Spanglish

This picture has nothing to do with anything

Is there anything more excruciating than listening to a good ol' boy get cultural?  I know the worse is when the white guy tries to get all hood with black guys.  That's the worse.  But a close second is the broken, bastardized, and mildly offensive mix of English and Spanish.  And I don't mean offensive like culturally insensitive.  Just mildly offensive to the ears.  It's also pretty bad when people use broken Spanish to talk to people who don't even speak Spanish.  Like asking a Russian something like "comprende?" 

But here we have the galley guy.  The head galley guy.  Who is very nice and a cool guy.  I'm not saying it's a character flaw or anything.  It's just a questionable habit.  So he's talking to the two-I guess they're Mexican-galley helpers the last couple days.  You know, sometime after the chief told me "there are mute buttons all over the boat.  They're called fire axes".  Still laughing at that.  So since then they've been cleaning up the galley and doing some good work.  Every one is just hunky dory or whatever positive characterization you could put on it.  And the whole time my piano and stuff is in the galley, btw. 

So the chief of the galley or whatever they call it is a good ol' boy from Tennessee.  Billy Joe.  Ya, that's right.  He's got one of those deep voices only a southerner can have.  And whenever he talks to Jaime or Marta it's in this busted ass impression of a Mexican accent with the occasional Spanish phrase thrown in.  Oh!  It makes me cringe.  He asked Jaime the other day if he had 'sopa' to clean with.  I've failed Spanish at least ten times.  I'm no linguist when it comes to Espanol.  But I couldn't help chiming in, "that's soup".  Marta laughed.  Billy Joe didn't hear.

But really.  This is like when you couldn't count to ten when you were ten years old and went "uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, sixo, seven o, eight o, nine o ten o."  Right?  Just putting 'o' or 'a' at the end of a word and pretending it's Spanish?  I mean, I kinda respect the effort and boldness of it.  He's trying to be 'amigos' with them.  I'd say we should be friends and if Jaime can't understand say it a little slower and with more force.  And if he still can't understand maybe give him an impatient look or something?  I just don't think you can meet someone in the middle when it comes to language.  It's hard enough when you're each using words that exist in your respective tongue.  When you're each making up words in different languages and some of them are a made up language?  No chance.

Again, I like everyone involved.  I'm not saying I don't.  I'm just saying that while we all are somewhat guilty of this, my buddy Billy Joe has taken it to the next level.  And maybe beyond.  I'm thinking about blogging the outline of the movie, just so I can keep track of ideas.  No one's gonna steal it if I do, right?