It's An Old Spanish Custom of Speech

With Few Biscuits (So He Says) An Alumnus Tells of His Courtship of Spanish Language

ASA SUPERFICIAL SCRIBBLER (cajon desastre—tailor's work-box) I realize as 111 venture into a discussion of my thirty years' courtship of the Spanish language that I am flinging caution to the winds (embarcando con poco bizcochosailing with few biscuits). But the wine of this language makes one rashly (escupiral cielo-spit at the heavens) talkative, and hopefully expectant that every listener will, in the customary sweet-tempered (sercomo una seda—be like silk) way of the sober, make due allowances.

In such a manner as indicated above, with my little store of biscuits, I will endeavor to convey to you some idea of the great good fun, and profit, which I have enjoyed in learning the Spanish language. Emphasis will be laid on the personality of this delightful tongue. Praise will be offered not so much for the mechanics of the language, such as vocabulary, the jagged irregular verbs, or its masculine pitch and cadence, but rather for the spirit and essence of thg stuff. Particular praise will center on the way in which Spanish- speaking people combine extravagant and earthy words to express their ideas. For as they would say, it is this characteristic of the tongue which has completely reached my entrails (me llego a las entranas) or as we would say, touched my heart.

Note, for example, how in Spanish the idea of "enjoying little happiness in the midst of plenty" would sometimes be expressed escupir sangre en bucin de oro, which literally means "spitting blood in a golden basin." What an extravagant flight of fancy for such earthbound words. Like the weary, footsore Sancho Panza plodding after his gallant Don Quixote.

All manner of such rough, blunt words are a necessary part of the cargo of speech in Spanish. Blood, spit, vomit, ear-wax, entrails, itch, venereal disease are barely recognizable as such when loosed in conversational Spanish. To express the idea, for example, that one is boasting of wealth, you would lay hold of the word "spit" and string it into the phrase "to spit doubloons" (escupir doblones). You would also employ the word "spit" to convey the idea of ridicule, for escupir en lacara means ridicule, figuratively, and spit in the face, literally. On the other hand, to boast of ancestry is to "vomit blood" (vomitar sangre).

To have venereal disease is to have the "French sickness" (mal frances).

To be completely broke is "to have no more wax in your ears" (no quedar a unocera en el oido).

To have everything in the world that your heart desires is "to pot even yearn for an itch to scratch" (no le falta sinorascarse).

Such capacity for melting hard words down into pleasant expressions, fit even for parlor conversations, is a special mark of the Spanish tongue, and one rarely encountered in occidental languages. This alchemy of transforming unfastidious words into fastidious concepts is curiously analogous to the capacity of those who are Spanish to the backbone (espahol a lasderechas) for the enjoyment of bull-fighting, where the domination, torture and ultimately the dispatch of a bull are meaningful only because they are related to the spectacle as a whole, namely, mans conquest over nature. Toro, the bull, must die, as the identity of many Spanish words must perish, for the sake of an idea, a concept, a symbol.

But sharp, rough words are not the only instruments employed in Spanish to enliven speech. There is also a very strong pull in the direction of the soil, which is to say, a harking back to the customs and usages of agricultural life, the usual lot of Spanish-speaking people both before and since Columbus. Country life fences in the mind and, as exemplified by vocabulary, bends it either downwards to the world of animals and crops or upwards to the world of God and His saints.

Bread, for example, which in English is often happily referred to as "the staff of life" is frequently rendered in Spanish as "God's grace" (gracia de Dios). God, in fact, is the most recurring of all words in Spanish, notably so in the delightful adios —"God be with you"—which attends each greeting and farewell. Contrariwise, Spanish profanity rarely invoices God, Who, alas, in other tongues is the keystone of profanity.

The affinity of the Spanish mind for the soil crops out, as from a cornucopia, in countless quaint phrases (dichos). To allude, for example, to a man as "experienced, not easily deceived" is to say, in Spanish, that "he has the spurs of a fighting cock" (tiene garrones).

To drop something from between the hands is "to have the chicken fly away" (void el polio).

To capsize, as a boat, is "to turn over with feet in the air" (se volvid patas arriba).

The expression "there's no such thing" becomes "there's no such sheep" (no haytales carneros).

One fool praising another is "one ass scratching another" (un asno rasca a otro).

To denote that money makes the wheels go round is to say that "money makes the dog jump" (por el dinero salta el perro).

To turn the tables is "to turn the omelet" (volverse la tortilla).

Such figures of speech fall readily from the lips of country bumpkins long after they have settled comfortably in Madrid or Havana or Caracas. And this is something of a phenomenon among humans, who as a rule dread sounding like Simple Simons. Bumpkin and cosmopolite alike cling to the old quaint Spanish phrases, impervious to ridicule or spit in one's face, as the saying goes.

The Spanish cosmopolite still harks back to the soil when he says "every cask smells of the wine it holds" to convey the idea that every man is to be judged by his actions (cada cuba huele el vino quetiene). Or, when he assembles the words, "as your bread is, you eat it," to mean "as you make your bed, so you must lie" (con su pan se lo coma). And he is only on loan from the farm when he speaks of some "sponger" as un amigo de vaso devino (a friend as long as he's drinking your wine).

Connotations of farm life stick out of the speech like hay. "To smell a rat" is "to smell a post" (oler el poste). To be a keen, intelligent fellow is "to be a pair of scissors" (es un estuche). To refrain from laughing is "to eat your laughter" (comersela risa). To publish something is "to bring it out into the market-place" (sacar aplaza). To labor to no purpose is "to pour into a broken sack" (echar en saco roto). To bribe is "to make a bridge of money" (hacer puente de plata). The saying "one man's meat is another man's poison" becomes, in Spanish, "one man relishes tart fruit which puckers up another" (unocome la fruta aceda, y otro tiene la dentera ).

To do something at another man's expense is to do it "at the expense of another man's wool" (a costo de lanas). To act without thinking is "to sow wheat" (echar trigo). A man who accommodates himself readily to circumstances is "a horse with a sensitive mouth" (caballo conbuena boca). Our own delightful phrase, of Biblical derivation, "to cast pearls before swine," becomes,, in Spanish, "honey is not made to be fed to asses" (no se hacela miel para la boca del asno).

Likewise, as indicated above, we find that nicknames in Spanish often throw their roots down into the soil. A "turkeyhen" (pava) is a lazy woman. A "turkey" (pavo) is a fop. A "chicken" (polio) is an artful, deceitful man. "A chicken with chilblains" (polio con esplones) is an oldish man. To be a leader is "to be a rooster" (gallo). To be very arrogant is "to be very much the rooster" (tener mucho gallo). A coward is "a hen" (gallina). A mild, meek man is "a lamb" (cordero). A conspicuous but shy person is "a bird" (pajaro). A country bumpkin is "a clown" (patdn). An ignoramus or a booby is "an orange" (naranjo).

It would appear that other encompassing and engrossing experiences of the race, as in this case of preoccupation with the soil, would also have touched up the speech with their own peculiar pigments. But to our great disappointment such is but rarely the case. We might well expect, for example, to catch some overtones from the waves of Moorish culture that had been breaking over Spain for almost an entire millennium, and yet, apart from a few Moorish place names and architectural designs that still remain, all traces of the invader's culture including his language vanished utterly.

The Spanish language is also almost entirely devoid of clues to the epic of America, the era of the Conquistadores. A great deal of silver plate, a few shining new words, like maiz for corn, a new vice called tobacco—such as these came back to Spain from America, but no bright new imagery to enliven the language. As though to prove the rule, this pitiful exception survives—you will say in Spanish to a person who is obviously contemptuous of you, soy indiof, which means, "what do you take me for, an Indian?"

The era of the Inquisition also surely deeply touched the minds of Spaniards, and might well have found some outlet in the language. And yet when this fierce and unique period of torture and bloodletting had passed, the popular figures of speech, which is to say, the life-blood of language in any period of history, vanished from the tongue as completely as have the gruesome instruments of torture from the latter-day Spanish courtroom. A few exceptions, like dim remembrances, remain; today, the word Inquisicidn means a sorting of papers, documents, etc. so that the useless may be burned! A further example, the Spanish phrase piede amigo, which- translates as "foot of a friend," figuratively means a small metal plate which has the purpose of holding up the head of a person who is in the pillory, or stocks.

But let us be content with the Spanish language as we find it, and with whatever detours it may have taken around such great historical events. For as we have tried to say, its extravagant and earthy savor will most assuredly touch your entrails along with your heart.

Yours obediently (a las plantas de Ud), "at the soles of your feet." Adios.

THE AUTHOR: Charles L. Youmans '20, who is now living in Cuba, shown in the Dartmouth Museum in 1945 at the time he presented the College with the collection of Taino Indian artifacts he had unearthed in Santo Domingo as an amateur archaeologist. Mr. Youmans was then a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Corps and was on terminal leave after serving as U. S. air attache to Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. He is co-author of a book in Spanish describing the La Caleta excavations.