Doesn’t this say something to those who, instead of promoting English because it is the most important communication vehicle of our century, try to force it by law down the throat of people — Hispanics especially. Well — people don’t read history — it’s boring). And back to the X. There were many other changes in geographic spelling. And since we like trivia, here’s some for you. Mexico was originally pronounced méh-shi-ko after the Mexicas (meh-shí- kas) Aztecs who founded it. It was later changed to Méjico, as Texas (Téshas) was changed into Tejas, and so on. Most Spanish speaking countries accepted the ‘j’ spelling. Mexicans didn’t like the change and until today they still refuse the new spelling, as a good American would have probably done, too.
However, they compromised and changed the pronunciation into Méh-hee-ko; also as a good “American” would have done. After all those changes, Quixote (kee-shó-te) became Quijote, but English clung to the original spelling. A change in spelling of a word accepted by usage? God forbid! However, as I have already pointed, modern speakers have recently changed the pronunciation into Ki-ho-te while leaving the x, as Mexicans did with Mexico. Why? Beats me.
We all know that La Jolla (California) is a spelling error, probably committed by an Andalusian (Andalusians cannot tell the ll and the y apart — ll is pronounced like ly, and the y like English y). It should have been spelled La Joya. But have you heard the names they called those who suggested the change in the past? In the Hispanic World, in particular, people are always changing the spelling of geographic names, thus constantly confusing the rest of the world. The Cuban capital was originally spelled Havana, with a v, as in English. This spelling persisted from the colonization of America to the beginning of this century. Then, one day close to the celebration of their independence, some Indian scholar (that is, a scholar versed in Indian affairs, since no Indians survived colonization in Cuba) suggested the change in spelling. This otherwise unknown person reasoned that Cuban Indians had no v sound in their language (neither did the Spaniards, he forgot). Therefore, Havana — an Indian name — should be spelled Habana, instead.
Cubans approved the change and Havana became officially Habana, in an emotional outburst of patriotism (the Republic was about to be created) or out of guilt, that is trying to compensate with a phony recognition of a supposed Indian heritage for having exterminated all the Indians. No other European language, English among them, acknowledged the change. Havana is spelled Habana only in Spanish — nice feeling not to be alone, as we stand on some other things. However, not everybody overlooked the change, the new spelling was properly noted by cigar smokers, who could now distinguish a cigar made in Habana, Cuba, from a cigar manufactured in Havana, northern Florida. In the late 70s, Peru respelled a lot of geographical names to make them sound closer to their original Incaic pronunciation. Thus Cuzco became Cusco (and finally Qosqo), Machu Picchu became Machu Pijchu, Nazca, Nasca, etc. Big deal the z and the s are pronounced alike in Latin America! Now if you address a letter to the University in Cuzco, and want to do it properly, you must write: Universidad de Cuzco, Cusco, Perú. “Americans” haven’t noticed this change and I don’t think that Americans have either. I talked to some fellow tourists in Cuzco, Peru and the only comment about the change was: “Look, they misspelled the name of the city.” This comment was made by Anglo and Latin Americans alike. The only changes in geographic names promptly accepted by us are those imposed by politics, maybe for that demagogical attitude of the so called political correctness. Of course the printed media are involved here and everybody knows how much they love politics. Thus we changed Danzig to Gdansk, in Germany-Poland; Saint Petersburg to Leningrad to Saint Petersburg, Königsberg to Kaliningrad; Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, in Viet Nam; Cambodia to Kampuchea; Peking to Beijing, etc. Very few people — however — pay attention to changing a name just out of regional patriotism, as in the case of the Irish capital, from Dublin to Baile Átha Cliáth (pr. bláklia, in Gaelic). We have done some changes of our own. We changed the longest geographical name in our premises to the shortest name given to an American city. It was founded centuries ago as El Pueblo de la Misión de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula and today we just call it L.A.
HAMBURGERS, HOT DOGS — IS THAT ALL WE EAT?
How about pizzas
How about frijoles negros
Those who see us only from other countries think that all we eat is hamburgers and hot dogs (or franks). I have no statistics at hand, but just by looking around, I could tell that the national meal in the United States is pizza. It is now more American than apple pie. The fact that you can order it now and you eat it still hot in the comfort of your home 15 to 30 minutes later puts it tops on the list of millions of people. A family may go out and have hamburgers; hot dogs are boiled, broiled or fried as a fast lunch in an emergency, but pizzas are an instant miracle. Every time I step in or out my apartment, I see a pizza man carrying the familiar box and a couple of sodas through the halls of the complex. Our ubiquitous pizza comes as an ethnic shock to some foreigners. They never had it elsewhere the way we make it here, especially Italians. Michele, a Roman friend of mine, got hooked on Pizza Hut Priazzos (now vanished). He enjoyed the food, yes, but he also the atmosphere of a Pizza Hut. “We don’t have anything like this in Italy,” he said. “Soon you will,” I answered — thinking how fast food establishments sprout everywhere in the world. While living in New York I met a Spaniard whose French mother was desperately trying to teach him the refinements of the French cuisine, but he had discovered pizza. And he got so hooked on it, that pizza was all he ate during the week he spent in the Big Apple. His mother was in shock. With medium and high quality restaurants appearing everywhere in our country and the fact that Americans today enjoy more free time and a better income, we are eating out a lot.
We are munching on delicacies not exactly popular before, ranging from filet mignon to escargot, and timidly saving the ketchup for occasional visits to the neighborhood Burger King, McDonald’s or Wendy’s. We also eat things we have been making other people and ourselves believe are really native to America. Among them you can find chewing gum (Mexican) popcorn (Mayan-Mexican) potatoes (Peru) or chocolate (Aztec- Mexican). In others, it is easy to infer their origin. Their names give them away as in hamburgers and frankfurters. Actually, we call American food to a selection from meats, vegetables and bread savored by anyone with no wince. The rule of thumb is no funny stuff and it must look good. To comply, manufacturers put all kinds of funny stuff we seldom know about in our food, and supermarkets follow suit placing them under special lights, as in the case of meats, illuminated with red lights to make them look good. To some people in the world, pigs are as unclean as dogs are to us. However, in some societies dogs provide the necessary proteins for their people to keep on going. In other places, monkeys are a delicacy. If you go to Mérida, Mexico, and you are one of those tourists who — not speaking the language — point out at any plate on the menu, watch out for the word “chango”! It means monkey in the local dialect. An “acquired taste” is a euphemism for a food that takes a long time learning to like. One of my most trying eating experiences occurred when I was in Puebla, a beautiful city, minutes from Mexico City. I had decided to go for a famous local dish called mole poblano with chicken. Mole poblano is a sauce prepared with over 20 different spices, lots of them hot, and I’m telling you hot, plus chili mixed with pure chocolate — which tastes bitter and beyond.
The mole poblano looks pitch dark and has a texture similar to tar. And it is no doubt an acquired taste. You can have a beer with it, but please don’t even try drinking water. If you do, wait over three hours before drinking any water or this will taste sour, bitter and tart, altogether. If after the first try you are courageous enough to try again and again, you’ll probably end up enjoying the exquisite taste of mole poblano. And with food, there is water! Every traveling American knows too well that water abroad is a rare commodity and many times it becomes a point of friction anywhere abroad. Possibly the first thing we question upon arrival is the purity of the water — we may be catching up at home with the pollution of our drinking water lately.
Even before we leave, some travel agencies advise us about hostile
creatures swim and flourish in the drinking waters of many countries. “Stick to bottled water. And watch it. The capping of the bottles is not so efficient in many countries as it is here. It is very easy to have any bottle quickly replenished with tap water, especially in some flea-bag fifth class hotels,” they add. Now, let’s keep in mind the fact that water may not be so important to them during meals as it is for us, especially in Europe. We like having a glass of water right there on the table before we start eating. However, in most restaurants in
other countries, water is some sort of luxury. In many restaurants you have to beg for water and wait and wait while you sense how your food gets cold. Then, what do you get? A teeny glass with lukewarm water! On top of that, the damned thing is not even completely filled.
There’s always one inch — or more — of water missing from the brim down. Europeans haven’t understood yet that Americans drink a lot of water. Even in the most luxurious hotels in Europe, it would be a miracle to find a water fountain. And they let you know all the time. Waiters or waitresses feel it is their duty to drop a comment about our lack of interest for wine or beer with our food.
“What are you going to drink, sir?”
“Just water.”
“Water?”
“Yes, water, agua, Wasser, de l’eau.
“Yes.”
“And put some ice in the glass, please.”
“Ice?”
“Yes, ice… you know Eis, glace, hielo…”
“You’re sure you don’t want any wine?”
“No, nein, non. Just cold water, please, bitte, por favor, s’il vous plaît.”
Then the waiter goes away mumbling something like: “Water, ice… These Americans! Water with dinner, geez (or local equivalent).” I wonder all the time why they are always so reluctant to give you ice.
Why? What do they use the ice for? Water really becomes precious when you are corralled up in an Economy Class seat for hours. At some point you begin to feel like a camel in the middle of the Sahara.
And what do you get if you ask the stewardess — I mean, the flight
attendant — for a glass of water? A microscopic paper cup with two or three drops of water in it! Soon you’ll be panting like a dog. What to do? Always carry a plastic bottle of water in your carry-on,
especially if you’re flying a non American carrier. Try not to be ostentatious about it, or soon your next seat neighbors, 2 out of 3, will ask you for a drink — of your precious water.
PRECIOUS COMMODITIES ABROAD
Toilet paper, getting softer
Showers, they call them douches
In the States, there are dozens of things that are insignificant to us, but important for many people abroad. We take them for granted, not knowing their international values. That is why traveling to other countries is not only important, but also essential, to help us do a thorough reevaluation of everything we have at home. You may think this is funny, but it is not. It takes just one trip to an inhospitable area of the planet to realize it. One item most Americans usually miss in their wandering around the world is toilet paper, our kind of toilet paper, that is. The countries that have it, in most of the cases, have it so rough that — in the words of some — it gives hemorrhoids. How important is toilet paper?
This is what a guest at a local radio talk- show on one of the many Spanish radio stations here in Miami had to say on toilet paper. I assure you that this was the most unusually philosophical opinion on toilet paper I ever heard.
Toilet paper, he said, “is an item directly related to social and economic progress. When a country slides into economic disaster, the first thing to disappear from the shelves of stores and supermarkets is toilet paper.” He said that the lack of toilet paper has become a symbol of economic depression. “An economically depressed nation,” he continued, “is forced to used newspapers and paper bags to substitute for the missing toilet paper.” It came to my mind how uncivilized people use leaves, grass, corn cobs and even stones.
I also remember that a few years ago, we had a temporary critical shortage of toilet paper, and, coincidentally, we were going through a
recession. American tourists nowadays don’t have to face those predicaments. Some hotels seem to have gotten the message often repeated by those who used to pack their suitcases with toilet paper rolls. Furthermore, toilet paper has become softer in many countries, or optional. For instance, In a recent visit to Santiago, Chile, I was surprised to learn that the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, a business-oriented hotel, provides two types of toilet papers in its bathrooms: one rough (European style), one soft (North American style). To each his own. This duality may reflect a trend going on everywhere in the international business world. The American businessman makes up only 40% of their total business clientele, the other 60% is made up by Europeans and by — guess who! — those ubiquitous and ever smiling Japanese. Besides toilet paper, many other things may be useful to an American visitor who wants to communicate with the natives. By the way, don’t use this word in Spanish or Portuguese — nativo in both — it is a derogatory term in those two languages.
A Polaroid camera will make instant friends. Nothing makes somebody
smile faster than to see his own picture in seconds and get it as a present from you. Even those reluctant to have their pictures taken, appreciate it. Whether you agree or not with some traditions, you must respect them. A misunderstanding, in some cases, can lead you right into serious trouble. In some countries, picture-taking may be hazardous to your freedom and pocket. In Socialist Cuba in particular, they are oversensitive to what they may consider top secrets — no matter how childish they may seem to you. They take military in-
stallations and railroad stations (?) very seriously. Picture-taking can be also irritating when you want to take an innocent shot at the indigenous population in some African and Latin American countries. For instance, some indigenous people believe that if you take them a picture, you also take part of the subject’s soul. Sometimes, however, they would waive their rights to their soul for some hard currency.
In some places, you may be arrested for taking a picture of a person
without previously asking his authorization. If you want to take home candid pictures of people, the best bet is to attach a telephoto lens to your camera. That way you’ll have no problems and no misunderstandings. If you still smoke, besides being a courageous person nowadays, you can use cigarettes as one really important icebreaker. Europeans, especially Germans and Spaniards smoke like herring. Just keep in mind that it is customary always to offer a cigarette to whomever you are talking to or even close to you before you light your own cigarette. This courtesy is appreciated by friends and acquaintances and opens up a conversation with strangers, a fascinating thing to do when you are in another country. And it is considered good manners. Many times, Americans have been labeled as rude, even stingy, for not offering a cigarette to the person they are talking to before they start to puff. Actually, we don’t usually do that in the U.S.A., where we take for granted that he who smokes, is loyal to a particular brand and always has his own pack with him, not out of rudeness, as people abroad think.
In Latin America, they also consider it very rude not only to pull a cigarette out of a pack without first offering one to the person you are talking with, but also refusing to accept a cigarette that is being offered to you. In the latter case it may become a trying experience to accept a black tobacco cigarette, the one they call “rompepechos” (lung busters).
Every country in the world has its own list of hot American items; that is, those items difficult for them to get. You must be aware that most of the time, there are legal restrictions, so you don’t break the law. In Israel, for instance, where small Japanese recorders are a luxury, there are tough customs regulations on incoming ones in tourist bags. In former socialist countries, blue jeans and T-shirts with phrases, rock group pictures, etc., printed on them could be both a token of friendship and a valuable trade item. Nevertheless, unless you are a born businessman, just the contact with the people is pay enough. Other small items, like candies, chewing gum, pens, key-holders will make instant friends, especially in those places where they are considered a rarity.
It is very important to understand that those who can give you the best information on the country you are visiting are old folks. They are always attentive, proud and always try harder to help you. Human beings are the best commodities. We are. They are. We may conclude that “America” or the United States of America — not this country, but our country — is, more often than not, misunderstood.
Sometimes it’s our fault, sometimes it’s somebody else’s fault — now and in the future. Communications will bring to us a wider exchange of ideas. Judgments will take place and we will be even more misunderstood than we ever have been. We understand and accept our criticism with grace, but we must also realize that other nations don’t accept criticism the same way. Despite all misunderstandings, people from all over the world flock toward our borders and jump through them to desperately cling to our misunderstood way of life. It must be that all our defects subtracted from our virtues, we still come to total of virtues. Few other countries can proclaim that. Plus we have a more down-to-earth reason: our economic system works.
In all these previous accounts of communications, the fabled American tourist played an outstanding role. Probably no place on earth exists today that hasn’t been visited already by a man or a woman wearing dark glasses and funny clothes. In every U.S. city there is a little piece of a far away country; in every country on earth there is now a little bit of the United States of America. We are sometimes misunderstood; we sometimes misunderstand.
But, what the hell! Understanding and misunderstanding are part of our human nature.
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