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En su despedida del mundo politico, el ministro don Antonio Machado no oculto su falta de gramática propia. Machado construyo "la oración más larga del mundo," que no podrás leerlo en voz alto bajo un suspiro. Incluso, Machado no sabe cuando usar mayúsculas: "al Partido Popular."

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Cuando Antonio Machado predicó con aquello de las dos Españas que han de helarte el corazón, sabía muy bien lo que decía. El españolito que ha venido al mundo se levanta cada mañana con un maremoto político que afecta a una u otra orilla, sin importar las siglas políticas que lo amparen. Precisamente aquella Soria que tanto amó el propio Machado pasó de inspirar al poeta a apellidar al hombre que protagoniza hoy el enésimo desastre. El españolito que viene al mundo observa el periódico sorprendido: "El ministro Soria dimite por el escándalo de sus sociedades offshore".

Lo que don Antonio Machado no sabía al componer aquellos versos es que hay una tercera España que cada día cobra más importancia dentro del contexto social del país. Es la España que destruye la lengua que la hizo grande. Es la España que pisotea indistintamente los distintos niveles gramaticales: hoy me cisco en la morfología, que ayer ya profané la fonética y mañana quiero pegarle fuego al léxico.

Lo que don Antonio Machado no sabía al componer aquellos versos es que hay una tercera España que destruye la lengua que la hizo grande

Por eso, el españolito que viene al mundo se centra en la noticia de la dimisión del ministro Soria consciente de que, en cualquier momento, puede hacer acto de presencia esa tercera España que ha de helarte el corazón y, de paso, el entendimiento lingüístico. Se adentra en la noticia y todo va según lo esperado: Panamá, dimisiones, excusas. Entonces llega. Es él, el bando que Machado no reconoció, la tercera España. Y esta vez ataca en forma de comunicado, ése que ha utilizado el ministro para decir adiós a la política. El españolito se intenta fajar con el texto, hace lo que puede, pero el monstruo tiene demasiada fuerza. Termina de leerlo casi entre lágrimas. -¿Quién ha caído esta vez?- pregunta alguien. -Me temo que ha sido la sintaxis.

La oración más larga del mundo

Lo primero que llama la atención al examinar el cadáver sintáctico es el hecho de no encontrar ningún punto en todo el texto. Varios de los lingüistas encargados de analizar al finado se asfixian al intentar leerlo. Tranquilos, siempre se podrán trasplantar los pulmones caídos, así que pasemos a la acción.

Alguien se decide por la causalidad como definición sintáctica del texto. Esto quiere decir que toda la narración está centrada en explicar la causa de la dimisión. Vale. Es entonces cuando alguien se percata de la cantidad de nexos causales que flotan por el texto: "A la luz de", "en relación a", "debidos a" y "considerando que". Ni siquiera el manual de sintáctica más celebrado cuenta con semejante retahíla de ejemplos.

Lo primero que llama la atención al examinar el cadáver sintáctico es el hecho de no encontrar ningún punto en todo el texto. Varios de los lingüistas encargados de analizar al finado se asfixian al intentar leerlo

Pero el problema viene cuando uno quiere saber si estos complementos circunstanciales de causa se están refiriendo a la oración principal o a cualquiera de los millones de sintagmas que por allí pululan sin un punto que los acote ni un alma que los cobije.Por ejemplo, esa unidad sintáctica que comienza "en relación a mis explicaciones...", ¿a qué complementa? ¿A los "errores cometidos"? ¿A la decisión de renunciar al cargo?

Por este motivo, nos encontramos con una catarata de sintagmas que pueden relacionarse de mil formas entre sí. A estas alturas, nadie es capaz de analizar el texto sintácticamente. La red de oraciones es de una complejidad tal que se ríe uno de la red de sociedades opacas de Panamá. No hay nada más offshore que el núcleo sintagmático en este texto.

Posesivos y mayúsculas onshore

A pesar de no haber hallado en el cadáver un sujeto y un predicado que expliquen el motivo del crimen, intentamos continuar con el análisis. Lo siguiente que nos llama la atención es el hecho de encontrarnos, en un simple espacio comprendido entre dos puntos, hasta seis veces con el posesivo "mi". Especialmente llamativa resulta la frase: "en relación a mis explicaciones de mis actividades empresariales anteriores a mi entrada en política". Hasta tres posesivos en un rango de quince palabras. ¿Tan difícil resulta abstraerse de la "posesión" como único incentivo? Pasemos a la siguiente pregunta.

Especialmente llamativa resulta la frase: "en relación a mis explicaciones de mis actividades empresariales anteriores a mi entrada en política". Hasta tres posesivos en un rango de quince palabras

Sí encontramos rasgos de violencia al examinar el estado de las mayúsculas al toparnos con cargos como "Presidente del Gobierno" o "Ministro de Industria, Energía y Turismo". En este caso, el cargo debe escribirse con minúscula inicial como así dicta la FUNDEU: "Los nombres de los cargos, como presidente, ministro, director, fiscal general y términos similares, se escriben con minúscula inicial por tratarse de sustantivos comunes". Es muy probable que los asesores del ministro no hayan puesto el mismo interés a la hora de ocultar sus carencias lingüísticas que el que mostraron en otros quehaceres. Con numerosos lectores asfixiados y varios niveles lingüísticos ardiendo, ya no queda ninguna duda: en este país, no hay nada más opaco que su gramática. La tercera España ha hecho su trabajo.

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El comunicado de Soria no oculta su nivel gramatical

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Cuando Antonio Machado predicó con aquello de las dos Españas que han de helarte el corazón, sabía muy bien lo que decía. El españolito que ha venido al mundo se levanta cada mañana con un maremoto político que afecta a una u otra orilla, sin importar las siglas políticas que lo amparen.

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En este libro, escrito por Carlos Alberto Patiño, señala el hecho de que la palabra compuesta "ojiverde" (alguien con ojos de color verde) no se encuentra en ninguno de los diccionarios que existe.

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Sorprendió a Eimy Arriaga la calidad descriptiva de Nellie Campobello en su libro Cartucho, Particularmente llamó su atención el uso de una palabra compuesta "ojiv...

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Desde mi primer clase de español, me he confundido con el gerundio. Algunas personas me decían que era como los "-ing" verbos en inglés.

En este articulo, explica la diferencia de los tres estados de acción: simultánea, anterior o posterior al verbo principal.

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Siempre habra prestamos de otras lenguas. En particular aprendí de calcos= términos que pasan un rasgo característico de una lengua a otra. Hay tres diferentes clasificaciones de calcos: estructurales, semánticos, y fonéticos.
Calcos semántico son los que copian el significado y los que más inconvenientes presentan. Muchas veces se confunden los significados o se asignan significados erróneos. Por ejemplo, el adjetivo severo, significa “riguroso, áspero, duro” y no “grave” como muchas veces se utiliza.

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Los extranjerismos, calcos y préstamos son fenómenos comunes en los idiomas y es una manera de incrementar el léxico de una lengua.

Con los avances de la tecnología, la influencia del inglés y la velocidad de las comunicaciones, el número de extranjerismos, calcos y préstamos se ha multiplicado y sigue creciendo.

Qué son los extranjerismos en español

El es una palabra proveniente de otra lengua, que sin ser traducida, entra a formar parte del lenguaje de todos los días.

Es correcto usar un extranjerismo, cuando el término no existe en español. Algunas veces llega el invento o el hallazgo científico, y con él su nombre en lengua original; otras se usa el extranjerismo como un signo de distinción y modernidad. Hoy, hay personas que prefieren hacer business en vez de negocios o hacer un tour en el week end, en vez de viajar el fin de semana.

Hay palabras que por su facilidad de pronunciación son incorporadas, sin nunca ser cambiadas, como por ejemplo bit, chip, chef, fan, kit, test, web, punk. Otras aún no se han adaptado o no existe el sustituto adecuado, sobre todo en el ámbito deportivo, en las artes y en las comidas. De uso tradicional son boutique, blog, curry, chat, link, playboy.

Definición de préstamo en una lengua

El préstamo es un extranjerismo, adaptado a la lengua que lo acepta. El español tiene muchos préstamos antiguos, como por ejemplo los de procedencia árabe como aceite, adoquín, adobe, almacén, álgebra, aduana, azúcar.

Hay préstamos que han cambiado sólo la última letra, la y final en i: derbi (derby), dandi (dandy), penalti (penalty); otros han perdido la t final, como por ejemplo carné (carnet), cabaré (cabaret), parqué (parquet) y algunos conviven en sus dos variantes: chalé y chalet, vermú y vermut.

Palabras como escáner (scanner), esmog (smog), estatus (status), han sumado la e al inicio del préstamo, otras han eliminado consonantes: gánster (gangster), pulóver (pullover), bulevar (boulevard).

No hay un criterio fijo y esto sumado a la diversidad geográfica de la lengua española, hace que a menudo se encuentren diversas adaptaciones de un mismo término. El inglés sandwic h, es sándwich en español, pero en diferentes países latinoamericanos se pueden encontrar formas como sánguche, sánguich, sánduche o sandwiche.

Definición de calco

Los calcos son términos que pasan un rasgo característico de una lengua a otra, traduciendo literalmente los elementos que la componen. El mundo del deporte, es un ejemplo "calcado": baloncesto y abierto de tenis provienen de calcar las voces basketball y open. En el ámbito informático abundan los calcos. Ejemplos de estos son: red, chatear, escritorio, ratón; provenientes de los términos ingleses net, chatting, desktop, mouse.

Clasificación de los calcos

Estructurales: son los que imitan la estructura extranjera: fin de semana (weekend), servicio de inteligencia (intelligence service).

Semánticos: son los que copian el significado y los que más inconvenientes presentan. Muchas veces se confunden los significados o se asignan significados erróneos. Por ejemplo, el adjetivo severo, significa "riguroso, áspero, duro" y no "grave" como muchas veces se utiliza. Versátil, "de genio o carácter voluble e inconstante", es usado en forma incorrecta como "polifacético".

Fonéticos: con frecuencia, voces originarias de la lengua italiana, como mezzo, pizza y pizzería, son pronunciados "a la italiana", pronunciando la doble zeta con sonido "ds", en lugar de la zeta española.

Hay calcos erróneos que entran en la categoría de los "falsos amigos", es decir, cuando dos términos similares tienen distinto significado. Ejemplos de falsos amigos son salvar, de save (guardar), asumir, de to asumme (suponer), sensible, de sensible (sensato).

En otros tiempos, la lengua española acogía fácilmente palabras extranjeras que naturalizaba transformándolas de acuerdo a su propia estructura. Hoy existe una especie de resistencia a la sustitución por los términos autóctonos, aunque la "naturalización" de los vocablos sería verdaderamente enriquecedora para el castellano.

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Extranjerismos, calcos y préstamos lingüísticos: definición y ejemplos

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Los extranjerismos, calcos y préstamos son fenómenos comunes en los idiomas y es una manera de incrementar el léxico de una lengua. Con los avances de la tecnología, la influencia del inglés y la velocidad de las comunicaciones, el número de extranjerismos, calcos y préstamos se ha multiplicado y sigue creciendo.

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Cuando era más jove, mi papa siempre me daba el reto de repetir esta palabra después de el. Aunque dominé la pronunciación, nunca me anime a tratar de escribirla.
Esta palabra por supuesto es trabalenguas y hoy aprendí el significado de la palabra: un pueblo chico en Michoacán, Mexico.

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This week's Mexi-Vocabulario is a doozy of a tongue twister. I have to thank the reader who originally shared this word with me a couple of months ago when I first kicked off the Mexi-Vocabulario series. The word itself is the name of a small village in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, and quite frankly, it's one of the hardest words ever featured here. Parangaricutirimicuaro as in Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutirimicuaro is located near the Paricutín volcano in the city of Nuevo Parangaricutiro. If you're head's already spinning from all of the parangaricutireo in this post, hold on... it gets better!

Here are a couple of popular tongue twisters employing the word:

El pueblo de Parangaricutirimícuaro se va a desparangaricutirimicuarizar. Quien logre desparangaricutirimicuarizarlo gran desparangaricutirimicuarizador será.
El Otorrinolaringólogo de Parangaricutirimícuaro, quiere desotorrinolaringologoparangaricutirimicuarillarse, el que lo desotorrinolaringologoparangaricutirimicuarillare, un buen desotorrinolaringologoparangaricutirimicuarillador será. Los parangaricutirimícuaros se quieren desparangaricutirimicuarizar porque un parangaricutirimícuaro se quiere casar con una parangaricutirimícuara y dicen que van a parangaricutirimicuarizar a muchos parangaricutirimicuaritos y parangaricutirimicuaritas, si a los parangaricutirimícuaros logran desparangaricutirimicuarizarlos el que logre desparangaricutirimicuarizarlos gran desparangaricutirimicuador será.

Now a confession. I don't think I can pronounce the word correctly myself either. It's so hard, LOL! Mejor, let's watch these folks I found on YouTube giving it a jab:

Now if you're brave enough of to make a video of yourself attempting this word I would love to see it and feature it here también. Me lo mandan please.

For more about parangaricutirimicuaro Click Here.

I'm always on the hunt for new mexi-vocabulario.
What other words would you like me to include in the mexi-vocabulario? If you have one that you would recommend please share it with me here.
Writer's Disclaimer: More Mexi-Vocabulario When I say mexi-vocabulario I don't necessarily mean these words are exclusively Mexican, or only used by Mexicans. This is simply an expression of how they were introduced to me in our Mexican Spanish.

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This week's Mexi-Vocabulario is a doozy of a tongue twister. I have to thank the reader who originally shared this word with me a couple of months ago when I first kicked off the Mexi-Vocabulario series. The word itself is the name of a small village in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, and quite frankly, it's one of the hardest words ever featured here.

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Esté refrán es uno que siempre me ha dicho mi mama, pero nunca me ha gustado. ¿Cómo que no voy a sentir una maldad solo porque no le he visto? Para mi, no tiene sentido.
En este articulo, se habla de la religion y creyentes en Dios. Algunos personas toman refranes como de esté tipo a que afecten su mentalidad personal.

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El refrán: "Ojos que no ven corazón que no siente" es bien conocido y no vamos a explicar su significado. Pero sí vamos a analizar las consecuencias que este refrán tiene en la vida espiritual de las personas.

Los ojos son uno de los sentidos del cuerpo, lo mismo que los oídos, por los ojos vemos y por los oídos escuchamos. Estos dos sentidos son los que más utilizamos lo seres humanos y los que más desarrollados tenemos, salvo en casos especiales, como pueden ser los de los ciegos, que tienen muy desarrollados el tacto, pues con el procuran suplir sus carencias de visión. Pero a través de las orejas y de los ojos, a nosotros nos entra casi todo, lo bueno y lo malo. Y lo que adquirimos por los ojos y por los oídos, nuestra mente lo maneja y muchas veces nos lo transforma en sentimientos, de aquí sale el valor de este refrán, que todos conocemos.

Todos nosotros tenemos una indudable tendencia a alimentar nuestro ego dándole el mayor grado de satisfacción posible, lo cual determina el aumentar nuestra soberbia en detrimento de nuestra necesaria humildad. Unos controlan esta tendencia más que otros y solo por razones de orden sobrenatural debidamente desarrollas puede una persona controlar y hasta llegara a anular, esta tendencia que continuamente nos está incordiando, facilitándole siempre su nefasta labor al demonio. Dicho de otra forma, nuestra vida es una continua lucha entre las apetencias materiales de nuestro cuerpo y las espirituales de nuestra alma. A unos le preocupa este problema y a otros este problema les importa un bledo y se lanzan río abajo sin control, a satisfacer los deseos de su carne, mientras que otros tratan de controlarlos y terminan consiguiendo sujetar su carne con la fuerza espiritual, que a su alma le proporciona el alimento de la gracia divina.

Y en esta lucha a la que todos nos vemos sometidos, naturalmente los que nos queremos someternos a ella, el demonio cuando se trata de temas que no nos afectan directamente, nos dice: Si no te enteras, no ves que no estás obligado a luchar ni preocuparte por ese problema. Lo malo de esta afirmación demoniaca es que en parte lleva razón. Nadie está obligado a remediar un mal cuya existencia desconoce. Pero es el caso de que, sí estamos todos, obligados a enterarnos y en la medida de nuestras posibilidades tratar de remediar el mal del que se trate. Nadie está autorizado, tal como se dice, para mirar hacia otro lado y menos para hacer de avestruz espiritual.

Si somos creyentes, y nos creemos que somos amantes del Señor, todos formamos parte del Cuerpo místico de Cristo, y en todo cuerpo las necesidades y problemas de uno de sus miembros le afectan por igual a todos. El bien que hagamos o el mal que cometamos, no creamos que es un algo personal que solo le afecta al que lo comete, ese bien o mal realizado le afecta a todo el cuerpo místico de Cristo. Es bien conocida la frase que dice, que nosotros: Nos salvamos y nos condenamos en racimos.

Antes de seguir más adelante, es conveniente que digamos algo más sobre el cuerpo místico de Cristo o Cristo total. ¿Y qué significa la expresión "Cristo total"? Cristo total es el término que usa San Agustín para denominar a lo que nosotros conocemos con el nombre de "Cuerpo místico de Cristo". San Agustín nos dice: "Todos los hombres son uno en Cristo y la unidad de los cristianos no constituye, sino un solo hombre.... Y ese hombre es todos los hombres, y todos los hombres son este hombre; porque todos son uno, ya que Cristo es uno.... No existe sino un hombre que alcance hasta el fin del tiempo. Este es el "Cristo Total". Cristo unido con la Iglesia".

Si meditamos todo lo anteriormente leído, tomaremos conciencia de la responsabilidad que como católicos tenemos, de hacer como nuestros los problemas y sufrimiento de todos nuestros hermanos, aunque no veamos con los ojos de la cara lo que está ocurriendo en Irak, en Irán, en Palestina, en la India en Pakistán y en otros lugares, generalmente de mayoría musulmana, donde a nuestros hermanos en la fe los están masacrando para exterminarlos, la mayoría de las veces por no aceptar el cambio de fe y adjurar del amor a Cristo.

¿Y qué puedo hacer yo? Estoy seguro que se preguntará más de un lector de esta glosa. Pues bien, puedes hacer mucho más de lo que te imaginas. Nosotros somos el fruto de una dicotomía, que como ya antes hemos dicho, son dos partes: cuerpo y alma que siempre están a la gresca entre ellos dos, pues uno quiereque la persona camine hacia la derecha y la otra hacia la izquierda. Solo cuando logremos alcanzar una vez santificados la sustitución del cuerpo mundano que ahora tenemos por el glorioso que nos espera, este problema quedará resuelto, porque nuestro futuro cuerpo estará sometido a la autoridad de nuestra alma, no como ahora que es al revés, que nuestra alma no puede ni respirar de la agobiante presión a la que le somete los malsanos deseos de nuestro cuerpo terrenal. Pues bien si somos expresión del espíritu y de la materia, nosotros podemos obrar materialmente y espiritualmente. Lo que determina que podemos ayudar a nuestros hermanos que están sufriendo con ayudas materiales, llámense limosnas, y sobre todo con ayudas espirituales, llámense oraciones.

No menospreciemos nunca la fuerza de la oración, ella es una tremenda palanca que Dios ha puesto a nuestra disposición para mover el mundo si fueses necesario y el caso es, que ahora lo es. Lo que pasa es que esta afirmación que acabo de hacer, son muchos los que no se la creen, sencillamente porque no han palpado y visto de inmediato los frutos de su oración. El Señor nos dijo muy claramente: "Pedid, y se os dará; buscad y hallareis; llamad y se os abrirá. Porque quien pide recibe, quien busca halla, y a quien llama se le abre. Pues ¿quién de vosotros es el que, si su hijo le pide pan, le da una piedra, o, si le pide un pez, le da una serpiente? Sí, pues, vosotros, siendo malos, sabéis dar cosas buenas a vuestros hijos, ¡cuanto más vuestro Padre, que está en los cielos, dará cosas buenas a quien se las pide!". (Mt 7,7-11). Y esta afirmación con distintas palabras la expresó más de una vez.

Que ocurre pues, ¿porque muchas veces pedimos y no somos escuchados? Cierto, así es, pero siempre somos escuchados, lo que ocurre es que no somos atendidos en nuestros deseos. Y ello es debido a un conjunto de causas que no son del caso de analizar en esta glosa. Lo que si podemos estar seguros es que las peticiones no atendidas, son generalmente referidas al orden material, pero aquellas otras que son referidas al orden espiritual y además a favor de terceros, hay que estar seguros que serán siempre atendidas.

Mi más cordial saludo lector y el deseo de que Dios te bendiga.
Otras glosas o libros del autor relacionados con este tema.

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El refrán: "Ojos que no ven corazón que no siente" es bien conocido y no vamos a explicar su significado. Pero sí vamos a analizar las consecuencias que este refrán tiene en la vida espiritual de las personas. Los ojos son uno de los sentidos del cuerpo, lo mismo que los oídos, por los ojos vemos y por los oídos escuchamos.

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En español hay muchas manera diferentes para llamar a un niño. En diferentes regiones de Mexico se les dicen "huercos" (Reynosa), "lepes" (Chihuahua), o "huaches" (Tejupilco). Esto lo aprendí cuando esta creciendo. Claro, también en otros países latinoamericanos come en El Salvador, se les dice "cipote."

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Modismos que no tienen sentido en inglés

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Modismos que no tienen sentido en inglés

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Habido ciertas situaciones donde me toca traducir español a inglés, pero no se traduce literalmente. La frase "¿Que onda" significa "What wave?" pero en realidad solo significa "What's up?" El origen de esta frase no tiene nada de sentido con el estado de como esta una persona. Es raro como se usan.

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If you want to learn Spanish it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the meaning of these commonly used phrases, for if the flies.

Anyone who grew up around Spanish speakers might be used to hearing these idioms, but when you stop and think about it their literal translations don't make any sense. For those trying to learn Spanish it might complicate the process if they take any of these literally.

So for the sake of all those future Spanish speakers out there we've put together a list of some of these commonly used, nonsensical phrases. Since the Spanish language varies so much from region to region these could change somewhat or be unfamiliar to some, depending on their country of origin.

Check out some nonsensical Spanish phrases below and let us know which ones you'd add in the comments!

Por si las moscas

Poner las pilas

Montar cachos / Poner los cuernos

No tener dos dedos de frente

Sacar de quicio

Sacar la piedra

Tomar el pelo

Echar el muerto

Que onda?

Literal: What wave?
Used as: What's up?

Poner la mano/las manos en el fuego

Le zumba el mango

Literal: He flings the mango
Used as: Commonly used as an expression of shock or incredulity.
Example: Le zumba el mango que llegó desde hace un mes y no me ha llamado
Translation: I can't believe he's been here for a month and he hasn't called.

Tirar/Echar la casa por la ventana

Volverse un ocho

Let us know what other phrases like these you'd add to the list in the comments below!

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Spanish Phrases That Literally Make No Sense

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If you want to learn Spanish it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the meaning of these commonly used phrases, for if the flies. Anyone who grew up around Spanish speakers might be used to hearing these idioms, but when you stop and think about it their literal translations don't make any sense.

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Punto de vista de un salvadoreño americano

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Punto de vista de un salvadoreño americano

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Yo soy mexicana. Leyendo este articulo, me da un sentido de el otro lado del cuento. El cuento es que mexicanos SI tienen e estereotipo negativa de salvadoreños. Pensamos que hablan bien vulgar y casi siempre tienen actitud horrible. Claro, es lo que crecí pensando por lo que me decía mi mama. Aqui en esté articulo, el autor salvadoreño dice lo contrario y describe experiencias que vivío.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Published this week in LatamThought (via Aleszu Bajak), Ivan also approached us to cross-publish his piece. He gave us permission to share his article on our site. Ivan posted it originally on his own page.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California to a Mexican father and a Salvadoran mother. Both came to the United States as migrants in the late 60's in search of a job that would pay them enough money to both eat and help out their families back home. At the time, this was a luxury their respective home countries could not afford them. My parents met and entered a domestic partnership in the U.S. when it was not so common to see a "Hispanic" in the streets of downtown Los Angeles (there were less than 70,000 self-identified Spanish speakers in all of California according to the 1970 census). My mother often recalls how she used to do a double take whenever she spotted a "Latin looking person" when she first arrived in 1969. Of course this is something unimaginable in today's Los Angeles.

My parents eventually separated after I was born in 1981 and my father moved back to Mexico. My mother was left to raise three children on her own. Despite this, my siblings and I would spend large parts of our summers in Mexico for most of our youth. We never went to El Salvador. I was 12 years old when I first visited El Pulgarcito and was promptly mugged at knifepoint (a welcome home of sorts) in a popular water park. So although I have spent more time in Mexico and lived there for a year as a baby, I consider myself more Salvadoran because my mother raised me and I grew up associating with all of her sisters, my aunts and their children, my cousins.

I grew up with a dual cultural friction that was only made worse by my host American culture. I was truly confused on whether I was Mexican, Salvadoran, or maybe (U.S.) American. My Spanish was not Mexican enough, my cultural customs were not Salvadoran enough, and my skin color and neighborhood were not American enough. To add to this crisis of identity, I was raised in Venice, California, at a time when it was known simply as the ghetto by the sea, so I have a little bit of an urban slang and drawl in my everyday vocabulary.

Most of my high school friends were of Mexican descent and it never seemed to matter that my father was Mexican, one word out of my mouth in Spanish and I was instantly branded a "cerote" (I will let you do the research on this and all other terms you are unsure of in this piece). Incidentally, I only ever met a handful of Salvadorans or Salvadoran Americans within my formative educational years. The few I did meet turned out to become lifelong friends, perhaps due in large part to our shared mutual experience of isolation, real and imagined.

Why does all of this matter? It matters because last summer the Pew Research Center reminded us that Salvadorans were to became the third largest U.S. Hispanic group in the Unites States (the 2010 census counted 1,648,968 Salvadorans; surely closer to 1,700,000 by now) behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. What is really known about us however? Who are we and how did we get here? Aside from Puerto Ricans and the occasional Cuban, aren't the rest of the Hispanics in this country just Mexican? Echoing the sentiments of a lot Americans: you all speak Spanish, and you like your food spicy, what else do we need to know about you? Well, a lot actually. Salvadorans don't even do spice.

Compared with Mexican Americans, the largest Latino ethnic group in the country, Salvadorans (not 'El' Salvadorans) have not been in the United States a very long time. The first big wave began in the early 1980s as many fled the gruesome civil war that devastated El Salvador for 15 years. Between the years of 1981 to 1990, over one million Salvadorans and Guatemalans migrated north to escape the strife at home. In 1990, Congress passed legislation allowing then president George H.W. Bush, to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to certain groups in need of a "temporary safe haven" spurred on by the tens of thousands of asylum seekers specifically from El Salvador. Since then Salvadorans have stamped their migrant history within the different ethnic enclaves of the U.S., particularly in Los Angeles.

Current official numbers have Salvadorans accounting for just over 3 percent of the total Latino population in the United States. This percentage does not take into account the unspecified number of undocumented Salvadorans arriving almost every day. Los Angeles is home to over 9 percent of all counted Latinos in the country in 2010, comprised of mostly Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans. The Salvadoran population grew significantly between 2000 and 2010, increasing by 180 percent. Consequently, there are more Salvadorans in Los Angeles than any other place in the world outside of El Salvador, with the second largest concentration in the U.S. being in the D.C.-Maryland area.

With such a big concentration of Mexicans and Central Americans in one city, intercultural relations have not always been smooth. Ethnographic research evidence over the last two decades indicates that the notorious MS-13 gang began in in the streets of Los Angeles as a direct response to the bullying Salvadoran youth experienced when first arriving in the early to mid 1980's. And if we revisit the history of Mexican migration beginning with the Bracero Program of the 1940's, we realize that Mexican migration has shifted and evolved over six decades to form into the large and influential (potentially) U.S. population it is today; the modern U.S. Salvadoran community is barely half that age.

I don't feel a lot of people would disagree with the statement that most Americans are not entirely clear on what today's Mexican American community looks like. Much more ambiguity surely exists regarding today's Salvadoran American community. For the sole purpose of confining a better idea of what it means to be Salvadoran in the United States today, I conducted a mini-survey of 33 Salvadoran Americans (they were either born here or migrated at a very young age) currently living in Southern California, and asked them a series of questions aimed at answering what it means to be a Salvadoran-American.

Certain broad themes emerged from the survey, five of which I list below. Once again, I will not define the terms italicized in the responses below, as the process of self-discovery is always a holistic one in my view.

The pupusa

Food is the most common symbol with which Salvadoran-Americans choose to define themselves. The pupusa, a thick handmade corn tortilla made from cornmeal dough usually filled with cheese, beans, chicharrón (cooked pork meat ground to a paste), or any combination thereof, is the most iconic symbol of what El Salvador is, according to the survey respondents.

To both Salvadorans and non-Salvadorans, the pupusa is a delicious icon that is known world over. Whether here in the States or traveling abroad, invariably the first thing people say to me when I mention that my mother is Salvadoran is, Oh, I love pupusas! . And it's also common knowledge that every Salvadoran American thinks their individual mother, aunt and/or grandmother makes the best pupusas. The funny thing is, depending on the day and particular taste, they are usually right.

When asked to describe a favorite memory of growing up Salvadoran in the U.S., the respondents equated ethnic identity with this influential cultural dish (as a side note, the term Salvi is short for Salvadorans):

"When I was little and tried to grasp the concept of the differences between Salvadorans or Mexicans, it confused me. At one point I believed my aunt was Mexican because she liked eating jalapeños, and one of the stereotypes was that Salvis couldn't eat spicy food, so in my eyes she HAD to be Mexican, but she was very much Salvadoran." - Kevin, 23, Bell Gardens, CA

The food is definitely what I associate with being Salvadoran. Mexican food is obtained easily, but any other ethnic food is more challenging to get." - Ángel, 21, Burbank, CA

"Obviously the food culture is my favorite! Yuca frita con curtido, empanadas, pupusas, tamales de elote, etc. I was always excited when family would go visit and bring back food that's only indigenous to El Salvador, like paternas! I connected most with my ancestral country through food." -Trixia, 22, Los Angeles, CA

"Having my grandmother come visit from El Salvador and make us homemade pupusas with cheese and ingredients that came from El Salvador. Love my mom's cooking especially the panes con pollo; growing up having panes con pavo on Thanksgiving instead of a traditional 'American' style Thanksgiving is a big memory for me." -Odalys, 26, Los Angeles, CA

A minority within a minority

Growing up as a minority within another minority, the relationship characterized between Salvadorans and Mexicans in the United States, a sense of ethnic alienation is developed. Language, and in particular, cultural customs are also sources of increased ethnic dissonance early on in the lives of Salvadoran Americans:

"I remember me really grasping my Salvadoran difference in middle school. Someone asked me what I was and I said I was Salvadoran, then they said 'oh so you're a cerote'... I was so confused. I had no clue what a cerote was. Also for some reason every time someone found out I was Salvadoran, they always seemed a little disappointed or surprised (this reaction was from Mexican kids)... Although what I do see is that when I do meet people my age who are also Salvadoran-American, there is a sense of bonding; like we automatically have each other's backs since we're outnumbered and it's cool that there's someone else with a similar background. As if we're a special few." -Kevin, 23, Bell Gardens, CA

"People didn't understand that part of being Latino meant that there was a whole continent full of people with sub-cultures, so trying to enlighten people of my differences was sometimes annoying and difficult. Some didn't want to hear it and just wanted to categorize everyone as 'Mexican' buy some were so interested. They wanted to know everything about the food, and mostly the language and accent. In other words, what makes me unique and awesome is also what makes me easily dismissed... Growing up was kind of difficult since the vast majority of everyone else in our neighborhood was Mexican. Especially as a kid it would kind of suck because others would gang up to make fun of the Salvis. But I felt it helped me to embrace my identity because being Salvi is what set me apart from everyone else. However, I had to develop mechanisms to exist in that reality. My Spanish slowed down in order for my Mexican friends to understand me. Ultimately though, I feel like my family's culture is what really kept me grounded in my identity. We would link up every weekend and hang out with all my uncles, aunts and cousins. We would be secure in our Salviness then." -Betsy, 23, Bell Gardens, CA

"Both my parents are Salvadoran and going to schools that were mostly Mexican American and Caucasian, it was important for me to label myself as Salvadoran, although it was very hard to do so. Back in the 80s there weren't too many Salvis in South Central or in the Southeast [L.A.]. I remember in school constantly getting called cerote and such. But I was fortunate to grow up in a home where the culture was very strong. We ate casamiento and pupusas, we listened to cumbias, and we spoke caliche. It was almost a resistance thing for me, whereas my older brother and sister tried to hide their Salvi heritage and pass as Mexican or American. I had two other friends who were Salvis who preferred to pass as Mexican in order to not get bullied." -Andrés, 32, South Gate, CA

"When I moved from Hollywood, it was then that I found myself having to identify who I was. The new school was primarily Black and Latino, and by Latino I mean Mexican. During elementary school was when I began hearing these terms (i.e., cerote) about Salvadorans from Mexicans and I went home and told my mom. She told me to pay them no mind, but even then I recognized this 'hatred' they have against us. It was a difficult road but I realized that at the end of the day what matters is how you view yourself and I am a proud Salvadoran." -Karla, 30, Los Angeles, CA

"I go to a private liberal arts school in Massachusetts, and all the Latinas are grouped together and called Mexican and our pan-Latino organization has actually been called the Mexican club. The sad part is that the statement is partly true. There is a majority in our membership of students of Mexican descent so a lot of the issues talked about/speakers brought in are concerned with Ch/Xicana identity, and there is almost no attention or consideration about issues of students of Central American descent... Within my group of Salvi friends we would joke about shared experiences growing up with Salvi families and take pride in our food and music. To the 'Mexican kids' we were made fun of because of our soccer team and just for being lesser, I guess. I was never told anything directly, but I know Salvis were the butt of jokes." -Kathy, 19, Panaroma City, CA

"There were a lot more Mexicans in my neighborhood than Salvadorans. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Most of my friends were Black and a lot of my friends and neighbors would not see the difference between Mexican and Salvis. I thought it was the most ignorant thing, but that is how it was. Mexican friends would joke with me with regular jokes. Call me pupusa or cerota. It was all in fun, so I was never really offended. I actually felt very unique because most Hispanics in my area were 'just' Mexican as opposed to me...I was both Mexican and Salvadoran... One of the challenges included having to explain myself constantly. Whether I was explaining something to my Mexican or black friends. It seemed as if I was the advocate for the entire Salvadoran community; which then led me to seem as if I was solely identifying or 'rooting' for Salvadoran people. I also had to defend my Mexican side to my Salvi family. As I am very sure you are familiar with the rivalry, my Salvi side of the family could be ruthless with jokes and prejudice towards Mexicans. I always had to defend my Mexican side to them." -Jennifer, 24, Los Angeles, CA

Salvadoran dialect

Language and dialect both distinguish and serve as a point of ethnic pride for most of the respondents. Salvadoran Spanish is markedly different from Mexican Spanish, just as Spanish from Spain sounds very different from any other Spanish spoken anywhere in Latin America. Salvadoran Spanish tends to be faster, less enunciated, and is filled with very particular lingo. Alternatively, the Salvadoran dialect can also cause confusion and/or estrangement, especially for school-aged children of Salvadoran descent.

"I really, really, love the language. I love the accent and the fast pace; the fact that sometimes R's don't exist in our conversations." -Betsy, 23, Bell Gardens, CA.

"I think many people have the misconception that all Salvis speak vulgarly and have very little class, which isn't the case." -Edgar, 32, Los Angeles, CA.

"I love the accent! Vos sos un bicha chuca. Vení y traeme una paílita my dad would say. I appreciated the different words for things as well as pronunciations." -Jennifer, 24, Los Angeles, CA.

"I love our music and slang. Our slang, caliche as I think it's called, can be used as a funny and unifying thing-my friends and I are fans of Salvadoran vines on Facebook, it's like we're seeing ourselves in those vines i.e. 'that's my tia right there!!'" -Kathy, 19, Panaroma City, CA.

"When I went to middle school and high school, I kept my Spanish to a minimum because I didn't want people asking where my parents are from and then having them say those terms. I felt it was just better if I didn't identify myself. I battled finding my identity in high school to the point where I began losing my Spanish" -Karla, 30, Los Angeles, CA

"When it came to school, I never brought it up that I was Salvadoran, not until I was about fifteen or sixteen... It was an issue to be Salvadoran, at least it was when I was growing up in the Elysian Park area. No one was Salvadoran, everyone was Mexican. There was one Nicaragüense, and the only reason we knew we were Central American was because in the 1 st grade we had to sing a Cinco de Mayo poem and our teacher got mad at us because we were not reading it the way she expected us to do so. She said we were singing the poem, not reading it. For a long time, I was a closet Salvadoran." -Carla, 27, Los Angeles, CA

Going back to visit

Unlike a great portion of first generation Mexican Americans, first generation Salvadoran Americans seem to visit their parents' homeland more often. Respondents in this survey said they have visited El Salvador several times or go back regularly for a variety of reasons. This suggests the cultural connections between first-generation Salvadoran Americans and their ancestral home country remain intact, at least on some level, and that they go beyond food, music, or linguistic identities.

"To me, being Salvadoran is more than just pupusas. We are influenced by so many different things that we don't really know who we are anymore. I feel some Salvadorans here are trying to rescue their Salvadorean-ness, they want to go to Nahuizalco, they want to go to Izalco, they want to speak Nahuatl, they want to connect." -Carla, 27, Los Angeles, CA

"I went twice; once when I was 16 and again when I was 25. The first time, I was there for a month and it was to connect with family. The second time, I was there for only three weeks and was for the previous reason." -Jasmine, 27, Los Angeles, CA

"The first time I had gone to E.S. was when I was 2 so I don't remember anything. But I recently went in 2013 for two weeks. And in 2012, for 3 months, so that was an experience. Reason for trip: it was just long overdue. Went to go see family I hadn't seen in such a long a long time. Went to visit the mother country." - Kevin, 23, Bell Gardens, CA

"Yes, we try to go about once a year. My parents actually purchased a house there about 6 years ago and other relatives that live here {U.S} have homes over there too. We usually go for about 2-3 weeks. We visit family and also do the tourist stuff." - Betsy, 23, Bell Gardens, CA

"Yes, I was lucky to return often. One of my mom's many forms of making money was to take items from people in L.A. to their families in El Salvador. She would use the pounds that she was allowed for her luggage to take items such as clothes, shoes, books or any other requests made by family members in El Salvador. She would also take clothes from "Los Callejones (in L.A.)" to sell over there. In return she would bring items sent by family, as well as, beans, Salvadoran cream and cheese to sale over here. For most of the 90's my mom took these trips some were quick just for business and others were long when we went on family vacation. With this business my mom was able to pay for our tickets and make income. So I was able to return to El Salvador often. Mostly for 2 weeks but up to 2 months." -Jennifer, 32, Los Angeles, CA

"My father for a very long time did not want to return to El Salvador nor did he want my sisters and I to go. He had a very hard upbringing, his mother passed when he was 6 and his father died when he was 11. These tragedies were all happening during the Salvadoran Civil War. I am assuming this is the reason why he did not want us to go back. He does not like to talk about it. I went to El Salvador for the first time during my junior year in college for a study abroad trip. It was such an amazing trip. I wanted to trace my roots and so I went to Central America." -Jennifer, 24, Los Angeles, CA

The golden rule

LASTLY, not to engage in stereotypical falsities, but as someone who was raised by one, I know this to be somewhat true: do not get a Salvadoran woman upset.

"I grew up with stories of very strong Salvadoran women, women who were courageous, gave birth, had visions, owned a business, were artists, and stood up to violence and alcoholism. Women in Mexico - or the stories of them were very different. It felt as if women from El Salvador were more independent and had different challenges. My mother and grandmother lived many things compared to the women in my family living in Mexico (who seemed much more sheltered and protected) but that could just be a reflection of the different family dynamics." -Rocío, 33, Los Angeles, CA

"The idea that some try to use as a negative, which is don't get a Salvi woman mad, I think this comes from Salvadoran woman having to adopt strong survival skills that's just about being a bad ass. So although I know people are trying to talk smack, I enjoy knowing that people think Salvi women are strong enough that they will stand up for themselves. Of course, there are a lot of vulnerable Salvi women but I also believe that Salvi women have impressive survival skills. I loved going back to ElSalvador and connecting what I did in L.A. and where it came from." - Jennifer, 32, Los Angeles, CA

"Yes, both my parents are Salvadoran but I was raised by only my mother. She's strong-willed and taught me to be self-sufficient. She's an amazing role model and I feel like that has a lot to do with her culture and having come from true poverty. I admire that and feel like she's raised me to have that same drive." -Katie, 27, Los Angeles, CA

***

Salvadoran Americans are an ever-increasing population. We are coming of age very quickly. Older and younger cousins are getting married, to other Salvadorans, having children, buying homes, and in some cases even having grandchildren. This fact is important because if the now third largest Latino community in the United States is to be understood better, or at all, existing Salvadoran-Americans must step up their efforts to express their unique experiences to a larger audience.

We are not "Mexican" or simply "Central American," as most in the mainstream would like to categorize us as. We have much more to offer as a community than just great-tasting pupusas. As Carla, 27, from Los Angeles aptly put it, "We are not a 'generational community' yet. I would say that I've never met a third generational Salvadoran here [in U.S]. It's very rare. Mexicanos have established their community and their culture here. But I think we are getting there."

***

Iván Villanueva is a freelance writer and Spanish teacher born and raised in Los Angeles. He has written for The Boyle Heights Beat, The Fair Observer and The Advocate Magazine, primarily on immigration and cross-cultural social issues. You can follow him @IvanVilla.

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A View From Within: How First Generation Salvadoran Americans See Themselves & Why It Matters

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Published this week in LatamThought (via Aleszu Bajak), Ivan also approached us to cross-publish his piece. He gave us permission to share his article on our site. Ivan posted it originally on his own page. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California to a Mexican father and a Salvadoran mother.

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El titulo se refiere a la canción "Gasolina" quien la canta Daddy Yankee. En mis tiempos, era muy popular en la música de reggaeton. Siempre fui curiosa acerca de su diferente acento por ser puertorriqueño. En esté articulo, el numero 8: en cambio de pronunciar la letra "s," se pronuncia la letra "h" en vez.
Por ejemplo: los muertoh (los muertos)

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Learning Spanish Slang: Pronunciation and Accent from Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico, as in any other country in the world, has its own unique pronunciation for certain words, phrases and sounds. If you have only ever heard Spanish in a formal class setting or even if you are accustomed to an accent from a different country, it may take some time to understand the Puerto Rican accent when you first arrive on the island. Here are some guidelines to help that transition (words and phrases in parentheses are the correct spellings/pronunciations):

1. Words that end in the letters ADO will be pronounced without the letter D.

Example: amogollao (amogollado), afrentao (afrentado), eñemao (eñemado).

2. Words that end in a consonant and a vowel (ex. para, carajo, etc.) will be pronounced without the consonant.
Example: anda pá al cará (anda para el carajo), mira pá yá (mira para allá), me cá 'e ná (me cago en nada o me caso en nada).
3. Words with the letter R followed by a consonant will be pronounced as if the letter R were the letter L.

Example: Louldes (Lourdes), almas (armas).

4. Words with the letter S followed by a consonant will be pronounced as if the letter S were the letter H.

Example: ehnú (esnú), ehtartear (estartear).

5. Outside of San Juan, many people pronounce the double letter RR sound as if it were a J in Spanish and an H in English.

6. For transition words such as De or En, the consonant is sometimes dropped.

Example: me cá 'e ná (me cago en nada), pote 'e leche (pote de leche).
Example: concecto (concepto), Pecsi (Pepsi) Example: loh muertoh (los muertos), pehcadoreh (pescadores) Check out these other Learning Puerto Rican Spanish Slang articles.
7. The letter P when followed by a consonant may be replaced with the letter C.

8. The letter S is often dropped and replaced with an English letter H sound.

9. The letter R at the end of a word is often pronounced as an English R. The sound comes out as a "hard"sounding letter with more emphasis than normal placed on the R.

Featured photo credit: Ricymar Fine Art Photography via photopin cc

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Learning Spanish Slang: 9 Ways to Identify the Puerto Rico Accent and Pronunciation

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This post is an excerpt from the Puerto Rican bestseller Speaking Boricua: A Practical Guide to Puerto Rican Spanish. Learning Spanish Slang: Pronunciation and Accent from Puerto Rico Puerto Rico, as in any other country in the world, has its own unique pronunciation for certain words, phrases and sounds.

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Siempre me ha interesado el acento de colombianos. Recientemente, vi una telenovela "La Promesa," y habían muchas palabras que no conocía. Por ejemplo, los colombianos se refieren a dinero come "plata." También, el uso de "usted" no es solo para cuando hablas formalmente. Ellos lo usan casi siempre. También cambian el sufijo "-ito" a "-ico" (gatito>gatico).

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Español tiene su marca propia en diferentes circunstancias 

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Español tiene su marca propia en diferentes circunstancias 

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Hector Tobár escribe acerca de su conocimiento de español creciendo en Los Angles y como su fluidez ha influenciado su trabajo. Estudio en la universidad nacional de Mexico, donde se dio cuenta de la diferencia que hace el ambiente en cual te encuentras aprendiendo la lengua.

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LOS ANGELES - In the deepest reaches of my brain, there is a boy who speaks Spanish.

He calls his mother and father "Mamá" and "Papá." One of his favorite expressions is "qué lindo" (how nice, or how sweet). He's proud of the Mexican slang he's learned: for instance, "no hay pedo," which means "no problem," though its literal translation is "there is no fart."

California nearly killed that boy.

My parents arrived in Los Angeles as immigrants from Guatemala. We had a shelf of books in Spanish in our Los Angeles home, including "El Señor Presidente" by the Guatemalan Nobel laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias, but growing up I could not read them.

Like millions of Latino kids educated in California public schools, I never took a class in Spanish grammar or Spanish literature, nor was I ever asked to write a single word with an accent or a squiggly tilde over it. In the '70s, Spanish was the language of poverty and backwardness in the eyes of some school administrators, and many others.

Supposedly, we got smarter by forgetting Spanish. By the time I was a teenager, I spoke the language at the level of a second grader. My English was perfect, but in Spanish I was a nincompoop.

I knew I had lost something priceless to me. A lot of Latino kids who grow up without Spanish feel this. And last week, even as the Latino-immigrant basher Donald J. Trump was elected president, many engaged in a successful collective act of cultural resistance by joining other Californian voters who overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to expand bilingual education in public schools.

Proposition 58 overhauls another ballot initiative that was approved by the voters in 1998. That measure was born in the early years of the anti-immigrant movement, before it spread from California across the United States.

Back then, Spanish had become the de facto second language of California. Latino immigrant children were filling the underfunded public schools and not doing very well, while chattering away to one another and to their teachers in Spanish in their overcrowded classrooms. Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who helped lead the anti-bilingual education movement, argued that educating immigrant kids exclusively in English would improve our test scores.

No one disputes that every child in this country should learn English. But the no-Spanish dictate amounted to a form of cultural erasure. It was a cruel, shortsighted act, born of ignorance and intolerance.

Being literate in the language of your immigrant ancestors (whether that language is Spanish, Korean, Mandarin or Armenian) makes you wiser and more powerful. I know this from experience.

It took me two years of college study and a year enrolled abroad at Mexico's national university to reboot and upgrade my bilingual brain. Shakespeare and Cervantes now live in my frontal lobe. Seinfeld and the Mexican comedian Cantinflas, too. Bob Dylan and the Chilean songwriter Violeta Parra. I have sought to master the Anglo-Saxon language spoken by Lincoln and Whitman, and also the Latinate language of Pablo Neruda and of the Angeleno street vendors.

With Spanish's endearments and ample use of the subjunctive tense and the diminutive, I have learned that to know a language is to enter into another way of being.

My father, for example, is a charming man in English, a language he has spoken fluently for a half-century. In Spanish, however, his full talents as a sardonic raconteur are on display; he's even prone to the occasional philosophical soliloquy. My mother is a fluent English speaker, but in Spanish she's a storyteller with a deeply romantic bent and a flair for the ironic.

Today, I write books in English, but the roots of my career as a writer lie in Spanish literacy and Spanish fluency.

Most of my extended family lives in Guatemala and speaks no English. When I returned to that country as a fluent Spanish speaker, I had my first grown-up conversations with my grandparents, uncles and cousins. I learned of village dramas and quiet acts of resistance against Guatemala's dictatorship, including my grandfather's adventures as a bricklayer and die-hard union man.

It was only as a fluent Spanish speaker that I finally I came to know my true self. Who I was and where I came from.

Soon enough, I also came to know a Los Angeles I would not have known otherwise: a city with its own brand of Spanish, a city shaped by the ceaseless improvisations, reinventions and ambitions of its Spanish speakers. They became the subjects of my novels.

For Latino immigrant children, Spanish is the key that unlocks the untranslatable wisdom of their elders, and that reveals the subtle truths in their family histories. It's a source of self-knowledge, a form of cultural capital. They are smarter, in fact, for each bit of Spanish they keep alive in their bilingual brains. And they are more likely to see the absurdity in the rants of xenophobes and racists.

In Europe, most people speak more than one language. Some speak three or four or more. Multilingualism is a sign of intellectual achievement and sophistication.

A fourth grader from Guadalajara, Mexico, learning English for the first time in a Los Angeles classroom needs to know that what she already possesses is valuable. Teach her English, yes, but also the rules of Spanish spelling - and give her some Juan Rulfo to read when she gets older.

She'll most likely see some of herself in the stories of that Mexican genius. And it might soon dawn on her that she's a genius, too.

Héctor Tobar, a professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, is the author of the novels "The Barbarian Nurseries" and "The Tattooed Soldier" and a contributing opinion writer.
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Spanish Lesson I Never Got at School. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | The Spanish Lesson I Never Got at School

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LOS ANGELES - In the deepest reaches of my brain, there is a boy who speaks Spanish. He calls his mother and father "Mamá" and "Papá." One of his favorite expressions is "qué lindo" (how nice, or how sweet).

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La gama de la respuesta a esta pregunta ha crecido inmensamente, especialmente considerando el español aquí en los Estado unidos. Antes era entre sí o no, pero en muchos hogares hay niños que solo aprenden el español que les hablan sus abuelos.

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When the Answer to ¿Hablas español? is Complicated | Ovations | UTSA's College of Liberal and Fine Arts Magazine

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This idea of a "pure" language is one of the prominent myths that Chappell seeks to dispel in her class on Bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking World. All languages are mutts to some degree. English, for example, is a hybrid of Germanic roots and Latinate vocabulary, its purity a myth believed only by those without access to etymological dictionaries.

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Hay muchas palabras que vienen de los árabe. una en particular, "ojalá" significa desear que pase/ no pase algo. En le lengua arábica, tienen la expresión "ma sha allah" que significa como nosotros mexicanos decimos "si Dios quiere."
Es algo que siempre dice mi mama cuando hablamos del futuro.

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In 711 C.E., Arab armies began the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. With the conquest, the , or Moors, brought with them their Arabic architecture, art, and of course, language. Over time, Arabic expressions mixed with old Spanish vocabulary to become the Spanish dialect that most Spanish-speaking countries use today: , or Castilian Spanish.

Even after ( the Catholic king and queen) Ferdinand and Isabel expelled the Arab empire from the Spanish kingdom in 1492, Castilian Spanish has retained approximately 8,000 words with Arabic origin to this day. After Latin, Arabic has made the greatest contribution to the Spanish language.

Traveling through Spain, it is almost impossible to avoid the name of a place or region that is derived from Arabic. To name just a few:

Something interesting to note about this map is that the majority of the Spanish locations derived from Arabic are limited to the central and southern regions of the country, representative of how deep the Arab culture had set its roots into the culture of the peninsula. The Arabic influence on the Spanish language extends past the names of modern cities and regions. Perhaps the easiest way to see this influence in Spanish is in the simple words spoken every day. Here's a list of some of our favorite Spanish words with Arabic origin:

One of the most well-known words to come from Arabic, means hopefully in English and comes from the Arabic expression: "ma sha allah" which means should God will it. Remember that is a conjunction that can often, but doesn't need to be, used with .

This next word, , is interesting because the word itself is derived from the Spanish expression , but in fact is phonetically similar to the Arabic word for doctor/professor: "ustadh". In Spanish, is a pronoun that denotes formality and is typically used when we are addressing someone in formal situations.

Meaning until in English, comes from the Arabic word "hata", which is a preposition with essentially the same meaning as hasta.

Definitely the sweetest word on this list, , meaning sugar in English followed along the silk road and originates directly from the Arabic word "as-sukkar".

From the Arabic word, "zayt", aceite translates to oil in English - not the fossil fuel, but the delicious liquid that comes from olives, almonds, and more.

Meaning pillow in English, originates from the Andalusian Arabic word "mijadda", which became "al-mujadda" in Andalusian Arabic (the Arabic of the Iberian Peninsula) and means "cushion" or "pillow". The Arabic root of this word is "jadd", which can mean ( side) or ( cheek) in Arabic.

, which translates to neighborhood in English, comes from the Arabic word, "barri", which refers to the outer limits of a city. If you visit certain Spanish cities like , , or , you'll immediately notice a , or city wall, that separates the inner city from the neighborhoods on the outskirts. The hispanomusulmanes were meticulous about urban planning and specifically designed their cities to have specific barrios for the various religious and cultural communities living within them.

, or chess, is a popular game that was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors when they arrived in the year 711. is a sport that has its roots embedded deep in the ancient Asian cultures, and the word came to the hispanomusulmanes through the Medieval Persian word "ash-shantranj". When it was first adopted into Castilian Spanish, it was actually spelled , and over time the and became j and , respectively.

, meaning assassin in English, has a surprising etymology. The word originally comes from one addicted to hashish, as a term derived by the Christians during the Crusades to demonize a certain Muslim sect that would, according to the Crusaders, become intoxicated from hashish and murder Christian leaders. Our English word, assassin, has the same etymology, although it came into our language from old French.

Over the centuries, the Arab culture has made invaluable contributions to the advancement of human civilization. Giant leaps of thinking in medicine, astronomy, and mathematics were made by early Muslim scientists and mathematicians. It's no wonder, then, that many of the Spanish words in these fields are derived from . , or algebra in English, is no exception. This word comes from the Arabic "al-jebr", literally, the reunion of broken parts, a term coined in the book, "Rules of Reintegration and Reduction" by the famed Muslim mathematician and astronomer, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.

As you can see, each word of Arabic origin has a rich history that sheds light on how los hispanomusulmanes shaped the Spanish culture and language. Below you'll find a list of even more Spanish words that have their origins in Arabic.

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Spanish Words of Arabic Origin | SpanishDict

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In 711 C.E., Arab armies began the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. With the conquest, the , or Moors, brought with them their Arabic architecture, art, and of course, language. Over time, Arabic expressions mixed with old Spanish vocabulary to become the Spanish dialect that most Spanish-speaking countries use today: , or Castilian Spanish.

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John Holm contribye al mundo lingüístico

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John Holm contribye al mundo lingüístico

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Mientras viajaba a través de México y América Central en su adolescencia, el señor Holm escuchó a los negros nicaragüenses a lo largo de la costa del Caribe hablando un idioma no español que parecía extrañamente familiar. Lo llamaron "inglés pirata", una referencia a su probable origen como un pidgin hablado en piratas y buques de la Armada británica.

Aunque el señor Holm apenas podía entender lo que estaba oyendo, plantó la semilla de lo que se convertiría en el trabajo de su vida: el estudio de las lenguas criollas y pidgin habladas por millones de personas en todo el mundo, especialmente los criollos ingleses del Caribe.

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After compiling the first dictionary of Bahamian English, Mr. Holm produced a landmark study, the two-volume "Pidgins and Creoles," which traced the socio-historical evolution of pidgins and creoles, explained their structures and described more than 100 varieties.

"Pidgin and creole studies had generally been dismissed, largely because creole languages in particular were thought to be spoken almost exclusively by poor people of color and were considered to be bastardized versions of the European languages that contributed their vocabularies," said Sarah Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan and an associate editor of The Journal of Historical Linguistics.

"By publishing careful empirical studies of creole and semi-creole language structures, and by publicizing these languages in 'Pidgins and Creoles,' John helped create one of the most exciting subfields of linguistics," she added.

John Alexander Holm was born on May 16, 1943, in Jackson, Mich. He studied German, Spanish and Russian in high school. As a student at the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in English in 1965, he studied French at the Sorbonne during his junior year and picked up Italian at the same time. After graduation, he taught English at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where he became fluent in Spanish.

At Columbia University's Teachers College, he earned a master's degree in teaching English as a foreign language. He taught English in Zurich and at the Detroit Institute of Technology, where his students included Indians from Gujarat and black Americans from poor neighborhoods in Detroit. His interest in black speech led him to study African-American English at the State University of New York at Cortland.

In 1978, he was awarded a doctorate in linguistics from University College, London. His dissertation was a history, descriptive grammar and dictionary of the "pirate English" he had encountered along the Miskito Coast.

His early work as a scholar focused on the creole languages of the Caribbean and their structural links to the Niger-Congo languages spoken by the region's slaves. While still in graduate school, he presented an influential paper proposing a historical relationship between Gullah and Jamaican creoles and informal African-American speech, known to linguists as black vernacular. Among other things, he noted that all three drop verbs in certain contexts, turning a statement like "He is angry," for example, into "He angry."

In linguistic terms, Mr. Holm was a substratist - someone who emphasizes the contributions of non-European languages to creoles - as opposed to a superstratist, who considers creoles to be reduced forms of European languages, with minimal contributions from non-European sources.

He also insisted that pidgins and creoles be regarded as languages in their own right, not debased versions of source languages. "They are new languages, shaped by many of the same linguistic forces that shaped English and other 'proper' languages," he later wrote in "An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles" (2000).

While lecturing at the College of the Bahamas, he began writing down examples of creole usage that blossomed into the first dictionary of Bahamian English, written with Alison Watt Shilling and published in 1982.

In 1980, he began teaching English and linguistics at Hunter College in New York, continuing to work on Caribbean and Central American English. He edited "Central American English" (1982) and, with Manfred Görlach, "Focus on the Caribbean" (1986) before completing "Pidgins and Creoles," which was published in 1988 and 1989.

After teaching in the doctoral linguistics program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, he accepted a post in 1998 as chairman of English linguistics at the University of Coimbra in Coimbra, Portugal, where he created a department of creole linguistics.

His other works include "Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars" (2007), which he edited with Peter Patrick, and "Contact Languages: Critical Concepts in Language Studies," a five-volume series he edited with Susanne Michaelis.

In addition to his husband, Mr. Holm, who lived near Miranda do Corvo, Portugal, is survived by a brother, James.

Correction: January 5, 2016

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John Holm, 72, Dies; Opened Linguistics to Creole and Pidgin Tongues

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After compiling the first dictionary of Bahamian English, Mr. Holm produced a landmark study, the two-volume "Pidgins and Creoles," which traced the socio-historical evolution of pidgins and creoles, explained their structures and described more than 100 varieties.

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Programas de inmersión de lengua que revolucionan EE.UU.

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Programas de inmersión de lengua que revolucionan EE.UU.

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Recientemente, habido un esfuerzo para que niños sean expuestos a otras lenguas aparte de inglés. En West Michigan, están creando programs que ofrecen más oportunidades para que niños sean biligües, aunque vengan de un hogar que solo habla inglés.

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Cosette is a 5-year-old kindergartner who can be heard at home saying: "Can I read the libro?" and "Dónde está mi bike?" on a daily basis. At bedtime she reads a book out loud, like most children her age do, but it is written in Spanish. English books won't be introduced to her until second grade. She is not growing up in a bilingual family, but she will most likely be proficient enough in Spanish to be considered bilingual when she graduates high school.

This young Grand Rapidian is part of an ever-growing movement in West Michigan called language immersion education. Students who participate in this type of program use the second language as a vehicle for learning the general curriculum. Think two birds, one stone...the same state mandated standards are met, but they are taught while being completely immersed in a second language. Students even take the same standardized tests (in English) as everyone else -- and typically end up outperforming their peers who are not in immersion programs.

The first immersion program in West Michigan debuted in the early 2000s; now there are 19 districts in the region that have total (classes taught using 100 percent Spanish) or dual immersion (50 percent Spanish, 50 percent English) programming offered beginning at the elementary level. Some districts in the area have expanded to include Mandarin Chinese dual immersion programming as well. Immersion education is offered within public, private and charter schools throughout the region, and in the majority of districts, a wait list has to be established annually for incoming kindergartners.

As parents are clamoring to get their children into these schools, it begs the questions: how did immersion education take root in West Michigan, and why does support continue to grow for it?

A changing world: Growing language options for students

Jesús Santillán sits comfortably in his office at Ada Vista Elementary after school and is full of excitement and pride. It's no surprise, really; he's in his element here at this flagship elementary. Ada Vista is considered a total immersion program and is one of the largest and most veteran in Michigan, servicing 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade annually. Incoming kindergartners spend 100 percent of their day in Spanish. Not only do the classroom teachers speak Spanish, but complete immersion includes elective teachers, paraprofessionals, and librarians; even the school secretaries speak in the target language. That 100 percent is maintained through first grade. Between second and fourth grade English literacy is worked into the curriculum more frequently. At the junior high level the program shifts to a dual immersion model, in which only 50 percent of the students' day is second language-based, and by high school students take two classes a day taught in Spanish, continuously building upon their kindergarten through sixth grade experience.

"In the beginning there was no Ada Vista; we began a Spanish immersion program at Ada Elementary with one pioneer class of 25 students," Santillán says, explaining the history behind this development. "Our administration (the Forest Hills Public Schools) believed in us so much that they purchased our current building and began renovating it before we had enough students to fill it."

Ada Vista opened as a kindergarten through sixth grade school and eventually outgrew itself again. It now functions as a kindergarten through fourth grade school, offering four classes per grade and a yearly waitlist of roughly 60 to 70 students. Santillán credits the increasing interest in Spanish immersion programming to the cognitive benefits students receive, the cultural awareness that is grown when you learn a second language, and becoming globally competitive as a result.

In Grand Rapids, dual language immersion options are also growing for students. Currently, the Southwest Community Campus, which offers a Spanish-English dual language immersion program for about 840 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, is slated to expand. The recent $175 million bond that voters passed last November will allow the district to open a new Southwest Community Campus High School, giving students a dual immersion program through 12th grade.

Students at Southwest hail from throughout the city, and world, with many of the students having recently moved to Grand Rapids from such countries as Puerto Rico, Mexico and Guatemala, among many others. This means that in addition to helping native English speakers become fluent in Spanish, the program "gives our English Language Learners the opportunity to learn and keep their language," says Southwest Principal Carmen Fernandez, who moved to Grand Rapids from Puerto Rico as a child.

Typically, the program starts with 50 percent of the students coming from each of the language groups -- so, 50 percent are native English speakers and 50 percent are native Spanish speakers (though that makeup can vary). In kindergarten and first grade, students spend 80 percent of their time learning and speaking in Spanish. That number changes to 70 percent Spanish in the second grade and 60 percent in third. In fourth through eighth grades, the students adopt a 50/50 dual immersion model.

"It gives our students a holistic view of the world," Fernandez says of the immersion program. "Our vision is to produce bilingual, biliterate and bicultural students. Really, we're producing multicultural students because we have so many different cultures here at Southwest Community Campus, and we celebrate all of them.

"I have discovered that a lot of students come in who are Hispanic, but they've lost that language - our program gives them an opportunity to feel proud of their culture, an opportunity to connect with their grandparents," Fernandez continues.

'The science of smart': Why dual immersion students are outperforming their peers

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) agrees with Santillán that language learning is a more cognitive process, rather than a linguistic one, stating, "Studies have shown repeatedly that foreign language learning increases critical thinking skills, creativity, and flexibility in the minds of young children." Santillán expands upon this, explaining how immersion education goes beyond the general foreign language curriculum and thereby drastically increases the cognitive benefits.

"Traditional foreign language classrooms function at the lowest level of cognitive development: students hear a foreign word and immediately translate it to English in their head; they receive lists of vocabulary and the English equivalents, making memorization a key factor to success," he says.

In immersion education English is taken out of the equation, almost recreating the experience of learning their first language. New words are related to actions and visual objects only; there is no English word association. The brain is forced to function at a higher level and make connections it wouldn't normally make. "In a true immersion experience children could all come into the classroom speaking a completely different first language and leave learning Spanish. English isn't used as an acquisition tool in our school," says Santillán.

American Radio Works, part of American Public Media, produced a radio documentary entitled, "The Science of Smart," in which they explored what language learning does to our brain. Researchers found that, "the act of juggling two languages strengthens the brain system that help people pay attention" -- something that has been reported time and again in numerous scientific studies. They think this might be what leads to better academic performance in some children who grow up either bilingual or attend language immersion programs; students in dual language programs typically far outperform their peers in English-only classrooms.

Santillán agrees that immersion education helps students at Ada Vista learn how to troubleshoot and problem solve on their own at a young age. "When a student is learning addition they are not only focusing on that mathematical concept, they are considering the new vocabulary in Spanish associated with that concept and making connections between the new and old information; their brain is in overdrive and that builds valuable problem solving skills from the start," he says.

Fernandez too stresses the skills and confidence that are built while learning another language.

"This is the New York of Grand Rapids Public Schools," she says, "If you want a child to leave very confident and able to move through different avenues in life, then Southwest Community Campus is the place to be."

Some parents have voiced concerns over standardized testing with immersion students. Because there isn't a strong focus on English literacy right off the bat, they are worried their kids are put at a testing disadvantage. That couldn't be further from the truth, says Sheryl Dalman, President of the West Michigan Alliance of Immersion Educators. As a school teacher at Roguewood Elementary, a total immersion program, she has noticed that her students tend to score higher than normal on standardized tests. Santillán agrees that low test scores have never been an area of concern for Ada Vista, as does Fernandez.

"It's why a lot of students go on to Blandford and the Zoo School and City High School -- because of their grades," Fernandez says.

Education Week's Global Learning Blog found that English-proficient immersion students are capable of achieving as well as, and in some cases better than, non-immersion peers on standardized measures of reading and math. It is important to note when English is not introduced until grades two through five, there is evidence of a temporary gap in specific skills, such as spelling and word discrimination, but that within a year or two of studying English language arts that disappears.

Steve Faber, a parent of two sons who attend Southwest Community Campus, notes he too had concerns when his son started in the dual immersion program, but those worries quickly dissipated.

"That was my biggest concern: are they going to get that basic education; are they still going to know where Madagascar is, what the state capitols are, how to do math," Faber says. "But they do. And my son, who's in fourth grade, is reading and practicing mathematical concepts at an eighth grade level."

A translation of worlds: How learning a language helps students to connect

Beyond the cognitive benefits of immersion, the cultural awareness and global readiness that occurs is a natural byproduct of this education model. "It's not the language itself that makes the students culturally connected, but it opens up a door that wasn't there before," says Santillán. "When they notice that they are a little different now and realize that this additional language enables them to interact with people on a whole new level, they feel empowered and that's huge. They want to connect with others, with those who are different than them; the motivation is real."

Beth Dawson, a parent at NorthPointe Christian's Spanish immersion program in Grand Rapids notices the same thing happening with her oldest daughter, who is currently in fourth grade. "The language program here has helped her expand her horizons more than we could have at home," Dawson says. "Most of her teachers are native speakers; they bring their culture with them and use it as a tool in the classroom."

Faber notes that many students in the classroom at Southwest hail from Spanish-speaking countries, which allows students from around the globe to form bonds with one another. This results in kids that are not only fluent in another language, but are able to build genuine empathy for people from other cultures, whether in their own city or around the world.

In an area where, like much of the U.S., the Hispanic population is the fastest growing community in the area (it has more than tripled in Kent County between 1990 and 2010, growing from a little less than 10,000 people in 1990 to nearly 30,000 individuals in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau), those cross-cultural relationships are vital.

"My son really knows and understands kids from all over -- Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Mexico," Faber says. "He understands where all of his friends come from and, because of that, understands more about our community, our neighborhoods, and our city."

'Our world is getting smaller': Being able to compete globally

By 2020, individuals who are Hispanic are expected to account for half of the growth of the U.S. labor force, according to federal statistics, and globally it is considered the second most widely spoken language in the world. "Our world is getting smaller every day and something's gotta give," says Dalman. "We have to expand and enrich our learning model. Doing this opens up so many opportunities to compete globally."

Santillán thinks immersion students have an additional competitive edge, aside from acquiring a second language. "Our students at Ada Vista are naturally more outgoing and willing to take chances," says Santillán. Students in an immersion classroom are loud, they take a risk every time they speak in the target language, but they are all making mistakes together and learning from one another. "Students learn at an early age that it's OK to take a risk and make a mistake; it's OK to fail and try again. That's an incredibly powerful lesson that most adults still grapple with," says Santillán.

When asked if students with learning disabilities would benefit from this kind of a program, Santillán immediately says yes and supports his claim by saying, "students with learning disabilities can find real success in an immersion setting; our classrooms are more hands on and experiential than a traditional setting and this can be a welcome change for some students." It's important to note that acquiring a second language does come more naturally to some, just as some students are naturally more adept at math or science, but Santillán believes that with the right attitude and motivation, anyone can succeed.

In the future, the West Michigan Alliance of Immersion Educators wants to see a biliteracy seal given to immersion graduates across Michigan. "This seal would be a serious pat on the back for our students in Michigan," says Dalman. "Students would take the ACTFL standardized language proficiency exam and the criteria would be the same for all." The ultimate goal is for students to receive college credits for their second language, much like an AP class. "They deserve recognition for all their hard work and dedication to the program," says Dalman.

Ultimately, the end goal is to develop competent and successful global citizens. Becoming proficient in a second language is the first step, but immersion education is so much more than that. Every day is spent outside of your comfort zone; every day is full of risks, rewards and explorations. You leave an immersion school with the ability to speak a second language, but you also leave with an amazing skill set beyond language, simply because you decided to try.

Additional reporting contributed by Managing Editor Anna Gustafson.

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¿Habla Español? Language immersion programs bring the world to West Michigan

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Cosette is a 5-year-old kindergartner who can be heard at home saying: "Can I read the libro?" and "Dónde está mi bike?" on a daily basis. At bedtime she reads a book out loud, like most children her age do, but it is written in Spanish.

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El profesor Cuahtemóc Garcia- Garcia ha colaborado con otros exploradores para asegurar un corpus en español que se extiende desde el siglo XIII hasta 2014. Dice de su proyecto, "Después de trazar cientos de miles de puntos en una serie de gráficos y analizar los datos que extraje, decidí que un mapa interactivo accesible sería la manera más eficiente de entender y comunicar cómo se desarrolló esta evolución."

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How has the Spanish language evolved in the hundreds of years it has been spoken on multiple continents?

To answer the question, Cuauhtémoc García-García, a graduate student in Iberian and Latin American cultures, analyzed 900 years' worth of texts in over a quarter of a million volumes.

"I wanted to study language evolution through data found in written work to add historical depth to how, where and when languages changed," he said. "My new data show that Spanish on the Iberian Peninsula was much more resistant to change over time when compared to Spanish in the Americas, where - since colonization - Spanish from Spain has come into contact with local, indigenous and hybrid influences."

That process, he noted, has led to a Spanish that has progressively changed ever since the language first arrived in the Americas. The changes, however, are not uniform across the Spanish-speaking Americas, and instead he found that the "hybridization" and evolution of language varied from place to place.

Drawing on his past work on changes in Brazilian Portuguese, García-García also noted intriguing differences between the two languages.

"In Brazil, there was a sudden shift in written language that coincided with the country gaining independence from Portugal in 1822 and correlating with increased local autonomy in printing and education," said García-García, who is a member of the Digital Humanities Focal Group.

In Spanish America, however, rapid transformation of this sort was less common, as the colonies typically had more liberties regarding printing presses and educational institutions. Unlike Portugal, Spain introduced the printing press and universities to its colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, meaning that Spanish was open to local influences and piecemeal evolution over a more gradual period.

Different places, different pronouns

In his study, García-García examined the changing use of pronouns in written works. One example aimed to quantify the frequency of the Spanish pronoun vos as compared with tú, both pronouns meaning "you."

Their usage varies across time and space. In Argentina, for example, vos is used almost exclusively as the second-person singular pronoun ("you"), as it is in Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and to a lesser extent in other Spanish-speaking countries.

García-García found a different story in Chile. Vos was common until the mid-19th century, when it ceded ground to tú after a campaign led by the Venezuelan intellectual and educator Andrés Bello, who sought to eradicate it from the educational system in his adopted home.

Bello published Castilian Grammar Intended for the Use by Americans in 1847, laying down the rules and institutions intended for Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. These rules were strongly influenced by colonizers and advocated use of the language in accordance with the Madrid-based Spanish Royal Academy, of which Bello became a member in 1861.

Bello's norms for language and usage, however, were not embraced all over the Americas.

"In regions such as Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and the southwestern U.S., tú gained popularity and vos did not evolve as part of written language. In fact, it is very rarely used today," said García-García.

García-García found in the available corpus that the second-person plural pronoun - vosotros - regularly appears in texts written in Iberian Spanish. But this same pronoun has largely fallen into disuse in modern Latin America.

As an extension to his earlier study, García-García wanted to contrast how the evolution of language in Brazil and Portugal compares with that of Iberian and Latin American Spanish.

"The digital corpus in Spanish is currently about four times larger than in Portuguese, meaning there is a lot more data to work with," he said. While the large size of the Spanish corpus means there is a lot of "noise" in the data that needs to be cleaned and sorted, it yields a shaper picture of language evolution across distinct geographical areas.

Digital discoveries

García-García, working with Iberian and Latin American cultures Professor Joan Ramon Resina and biology Professor Marc Feldman, also collaborated with Green Library and Google to secure a Spanish language corpus that runs from the 13th century to 2014. Feldman, an expert in evolutionary biology, created statistical modeling technologies that García-García adapted. Rather than simulate biological evolution, he traced the development of language.

"I devised various computer programs and algorithms to analyze this large digital corpus of books to trace language evolution," García-García said. "After plotting hundreds of thousands of points on a series of graphs and analyzing the data that I mined, I decided that an accessible, interactive map would be the most efficient way to understand and communicate how this evolution took place."

Green Library, and curators Glen Worthey, Everardo Rodríguez and Adán Griego, agreed with him. The project website, slated to launch during the 2016-17 academic year, will bring the data to life and allow users to scroll though history on an interactive map to see when and how linguistic evolution took place.

Ultimately, García-García is fascinated by how language evolves and how it shapes and mirrors social and historical changes.

"Language is always in movement and development, and there is no fixed way that perseveres over longer historical timeframes. My research has started to open that up in the digital realm for Portuguese and now Spanish, and hopefully it is a model that can be employed in other languages."

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Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish | Stanford News

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How has the Spanish language evolved in the hundreds of years it has been spoken on multiple continents? To answer the question, Cuauhtémoc García-García, a graduate student in Iberian and Latin American cultures, analyzed 900 years' worth of texts in over a quarter of a million volumes.

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"Eres tan articulado," es una frase que se tiene otros significados cuando se le dice a alguien de una minoría. La definición de articulado es enunciando o expresando con claridad. Cuando se usa esta frase como un piropo, es decir que al contrario del resto de mi gente, YO si se como hablar el inglés correctamente.

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Today, a baffled lady observed the shell where my soul dwells and announced that I'm articulate. Which means that when it comes to enunciation and diction, I don't even think of it cause I'm articulate. So when my professor asks a question and my answer is tainted with the connotation of urbanized suggestion, there's no misdirected intention. Pay attention 'cause I'm articulate.

So when my father asks "What kind of ting is this?" my articulate answer never goes amiss. I say, "Father, this is the impending problem at hand," and when I'm on the block I switch it up just because I can. So when my boy says "What's good wit you, son?" I say "I just follow to dem people, but I done." And sometimes in class I might pause the intellectual sound and flow to ask "Yo, why dese books never be about my peoples?"

Yes, I have decided to treat all three of my languages as equal because, I'm articulate. But who controls articulation? Because the English language is a multifaceted oration, subject to indefinite transformation.

Now, you may think that it is ignorant to speak broken English, but I am here to tell you that even articulate Americans sound foolish to the British. So when my professor comes on the block and says, "Hello," I stop him and say "No, you're being inarticulate. The proper way is to say 'What's good?'" Now, you may think that's too hood, that's not cool but I'm here to tell you that even our language has rules. So when mommy mocks me and says "Yao be mad going to the store" I say "Mommy, no! That sentence is not following the law. Never does the word mad go before present participle." That's simply the principle of this English.

If I had the vocal capacity I would sing this from every mountaintop, every suburbia, and every hood 'cause the only God of language is the one recorded in the Genesis of this world saying "It is good." So I may not always come before you with excellency of speech, but do not judge me by my language and assume that I'm too ignorant to teach, 'cause I speak three tongues. One for each, home, school and friends.

I'm a tri-lingual orator. Sometimes I'm consistent with my language now and I switch it up so I don't bore later. Sometimes I fight back two tongues while I use the other one in the classroom and when I mistakenly mix them up I feel crazy like I'm cooking in the bathroom.

I know that I had to borrow your language because mine was stolen, but you can't expect me to speak your history wholly while mine is broken. These words are spoken by someone who is simply fed up with the Euro-centric ideals of the season and the reason I speak a composite version of your language is because mine was ripped away along with my history.

I speak broken English so the profusing gashes can remind us that our current state is not a mystery. I'm so tired of the negative images that are driving my people mad. So unless you seen it rob a bank, stop calling my hair bad. I'm so sick of this nonsensical racial disparity. So don't call it good unless your hair is known for donating to charity.

As much as has been raped away from our people, how can you expect me to treat their imprint on your language as anything less than equal?

Let there be no confusion, let there be no hesitation: this is not a a promotion of ignorance. This is a linguistic celebration. That's why I put tri-lingual on my last job application. I can help to diversify your consumer market is all I wanted them to know. When they call me for the interview, I'll be more than happy to show I can say "Whats good?" "What a gwaan?" and of course "Hello." Because I'm articulate. Thank you.

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A Linguistic Celebration: Because Code Switching Is Articulate - Everyday Feminism

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"You're so articulate" may sound like a compliment. But when it's said by a white person to a black person, there's an unspoken racist element at work. It becomes, "You don't sound like those OTHER black people."

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"Cambio de codigo" o en inglés, "code-switching", es cuando un hablante intercambia entre dos lenguas durante una conversación. Es algo que hago yo misma diariamente, especialmente si no me acuerdo como traducir una palabra en particular.

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When "Modern Family" Colombian bombshell Gloria Pritchett tells off her older husband Jay in a mixture of Spanish and English - "Privacy in esta casa!" - you're watching code switching in action.

Code switching generally refers to the practice of moving back and forth between two languages while conversing. The typical code switcher is a bilingual person who substitutes a word or phrase from one language while speaking mostly in the other. But anyone can code switch. Many an American who speaks only English has uttered phrases such as, " Adios, my friend," or " C'est la vie," during conversation, both of which are also examples of code switching [source: Greene].

Dialing up or down an accent, or speaking in the vernacular, are forms of code switching, too. A native Georgian who has lived much of her life in Ohio may suddenly begin to pepper her speech with "y'all" and adopt a thick drawl upon returning home for a visit. Similarly, a person from Appalachia may greet work colleagues with a friendly "How are you?" Yet if someone calls from his native region, he may answer the phone, "Howdy-do! How're you'uns a-doin'?"

With regard to bilingualism, many people believe that those who code switch by swapping a word or phrase for one in another language are speaking this way because they don't know their second language all that well, or else they are careless or lazy. But several studies show code switching is actually more often done by highly fluent speakers and is a means of using all of the linguistic tools at their disposal [source: Fought].

We're all constantly changing the way we express ourselves; how and why we do so depends on everything from culture to language to self-identification and the people we happen to be around.

While code switching is a linguistic term, recently it's come to have a bigger meaning in some circles. It's not just a matter of using a different language (or phrasing) depending on your conversational partner. Some people use it to define switching between two modes of any behavior depending on whom you're around. For instance, author Marlon James wrote in The New York Times about code switching his clothes (leaving the Bronx in a baggy pants and oversized T-shirt and changing into skinny jeans and a tight shirt when he got to Manhattan) for fear of his family finding out he was gay.

With this in mind, let's see how code switching first began.

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When "Modern Family" Colombian bombshell Gloria Pritchett tells off her older husband Jay in a mixture of Spanish and English - "Privacy in esta casa!" - you're watching code switching in action. Code switching generally refers to the practice of moving back and forth between two languages while conversing.

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Este significado se puede confundir. Es algo que personalmente he tenido dificultad.

Debe de (con preposición)
= probabilidad
Eje. Deben de ser la seis o siete

Deber= obligación
Eje. Mañana debemos estudiar.

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Expresarse bien o mal, como sabemos, no es una mera cuestión de ortografía. Se cometen otros errores sintácticos o semánticos, como el desajuste entre los términos utilizados y lo que queremos comunicar con ellos. La impropiedad léxica es precisamente eso: atribuir a las palabras un significado que no tienen. Los siguientes son algunos casos de confusión habituales.

En base a / basándonos en

Por más que la oigamos continuamente y sea proferida hasta la saciedad por expertos de todo tipo, y a pesar de que muchos hagan valer su extendidísimo uso para defenderla, se trata de una forma inapropiada y del todo ajena a las construcciones gramaticales del español. Puesto que en esta estructura las preposiciones en y a no tienen relación alguna de significado con el sustantivo base, la RAE atribuye el éxito de su difusión al influjo del italiano in base a.

El verbo deber seguido de preposición significa conjetura o probabilidad. La obligación se expresa con el verbo sin preposición

Más convenientes son las formas: basándonos en, sobre la base de, que aluden al asentamiento de una cosa sobre otra o al apoyo en un punto de partida, o los más simples de acuerdo con o según, para decir entonces basándonos en criterios económicos en lugar de en base a criterioseconómicos o sobre la base de estos conocimientos en vez de en base a estos conocimientos.

Adolecer / carecer

Aunque el término adolecer está muy extendido como sinónimo de carecer, no lo es. Este verbo significa padecer. Tampoco los adolescentes son los individuos humanos que padecen una honda transformación, que experimentan pasiones, sufren múltiples cambios y afrontan profundas o leves crisis en esta etapa por carecer de las capacidades o el desarrolo adecuados; son simplemente los sujetos que pasan de la niñez a la juventud: los que crecen.

Proliferan sin embargo, tanto en la expresión hablada como en la escrita, las alusiones a los espacios, vehículos o proyectos, que adolecen de medidas de seguridad, cuando de lo que adolecen es de falta de estas medidas. Por tanto, no es correcto decir que los argumentos, pongamos por caso, que se arguyen a favor o en contra de una propuesta adolecen de solidez, puesto que de lo que sufren es de escasez o falta de ella.

Deber / deber de

El verbo deber seguido de preposición significa conjetura o probabilidad, como en el caso deben de ser las seis y media, pues no estoy muy segura de la hora exacta, mientras que la obligación se expresa con el verbo sin preposición: Mañana debes acompañarme. Frecuentemente confundimos los dos significados, sobre todo cuando se habla de obligación en los muy habituales debemos de seguir trabajando, debe de exigirse y fórmulas similares del discurso corporativo de nuestros representantes.

Coma / dos puntos

De las cartas que los niños que fuimos escribíamos a los Reyes Magos, me viene a la memoria el encabezamiento " Queridos Melchor, Gaspar y Baltasar ", que la mayoría rematábamos con dos puntos antes de lanzarnos al asunto principal. No era probable que siguiéramos adelante sin garabatear algún signo de puntuación, orgullosos como estábamos de nuestro recién adquirido conocimiento de las reglas ortográficas principales, aunque no se nos ocurría plantar una coma tras el saludo, como hoy hace un elevado porcentaje del personal oficinesco cuando redacta cartas o envía mensajes, que debe de dominar el inglés hasta el punto de confundir y mezclar sus reglas con las del idioma materno.

Reticente se aplica al ámbito de la palabra, del lenguaje, de lo que no se quiere decir o desvelar. Reacio es el que se opone o resiste a hacer algo

El uso de la coma en español, puesto que no es un punto, no admite mayúsculas a continuación, y menos aún el salto a otro párrafo, así que dejémonos ya de comas y aparte.

Carbonizar / calcinar

Si pueden elegir, los seres vivos se carbonizan cuando son sometidos a altísimas temperaturas, es decir, se reducen a carbón, mientras que los metales, en estas mismas circunstancias, más propiamente se calcinan, o se reducen a cal viva, puesto que no son materias orgánicas.

Así, una veintena de coches consumidos en un incendio se calcina, mientras que los cuerpos de los animales acorralados por las llamas en un bosque, por poner un ejemplo de especie no humana, se carbonizan, en contra de lo que sostienen algunos redactores de sucesos.

Ostentar / detentar / ejercer

La literatura está repleta de malos malísimos ávidos de poder que destierran, matan o engañan a todo el que se pone por delante con el fin de ocupar sus cargos y posiciones, es decir, de detentarlos, principalmente si se trata de reyes, sultanes o emperadores. De modo ilegítimo desempeñan y alcanzan estas dignidades, y por ello, entre otras cosas, en la justicia de los cuentos siempre son perseguidos y escarmentados.

Ostentar es desempeñar ese cargo relevante cuya consecución y disfrute son supuestamente legítimos. Si el oficio o función no reviste especial importancia, hablamos simplemente de ejercer, pues que menganito ostente el cargo de tesorero, por ejemplo, parece algo exagerado, por más que haya quien haga ostentación (se jacte y vanaglorie) de él hasta el abuso.

Aguzar / agudizar

Si al caminar por un paraje oscuro y poco conocido vislumbras una sombra que se mueve y percibes lejanos ruidos, lo que ocurre a tus sentidos en esa situación de inseguridad o alerta es que se aguzan, se espabilan; se agudizan en cambio los conflictos, las tensiones, las enfermedades. La vista, el oído, o cualquier otro sentido o capacidad se afinan todo lo posible cuando las circunstancias lo requieren. También el ingenio, acuciado por la necesidad y la crisis o avivado por la oportunidad, se puede afilar hasta volverse superlativo. Los dos términos (aguzar y agudizar) provienen de la palabra agudo, y por eso no es difícil confundirlos, pero mientras el primero alude a la óptima disposición sensorial o de aptitudes, el segundo se refiere al empeoramiento de procesos o situaciones.

Reticente / reacio

Usados a menudo indistintamente, estos vocablos tienen significados diferentes. Reticente se aplica al ámbito de la palabra, del lenguaje, de l o que no se quiere decir o desvelar, por lo que de los espías se espera que sean reticentes a hablar. Reacio, sin embargo, es el que se opone o resiste a hacer algo; así, el espía puede ser reacio a desvelar la información que posee, pero no reticente a ir a la playa en verano, sino reacio.

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Ocho términos en español que se utilizan mal. Noticias de Alma, Corazón, Vida

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Lengua española: Ocho términos en español que se utilizan mal. Noticias de Alma, Corazón, Vida. Adolecer, aguzar o agudizar, deber o deber de... A veces se asignan a las palabras significados que no tienen o se cometen fallos más allá de los ortográficos

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Sería logico que se pronunciara la palabra "cocodrilo" como "crocodilo" porque viene de la palabra en latin "crocodilum," pero no es así. Alguien decidió cambiar los silabos y eventualmente fue la correcta manera de decir la palabra. Así explica este Profesor Borrego, "La lengua no es de los filólogos ni de los académicos, sino del pueblo soberano." Nosotros somos los que hacemos y deshacemos.

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¿"Por qué se dice cocodrilo y no "crocodilo", que sería la evolución lógica de la palabra latina "crocodilum"? La respuesta es sencilla: alguien cambió la letra "r" de la primera a la tercera sílaba y el cambio hizo fortuna entre los hablantes prestigiosos hasta el punto de que acabó por aceptarse en el uso general. Así lo explica Julio Borrego en "Cocodrilos en el diccionario. Hacia dónde camina el español", un libro dirigido por el catedrático de Lengua Española de la Universidad de Salamanca y elaborado por profesores de la misma institución académica que, como reza su título, analiza los "cocodrilos" del lenguaje y cómo los errores del pasado son la norma del presente.

Publicada por el Instituto Cervantes y Espasa, la obra desgrana con un estilo ágil y desenfadado, y con muchos ejemplos reales, cómo fenómenos que inicialmente eran incorrectos, al final se convierten en correctos. "Explicamos cuál es el uso adecuado según la norma, pero examinamos las razones por las que otras opciones podrían haber triunfado", explicó ayer en su presentación Julio Borrego, quien manifestó la posibilidad de que expresiones consideradas incultas, como "pienso de que" o "dijistes" puedan llegar a ser admitidas.

Al respecto, el director del Instituto Cervantes, Víctor García de la Concha, afirmó: " La lengua no es de los filólogos ni de los académicos, sino del pueblo soberano, que hace y deshace" y añadió: "Si los hablantes deciden cómo decir una palabra, ese uso se convierte en el arbitrio, el derecho y la norma".

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¿Por qué decimos cocodrilo y no crocodilo?

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¿'Por qué se dice cocodrilo y no 'crocodilo', que sería la evolución lógica de la palabra latina 'crocodilum'? La respuesta es sencilla: alguien cambió la letra 'r' de la primera a la tercera sílaba y el cambio hizo fortuna entre los hablantes presti

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Todo tiene que ver con el momento en que se produjo la colonización del Nuevo Mundo, el descubrimiento de América. Básicamente, depende en donde los españoles calleron si pronuncian la Z o C.

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Sevilla, la "culpable" de la pronunciación de la ...

En Latinoamérica existen rasgos diferenciados en la forma de hablar respecto al castellano de España. Algunos más marcados que otros. Variantes regionales, expresiones, tendencias que han cambiado o han permanecido intactas a lo largo de los siglos... Pero una de las más principales y que podemos escuchar y reconocer más fácilmente es la diferencia en la pronunciación de la Z y C en los países hispanohablantes en América y en España. En los primeros no diferencian el sonido de esas dos consonantes (en el caso de la C cuando actúa delante de "e" o "i"), respecto a la S.

Esta diferencia ha tenido varias teorías a lo largo de los siglos, pero ahora se ha impuesto una sobre el resto: el sonido de Z y C jamás llegó a América, por lo que no es que haya cambiado con los años.

Según recoge la BBC, en palabras de Sánchez Méndez, un catedrático de la Universidad de Neuchâtel, en Suiza: "Todo tiene que ver con el momento en que se produjo la colonización del Nuevo Mundo, el descubrimiento de América".

En España ya había dos zonas geográficas con diferente acento

En España en aquella época ya había dos formas, dos acentos o modos de hablar el castellano: la zona norte de Castilla, centralizada en Madrid, y la zona sur, principalmente en Sevilla. Es en esta última ciudad donde el sonido de la Z y C era similar al de la S, como ocurre en nuestros días.

Hay estudios que documentan que un 37% de los primeros colonizadores españoles que llegaron a América entre finales del siglo XV y primeros del XVI eran andaluces, muchos de ellos sevillanos. El Puerto de Indias, en Sevilla, era la principal vía con América.

Es por ello que los indígenas al aprender el español, gran parte de lo que escuchaban eran a los andaluces hablar con su acento.

Facilitar el aprendizaje de los nativos americanos

Otra opción que también tiene su lógica es que, a la hora de enseñar el español, para hacerlo más fácil, unificaban los sonidos de la C y Z haciéndolo igual que la S, ya que el "ceceo" podría haber causado problemas de aprendizaje a los americanos nativos.

El sonido de Z y C como la S está totalmente generalizado en América, pese a que ha habido intentos, especialmente en el siglo XIX, de diferenciarlo. Esto, evidentemente, no triunfó nunca y en la actualidad podemos seguir escuchando esta peculiaridad cuando viajamos por la mayoría de países de América del Sur.

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Sevilla, la "culpable" de la pronunciación de la Z y C en Latinoamérica - Lab ADSLZONE.net

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Sevilla, la "culpable" de la pronunciación de la ... En Latinoamérica existen rasgos diferenciados en la forma de hablar respecto al castellano de España. Algunos más marcados que otros. Variantes regionales, expresiones, tendencias que han cambiado o han permanecido intactas a lo largo de los siglos...

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Cuando mi mama habla el inglés, tiene dificultad de pronunciar unas palabras porque no sabe como poner sus labios. En este articulo, dice que para chilenos el sonido de la B y V no se diferencian. Es similar en español, pero en inglés puede diferenciar entra una palabra a la otra. Por ejemplo, BOAT y VOTE.

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Estudiar inglés te puede tomar años de estudios, y pese a esto, tu pronunciación puede no llegar a ser tan buena como la de un nativo. Y para explicártelo, existen muchas razones, como el no usar en tu día a día el idioma y el no poner énfasis en algunas reglas gramaticales que te ayudarán entender el sonido de cada palabra.

Para ayudarte a mejorar, hemos hablado con Nathalia Escobar, directora académica de Wall Street English, quien compartió con América Economía algunos consejos que te dejamos a continuación.

1. Mira cómo pronuncia un nativo en inglés. Fíjate en la forma en que pones los labios y la manera en que acentúas las palabras y trata de imitarlo. Para ello, apóyate en películas o programas de TV en ese idioma.

2. Repasa las reglas gramaticales, diptongos y consonantes. El inglés, a diferencia de otros idiomas, posee más sonidos vocálicos. Las vocales escritas (grafemas) en inglés y español son las mismas; sin embargo, mientras que en español cada grafema corresponde siempre a un sólo sonido (fonema), las vocales en inglés -y las combinaciones de las mismas- dan origen a 12 fonemas distintos. Así, la vocal A de la palabra "Cat" se pronuncia distinto a la misma vocal en la palabra "Car".

Otra cosa importante es que en inglés existen sonidos capaces de diferenciar palabras: VOTE y BOAT se pronuncian exactamente igual, con la salvedad del primer sonido. Como en el español chileno, los sonidos B y V no se diferencian, los hablantes de este idioma tienden a no diferenciar tampoco los sonidos al hablar en inglés.

Finalmente, al hacer referencia al alfabeto fonético, es importante mencionar que este es un conocimiento académico que requiere de la ayuda de un profesor especializado en el tema.

3. Dispone de un buen diccionario que te permita no sólo incrementar las palabras de su léxico sino que, también, potenciar tu pronunciación a través de los símbolos fonéticos. Lo ideal es que este punto también sea apoyado por la guía de un especialista o profesor de inglés.

4. Acostúmbrate a escuchar canciones en inglés, en todos sus estilos, por lo menos media hora cada día.

5. Ve películas o series en inglés semanalmente y olvídate de los subtítulos en español.

6. Ten un listado con todas aquellas palabras o frases en ese idioma cuya pronunciación te resulte difícil o genere dudas. Averigüa en Internet o con algún conocido cual es la forma correcta en que se deben enunciar y practique hasta dominarlas.

7. Emplea una velocidad para comunicarse en inglés que te permita lograr la dicción que busca. Recuerda que modular bien es clave en este tema y no tanto la velocidad con la que se habla.

8. Ejercita tu pronunciación, ya sea leyendo en voz alta algún texto o cantando alguna canción frente a algún amigo o familiar que sea nativo o que, a su juicio, tenga un excelente dominio en ese idioma, de tal manera que lo pueda evaluar y lo ayude a mejorar.

9. Si tiene la posibilidad de grabar su voz, hágalo. Esto te permitirá escucharte y corregir los errores que comete.

10. Sé perseverante. En la medida que seas constante en el tiempo, los resultados que espera alcanzar llegarán más rápido. Así como ir una sola vez al gimnasio no se traduce en una mayor musculatura o en el abdomen perfecto, el practicar una semana o un mes no mejorará su pronunciación en inglés.

11. Inscríbete en un curso de inglés, con énfasis en la conversación. El objetivo es contratar un curso para fortalecer la parte hablada de este idioma, potenciando también la capacidad auditiva y comprensión.

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11 tips para mejorar tu pronunciación en inglés y acercarse a la de un nativo

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Estudiar inglés te puede tomar años de estudios, y pese a esto, tu pronunciación puede no llegar a ser tan buena como la de un nativo. Y para explicártelo, existen muchas razones, como el no usar en tu día a día el idioma y el no poner énfasis en algunas reglas gramaticales que te ayudarán entender el sonido de cada palabra.

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La letra y sonido de la "eñe" se ha desarollado desde la Edad Media. Las monjes (antes eran los unicos que sabían como escribir y leer) usaban diferentes formas para escribir este sonido:
-double n (nn)
-gn
-"ni", seguido de un vocal
Finalmente, para ahorrarse tinta y facilitar trabajo, abreviaron la "eñe" a solo "ñ."

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La ñ no entró en el diccionario de la Real Academia Española hasta 1803. Pero el origen de esta letra, genuinamente española, se remonta casi 1,000 años atrás.

Para conocer cómo surgió esta icónica letra hay que retroceder a la Edad Media.

En latín, ni la letra ni el sonido correspondiente a la eñe existían. Pero a medida que el latín evolucionó y empezaron a surgir las lenguas románicas , como el castellano, el francés o el italiano, apareció este sonido nasal (el aire sale por la nariz) palatal (al pronunciarlo el dorso de la lengua se apoya contra el paladar) que identificamos como "eñe".

Al no existir en el alfabeto latino, los escribas tuvieron que inventar formas de reproducir ese sonido en los textos de las lenguas romance. Así, desde el siglo IX , los copistas empezaron a transcribir el sonido de la eñe de tres formas diferentes:

Formas de reproducir el sonido de la eñe

Ejemplos

Como una doble n (nn)

canna (caña), anno (año), donna (doña)

Como un gn

lignu (leño), agnus (cordero),

Como "ni" seguido de una vocal

Hispania (España), vinia (viña)

"En un mismo texto podíamos encontrar las tres variaciones fonéticas de la eñe, según la procedencia del copista. No había una norma generalizada", le dice José J. Gómez Asencio, catedrático de la lengua española en la Universidad de Salamanca, a BBC Mundo.

Los escribas que optaban por usar la doble ene (o ene geminada) empezaron a abreviar esta forma, dejando una sola e n e y poniendo una v í rgula encima (el sombrerito tan característico de la ñ).

"Esto fue una solución para ahorrar pergamino y facilitar el duro trabajo de los monjes escribanos. Es por eso que el uso de abreviaturas era muy común en la época", recalca Gómez Asencio.

Y es que los monjes eran prácticamente las únicos que sabían leer y escribir en la Edad Media, por lo que la mayor parte de la cultura antigua se transmitió a través de la labor de estos copistas.

La victoria de la ñ

El uso generalizado de estas tres formas de reproducir el sonido de la eñe en un mismo texto generó una situación caótica, en la que en un mismo texto se podían encontrar las tres variantes -ñ, gn y ni más vocal- sin que hubiese ningún tipo de uniformidad.

Esto fue así hasta que en el siglo XIII, la reforma ortográfica del rey Alfonso X el Sabio, que buscaba establecer las primeras normas del castellano, se decantó por la ñ como la opción preferente para reproducir ese sonido.

Durante el siglo XIV la eñe se extendió en su uso y Antonio de Nebrija la incluyó en la gramática de 1492, la primera del castellano.

El español y el gallego optaron por la ñ (España) pero cada lengua románica adoptó su propia solución gráfica para el sonido palatal nasal. Así el italiano y el francés se quedaron con la gn (Espagne, Spagna), el portugués con la nh (Espanha) y el catalán con la ny (Espanya).

¿Qué otras lenguas la utilizan?

Tanto la letra ñ como el sonido (o fonema) de la ñ no son exclusivas del español.

En la Península Ibérica, el gallego y el asturiano usan esta letra. En América Latina muchas lenguas indígenas como el mixteco, el zapoteco, el otomí, el quechua, el aymara, el mapuche y el guaraní también cuentan con la eñe. Pero, ¿cómo llegaron a incorporar esa letra tan castiza a sus abecedarios?

"Muchas lenguas amerindias no tenían escritura en el siglo XVI, cuando los españoles llegaron al continente. Las lenguas que tenían ese sonido fuerte, palatal y nasal, tomaron la ñ del español", le dice a BBC Mundo Julio Calvo, profesor de la Universidad de Valencia, en España.

De hecho, los sistemas de escritura de las lenguas indígenas fueron implementados en la mayoría de los casos por lingüistas del reino de España.

"Hubo una directiva que, para facilitar a los indígenas el manejo tanto de su lengua como del español, señalaba que debían seguir el sistema del español", le cuenta Klaus Zimmermann, catedrático de lingüística románica de la Universidad de Bremen, en Alemania, a BBC Mundo.

"Por un lado se puede decir que (la eñe) fue un préstamo del español y por otro que fue una imposición, ya que la directiva no fue decretada por los mismos indígenas sino por lingüistas o indígenas obedeciendo a un raciocinio pedagógico propuesto por la cultura y política hispana", dice Zimmermann.

Otras culturas que también tuvieron contacto con el español cuentan con la ñ, como el papamiento de Curazao, el tagalo y el cha b acano de Filipinas, el bubi de Guinea Ecuatorial o el chamorro de Guam.

Internet, enemigo de la ñ

El español es una de las lenguas más extendidas del mundo. Según las cifras de este año del Instituto Cervantes, hay casi 472 millones de hispanohablantes nativos en el mundo, lo que sitúa al español como la segunda lengua materna más hablada del mundo, justo después del chino mandarín.

A pesar de esto, la ñ encontró obstáculos en la era digital. En 1991, la entonces Comunidad Económica Europea propuso comercializar teclados sin la letra ñ, una iniciativa rechazada por políticos e intelectuales hispanohablantes, entre ellos Gabriel García Márquez.

¿Por qué ese rechazo a esta letra tan icónica? "El problema es que el inglés es la lengua dominante y no tiene ni esa letra ni ese fonema, y todo lo que no tenga el inglés parece extraño en el mundo", dice el profesor Calvo a BBC Mundo.

A pesar que en 1993 el gobierno español consiguió salvar la ñ acogiéndose al Tratado de Maastricht, uno de los tratados fundacionales de la Unión Europea y que admite excepciones de carácter cultural, aun no podemos usar direcciones de correo electrónico que contengan la eñe.

Porque no es lo mismo Mariño que marino, ni Peña que pena, ¿verdad?
Este artículo es parte de la versión digital del Hay Festival Arequipa, un encuentro de escritores y pensadores que se realiza en esa ciudad peruana entre el 8 y 11 de diciembre de 2016.
- Carol Olona

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¿De dónde salió la letra "ñ"? Y otros datos para alimentar tu curiosidad

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La ñ no entró en el diccionario de la Real Academia Española hasta 1803. Pero el origen de esta letra, genuinamente española, se remonta casi 1,000 años atrás. Para conocer cómo surgió esta icónica letra hay que retroceder a la Edad Media. En latín, ni la letra ni el sonido correspondiente a la eñe existían.

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6. El estudio del significado: segmántica y pragmática

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6. El estudio del significado: segmántica y pragmática

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3. La estructura de las palabras: morfología

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3. La estructura de las palabras: morfología

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2. Los sonidos de la lengua: fonética y fonología 

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2. Los sonidos de la lengua: fonética y fonología 

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Acabo de entrar a una organización aquí en la universidad que se llama Texas Fuego y es el primero group de espíritu de Hispanos/Latinx. Esta el la primera vez que he visto el uso de esta palabra. Hasta pensé que se habían equivocado en su ortografía, pero no es cierto. En el articulo, se dice que el uso de Latinx es parte de imperialismo lingüístico, obligando a los ideales de los EE.UU sobre una lengua que no corresponde a ella, ni gramaticalmente o oralmente. El uso de "x" para reemplazar "a" y "o" es en un intento de "neutralidad de genero," pero excluye a casi todo Latino America que no puede pronunciar esta palabra ingles. Yo ni supe como pronunciar esta palabra! El lenguaje español contiene genero y si le quitas el genero a todas las palabras, ya no estas hablando español.

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Lingüistas estudian las reglas que personas normales naturalmente saben si saber porque lo saben. Por ejemplo, la orden en cual usar adjetivos en ingles es decidida por "Elementos de la eloquencia" descrito como opinion, tamaño, edad, forma, color, origen, material, próposito y al fin sustantivo. ("lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife")

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WHO can say what order should be used to list adjectives in English? Mark Forsyth, in "The Elements of Eloquence", describes it as: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose and then Noun. "So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac." Mr Forsyth may have exaggerated how fixed adjective order is, but his little nugget is broadly true, and it has delighted people to examine something they didn't know they knew.

Clearly, then, the discipline of linguistics needs a marketing overhaul, because this is exactly what linguistics consists of: describing the rules, many of them hidden and not obvious, of the human language ability. Given how eagerly word-nerds recently shared this tit-bit about adjective order on social media, the lecture-halls for linguistics classes should be crammed to the rafters.
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Instead, as most linguists only too ruefully admit, upon confessing their profession at cocktail parties they tend to be told: "Oops, better watch my grammar around you." Just as many psychologists moan that outsiders think the discipline is mainly about abnormal psychology, linguists haven't sufficiently spread the word that they are not out to ban split infinitives or correct the misuse of "whom". They consider themselves scientists (in a discipline that overlaps with psychology, cognitive science and others) in trying to learn how the human mind works.

They've found out many wonderful things about rules you know, but don't know you know. For example, a question can be formed from a statement by turning the questioned element into a question-word (like "where") and moving it to the front of a sentence. "Steve went to Toronto. Where did Steve go?" But that doesn't work when the element in question is itself a clause: in "John wonders where Steve went to university" "went" can't become "Where does John wonder that Steve went to university?" Everyone knows that the latter is awkward or even unacceptable, but very few people outside the world of linguistics know why. In fact, it took linguists themselves quite a while to work out the details.

There are hidden rules not just in grammar, but at every level of language production. Take pronunciation. The -s that marks a plural in English is pronounced differently depending on the previous consonants: if the consonant is "voiced" (ie, the vocal cords vibrate, as in "v", "g" and "d"), then the -s is pronounced like a "z". If the consonant is "unvoiced" (like "f", "k" and "t"), then the -s is simply pronounced as an "s". Every native English-speaker uses this rule every day. Children master it by three or four. But nobody is ever taught it, and almost nobody knows they know it.

Because linguists spend their careers trying to tease out what people actually do say and why, they get cross when people equate "grammar" with a host of rules that most people don't actually observe. Take the so-called rule against ending sentences with a preposition. In fact, saying things like: "What are you talking about?" is deeply embedded in the grammar of English. "About what are you talking?" strikes real speakers of English as absurd. So it annoys linguists to no end to hear the latter "rule" associated with "grammar", while the real, intricate grammar already embedded in the mind is ignored.

Sometimes our mental grammars don't know what to do with unusual cases. Take the newish verb "to greenlight", meaning to approve a project. What is its past tense? "Light" has the past tense "lit". But some people go for "greenlighted" ( Variety, a film-industry magazine, prefers this) whereas others go for "greenlit". Why the confusion? It's because "to greenlight" was formed anew from a noun phrase, "a green light". One mental rule is that new words are always regular; hence "greenlighted". But other people's mental grammars see "greenlight" as a form of the verb "to light", an existing irregular verb with the past tense "lit"; hence "greenlit".

This implicit grammatical knowledge overwhelms, in its intricacy and depth, the relatively few rules that people must be consciously taught at school. But since the implicit stuff is hidden in plain sight, it gets overlooked. It is cheering to see that things like the adjective-order rule can go viral on social media. Perhaps it can make people more likely to associate "grammar" not with drudgery, but with fascinating self-discovery.

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WHO can say what order should be used to list adjectives in English? Mark Forsyth, in "The Elements of Eloquence", describes it as: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose and then Noun. "So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.

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Encontré esta revista de habla que se enfoca en publicar artículos interesantes acerca de la lingüística en nuestra sociedad. Por ejemplo, un artículo pregunta porque usamos la letra X para representar un beso. Se dice que en aquellos tiempos medivales, en vez de usar una firma escribirían una X y también besaban la frente de la carta para representar la promesa de atenerse a los términos de su acuerdo.

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With Prof. David Crystal as Linguistic Advisor and Profs. Lesley Jeffries and Dan McIntyre as co-editors, Babel is written and compiled by world-class linguists. Nevertheless, it is aimed at a wide range of language-lovers, bringing cutting edge research in linguistics to our subscribers in an accessible and fun glossy magazine.

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Cuando consideramos la palabra gramática, muchos pensamos en las reglas que hemos aprendido desde muy pequeños, pero hay ciertas reglas mentales que tenemos con solo ser hablantes nativos de cierta lengua. Estudiamos cada lengua individualmente siguiendo el programa de Chomsky, asumiendo que oraciones son aceptables solo porque satisfacen ciertas condiciones en esa lengua. Al contrario, Prince y Paul Smolensky crearon la teoría de optimalidad, cual dice que idiomas individuales ocupan condiciones universales, y cuando surge un conflicto cada lengua elige las condiciones de mayor puntuación.

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4. La estructura de la oración: sintaxis 

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4. La estructura de la oración: sintaxis 

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Diferencias del español de países en Sudamérica 

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Diferencias del español de países en Sudamérica 

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La region, el "Cono Sur" tiene su propia manera de hablar.

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Las características del español de Sudamérica: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay

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The University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project (Acceso) is an open-access, digital learning environment designed to promote the acquisition of Spanish and the development of cultural understanding of the varied groups of people who share Spanish as a common language.

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Sí los primeros seis meses son los más crucial para un bebe aprendiendo un lenguaje, ¿que sucede con prematuros?

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Que interesante el saber los diferentes nombres de comida. ¿Sabias que tortilla se llama omlet en España?

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El dramaturgo irlandés George Bernard Shaw se refería a Gran Bretaña y a los Estados Unidos cuando habló de dos naciones divididas por una lengua común. Y en español la Tía Ilana se atreve a ampliarlo. Veintiuna naciones divididas por una lengua común: Hemos escrito una larga lista de alimentos que tienen varios nombres en español, dependiendo del país.

Mi experiencia principal es con el español dominicano y el ibérico, pero también he visitado una colección de otros países de habla hispana, a menudo con resultados divertidos. Mirar a mi marido dominicano conversar con mi madre, cuyo español es definitivamente ibérico con algo de influencia venezolana, puede rayar a veces en lo surrealista.

Al escribir sobre cocina dominicana para una audiencia internacional (sabemos que tenemos una gama impresionante de nacionalidades y de países entre nuestros visitantes) a menudo encontramos nombres de alimentos que significan una cosa en un lugar y el mismo nombre no tiene ningún sentido en otras partes porque son conocidas por un nombre totalmente distinto.
Hay también varios casos donde el mismo nombre se refiere a una cosa totalmente diferente, con toda la confusión que esto crea.
Éstas son características del mundo de habla hispana, donde diversos países en América latina y el Caribe fueron ocupados en diversos puntos de la historia, por gente de diversas regiones España y de muchos otros países, que añadieron sus estampas particulares en los vocabularios de las nuevas naciones, combinándolos a menudo con los términos indígenas. Todo esto contribuyó a una rica diversidad de la lengua, e intentamos mostrarte algunos de los placeres y las trampas causados por este mosaico lingüístico. Ya sea que seas una persona de habla inglesa que ha aprendido un poco de español, o un lector dominicano o a natural de otra parte del mundo de habla hispana, te dedicamos este artículo.

La arepa dominicana es un pastel dulce cocido al horno y hecho con harina de maíz y coco (hay una versión salada también). Aparte de su ingrediente básico, no hay mucha semejanza entre este y su tocayo suramericano, los cuales son similares a un panecillo de harina de maíz que acompañan casi cada comida venezolana y colombiana.

La cosa se enreda cuando comenzamos a desentrañar los diversos nombres para las habichuelas. Déjame acompañarte a por este campo de habichuelas, o debí decir, campo de minas. Habichuelas en la República Dominicana es como llamamos a los frijoles. En España habichuelas son las habas verdes. En la República Dominicana, las habas verdes son vainitas. En España, las habichuelas rojas y otras legumbres similares adquieren el extraño nombre de judías. En otras partes del mundo de habla hispana estas legumbres se conocen como alubias, nombres con el que en algunos sitios se conocen las habas dominicanas las cuales se conocen en España como fabas. En México y América Central las habichuelas se llaman "frijoles". En Venezuela, son "caraotas".

Los guisantes conocidos con el elegante nombre de petit pois por los franceses, y en la Rep. Dominicana, cuando son enlatados o como arvejas si son secos. En España son guisantes y en México chícharos.

Bollo o bollito en España es un panecillo, mientras que en la República Dominicana se refiere a un tipo de croqueta (como los de yuca). En la R.D. si deseas un panecillo pide un pancito.

Como tortilla se conoce la omelet en España. En el resto del mundo de habla hispana tienes que especificar que es una tortilla de huevos o simplemente tortilla española. En México una tortilla es una crepa de harina y en América Central se hacen con maíz. Si estás en España tienes que especificar tortilla mexicana si es eso lo que deseas. Hay también una tortilla dominicana.

Un pastel es un pastel. ¿Cierto? En el mundo de habla hispana puede ser un bizcocho (Rep. Dominicana), torta (Venezuela) pastel o tarta (España), queque (Perú), cake en (Latinos en los E.E.U.U.), o las comunidades de habla inglesa que viven en la costa del Caribe de America Central. En mi Gibraltar nativo, donde hay una mezcla lingüística y cultural comparable, también decimos queque.

Otro nombre de un alimento que podría causar confusión es el de los pasteles hoja. En España puede ser que piensen que usted habla de los milhojas. Algo muy similar a los pasteles en hoja es conocido como tamal en América Central y México y como humita en Ecuador.

Si estás buscando La palabra venezolana para el plátano es la inusual "cambur". El "guineo dominicano" también se utiliza en algunas otras partes de las Américas, tales como Nicaragua y Ecuador. plátanos en España, usted consigue un guineo, que es como se conoce la banana en la Rep. Dominicana. Si pides guineo, consigues una mirada extrañada. Sandía es generalmente llamada "patilla" en Venezuela (y por algunos dominicanos). El melocotón es "durazno" en casi todas partes.

Lo que mi madre llama " pimiento " Pedro llama "ají". A este también se le llama "chile"en otros países aunque se refiere generalmente a las variedades más picantes. Lo qué ella llama "sésamo", él llama "ajonjolí".

Los españoles dicen "zumo" y los latinoamericanos dicen " jugo". En España es "pomelo", "toronja" en otras partes. El " jugo de china" dominicano no se reconocería en otros lugares (excepto en Puerto Rico). Los dominicanos llaman a las naranjas chinas, aunque el nombre de naranja también se usa indistintamente. Para el neófito, vale la pena mencionar que "jugo de china" no tiene nada que ver con la salsa de soya.

La forma más común en España es "patatas" a excepción de la región meridional de Andalucía donde se llaman " papas", como en América latina. Una receta andaluza famosa y deliciosa es "Papas a la Pobre" (cebollas, ajo, vegetales y papas fritas en una cantidad abundante de aceite de oliva). En España, es "col", no " repollo", y dicen "gambas" no " camarones". La " crema " es "nata", "crema" se utiliza para referirse a más bien textura que a un artículo en particular.

Los mexicanos tienen algunas palabras particulares para los vegetales, tales como " pepinillo" para el "pepino" y "jitomates" para los " tomates". En Cuba, la "okra" no es " molondrón " como se llama en la Rep. Dominicana, sino "quimbombó" ambos nombres tienen claras raíces africanas. El "moro dominicano" (arroz y habichuelas) es el "congrí" de Cuba y el "gallo pinto" de América Central.

Más al sur en la región andina nos encontramos con la palabra "palta" para referirse al "aguacate". Este último se origina en México y se deriva de la palabra azteca "ahucatl" la cuál significa realmente "testículo", y revela que los aztecas pudieron haber tenido una gran imaginación, o quizá testículos extraños. En los Andes encontramos el "camote", mejor conocido como "boniato" o "batata" (patata dulce) en otras partes. "Batata" por cierto viene del árabe, que nos heredó muchas palabras al español.

Esa quintaesencial cosecha latinoamericana el maíz tiene muchos y diversos nombres a través del mundo de habla hispana, "maíz" siendo el más común. El maíz tierno es "maíz dulce". En México la mazorca se llama "elote" y "choclo" en Suramérica, a excepción de Venezuela en donde se llama "jojoto". En Centroamérica se le llama "chilote".

Aunque la mayoría de hispanoparlantes se apegan a la versión española del italiano " broccoli" y le deletrean "brócoli", algunos lo llaman "brécol". " Cangrejo " es el nombre generalmente usado, pero muchos latinoamericanos , incluyendo dominicanos y colombianos también lo conocen como "jaiba".

Los nombres varían para la fruta de pasión: " Chinola" en la Rep. Dominicana y "maracuyá" (que suena brasileño) en Venezuela. En España es "fruta de la pasión" y "granadilla", "granadillo" en algunas partes de Centro y Suramérica así como también en Cuba. El granadillo dominicano es una fruta para la que no he podido encontrar su equivalente en español en otras partes, todo lo que sé es que con esta se hace una batida maravillosa y que sabe un poco a pera. Ninguno de los antes mencionados se debe confundir con la " granada " para los cuales granadillo y granadilla son casi ciertamente los diminutivos. Aunque son tipos totalmente distintos de fruta, las cortezas duras y los racimos de semillas comestibles implica que no está tan alejado de la realidad el describir a la chinola como mini-granadas.

El anacardo de España es marañón en la mayoría de los países de habla hispana, pero en la República Dominicana la palabra es cajuil. "Cashew", el nombre inglés para esta semilla viene del hindú "kaju". Cajuil parece estar relacionado con el cajueiro gallego, probablemente tengan el mismo origen. La gente de Galicia en el noroeste de España ha emigrado extensamente al nuevo mundo a través de los siglos, y esto es claramente una herencia suya. Incidentalmente, el mismo sitio web que me proveyó esta información nos deja saber que el cajuil tiene propiedades afrodisíacas.

Zapote se conoce como anona en México y recibe el nombre de sapote también en inglés, y puede ser encontrado en México, América Central y el Caribe. La anona, de paso, es el nombre inglés para otra fruta ilustre que no debo dejar de mencionar, la chirimoya. La chirimoya, la cuál se origina en la región andina no debe ser confundida con la guanábana dominicana, aunque guardan un cierto parecido.

Uno de nuestros lectores, Tony de Ontario, escribió que un área particular de confusión para la gente que él conoce es la diferencia entre los limones y las limas, las cuales en inglés corresponden a lo contrario que en español.

Mi papá escribiendo desde Gibraltar, me recordó que el "cabello de ángel" es un caramelo hecho de la pulpa cristalizada de la calabaza en España, mientras que en este lado de la charca el término se utiliza para una cosa totalmente distinta: fideos (o tallarines) para sopa. Una vez encontré cabello de ángel en mi cuenta del supermercado y me quedé estupefacta pensando que debía haber sido un error con la codificación, porque nunca había visto cabello de ángel tal y como le conocen en España en la Rep. Dominicana. En otra ocasión noté el nombre en un paquete de fideos y me di cuenta de mi error.

Papá también precisó que así como en México, en Gibraltar los " garbanzos " son también "chícharos" (a diferencia de España donde son guisantes). La palabra parece originarse en el latín. Siempre una fuente inagotable de información inútil, papá amplía: "Cicerón, el orador romano, llevaba ese nombre supuestamente porque él, o un antepasado, tenía la nariz como un garbanzo".

Terminaré con esta adaptación de una canción clásica:

¡Tú dices papa y yo digo boniato.
Dices guineo y yo digo plátano
Boniato, patata, guineo, plátano. ¡Detengamos esto!
(Con disculpas a Ira e Israel Gershwin).
Gracias a Himilce Tejada por la asistencia con algunos términos.
* México, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, República Dominicana, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guinea Ecuatorial (antigua colonia española en África) y España.

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El dramaturgo irlandés George Bernard Shaw se refería a Gran Bretaña y a los Estados Unidos cuando habló de dos naciones divididas por una lengua común. Y en español la Tía Ilana se atreve a ampliarlo. Veintiuna naciones divididas por una lengua común: Hemos escrito una larga lista de alimentos que tienen varios nombres en español, dependiendo del país.

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Este fin de semana, estuve "binge-watching" mi favorito programa en Netflix y apareció un caso de afasia. Se me hizo una gran coincindencia! (Desafortunadamente, no pude encontrar el clip exacto del video, pero es temporada 8, episodio 17.)

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One Step Too Far

Cristina works together with the nurse she thinks Owen is cheating on her with.

"

We're trained to be vigilant. To chase down the problem. To ask all the right questions. To find the root cause, until we know exactly what it is. And we can confront it. It takes an extreme amount of caution, or we can overstep ourselves. We can create problems, where none exist. Our intentions are always pure, we always want to do what's right. But we also have the drive to push boundaries, so we're in danger of taking things too far. We're told to do no harm, while we're trained to cut you open with a knife. So, we do things, when we should have left well enough alone. Because it's hard to admit when there's no problem to treat. To let it alone, before we make it so much worse. Before we cause terrible damage.

"

One Step Too Far is the seventeenth episode of the eighth season and the 165th overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Derek encourages a hesitant Meredith to work with him again in neurology. Jackson's mother, Catherine Avery, returns to Seattle Grace with a urology fellow and develops an interest in Richard. Cristina becomes increasingly suspicious of Owen's every move. Meanwhile, Alex tries to deny the fact that Morgan may be falling for him.

In the middle of the night, Owen and Cristina are lying in bed. Meredith's voice over talks about how surgeons are trained to be vigilant and find the problem. Cristina's awake and holds his nose. He wakes up, but she has nothing to say but "hi". Irritated, he turns around and goes back to sleep.

At 3:12 AM, Cristina is lying in bed. Owen comes home and goes into the bathroom. She's awake and takes his phone to check it.

4:40 AM. Cristina is awake and trying to reach Dr. Hunt at the hospital. She denies that Owen came home and asks the person at the hospital to page him. She will hold.

Cristina is at the hospital. She hears laughter in an on-call room. She finds Morgan and Alex eating and laughing together. She closes the door and enters the next on-call room. She walks in and Owen wakes up. She says he didn't come home, but there was a bus crash, he says. He asks why she's here. She stammers she brought him coffee after his rough night. But she forgot the coffee. She tells him to go back to sleep and leaves. Nurse Emily walks by, raising Cristina's suspicions even more.

Derek and Meredith are sitting in bath together. He wants her to come back to neuro, but she says they decided that was a bad idea. He says that was when they wanted to get Zola back. He misses her on his service and asks her to come back for one day for neuro's magic and mysteries.

Richard is sleeping in the skills lab. He's woken up by Bailey and Catherine Avery. There's another doctor with them, a fellow of Catherine's. Bailey tells him Dr. Avery's here for their bladder surgery. He gets up and greets them. Catherine takes a look at the bladder they grew from the patient's own stem cells. She says all these late night phone calls paid off. Richard says they couldn't have done it without her consultations. She calls him a flatterer and says that she's going to find her son before they put this bladder in places the sun don't shine. She tickles his chest and says he should find a cup of coffee. She orders Dr. Keaton to come with and leaves. Bailey seems to remark the flirtation. Richard says he likes to sit with Adele until she falls asleep and to be there in the morning. Bailey worries when he gets sleep then, but he assures her he's fine.

Alex and Morgan are using an on-call room as Morgan's place to live. While he's eating, he asks her to ask him another card again. She's too worried about Tommy, who has a brain bleed. Alex corrects he barely has a brain bleed and assures her they're watching him. She thinks he's this close to failing his boards. He denies and gets a page. It's from Robbins, so Morgan decides she's coming with.

Meredith tells Cristina that Derek put her on his service despite her objections. Cristina needs Owen to confirm her trauma victim is brain dead. Through the ER window, they see Owen share his snack with nurse Emily. Meredith claims it doesn't have to mean anything, but Cristina doesn't hear her. Meredith leaves to find Derek.

Jackson reminds Mark that he has to tell his mother that they're buried with work today, so Jackson has no time to spend with her. Catherine comes in and kisses her son hello. She comments he looks skinny and asks if he forgot his tux. He's her date tonight for the frontiers of medicine benefit tonight. Catherine introduces Mark and Jackson to Mara Keaton, her star urology fellow. Since Mara is considering Seattle Grace Mercy West for an attending position next year, Catherine thought it'd be good for Jackson to show her around. Mark says he can absolutely spare Jackson for a few hours, breaking his promise to Jackson. Kepner will cover for his work.

Cristina is in a room in the ICU, watching Emily at the nurse's station. Her patient's husband has signed the consent forms to take the man off life support. The man takes a short moment to say goodbye and while he talks about a memory, the ventilator is turned off. However, he suddenly says he can't do this and urges the nurse to put the ventilator back on. So she does.

Cristina tells Owen what happened. She wants to get in on Teddy's premie surgery, but Owen orders her to stay with the man to make him realize this is the only option left. He wants her to do his job and find some damn compassion. Emily comes over and suggests she could help, as the men know her. Cristina snaps at her, but Owen tells Cristina to let her help and thanks Emily. So does Cristina, but Emily realizes she doesn't mean it.

A patient is talking to Derek about how she screwed up her job interview in an embarrassing way. She didn't get the job, but Derek says her next interview will go better because they will remove the cyst today. Lexie explains how the cyst will be removed. The patient asks about the tumor they found. Derek explains it's benign, and they'll leave it for now until it starts to cause problems. When it does, it'll be easy to remove it. Today's surgery will stop the seizures and the dizziness. The patient is excited. Derek and Lexie leave the room just as Meredith arrives. Meredith claims she was kidnapped, while Derek tells Lexie Meredith is thinking about coming back to neuro because she misses the magic. Meredith objects.

Teddy and Arizona are explaining to Morgan that heart surgery is necessary. They can't wait till after the brain bleed has cleared up. Callie comes in and says Tommy's hip dysplasia can be treated with a harness. She also gives Arizona a scone, knowing her wife skipped breakfast today. However, Arizona doesn't like pumpkin scones. Alex takes it and wants Morgan to eat, worried that she doesn't eat enough. The attendings notice how much he's caring. Alex will scrub in as it'll look good for his boards, but on their way out, Morgan jokes he shouldn't as he's been up with her all night. Callie asks if Alex really should be dating the heart-patient intern mom. Arizona is convinced he wouldn't date his intern, but Callie brings up how he's been treating her. Arizona however claims Alex is just trying to be more human and she's to be thanked for that.

Catherine tells her patient that the bladder is ready. They joke about it, making the patient laugh and eventually pee. After today, she won't have to be scared anymore that her bladder will let go every time she laughs. Or sneezes, or coughs, or has sex, the patient completes. Richard says she'll have a very full life once Dr. Avery's done with her. Looking at Richard, Catherine says she likes to think that everyone lives a very full life once she's done with them.

Meredith, Derek, and Lexie are in the OR. Lexie is doing her first solo cyst. Meredith thinks it's a boring procedure, showing no interest in neuro anymore at all, but Derek urges her to be a good sister and cheer Lexie on. Callie comes in, needing Derek to come and check on her patient. Derek says he'll be right there. Lexie knows how to continue the surgery. He promises to be right back, but asks Meredith to observe.

Jackson and Mara have arrived at the gallery. Jackson wants to go, as he has a difficult year because of the studying for the boards. Mara however wants to observe the surgery for a moment. They sit down and Mara asks if he's still dating anyone. Jackson doesn't answer and asks about her education. She tells him where he studied while he continues to look through his study cards. He gets how she managed to build such an impressive resume. Meanwhile, Derek entered the OR. Mara is amazed by him and asks Jackson to watch a little while longer, but he's disappeared.

In surgery, Teddy and Arizona agree Tommy's heart is the smallest they have ever seen. Suddenly, things get more complicated as Tommy's brain bleed has progressed to stage 3. Tommy needs a ventriculostomy. Arizona says they can page Marcus as Shepherd is in surgery, but Alex is determined to get the best surgeon possible. He rushes out to get Derek.

In Lexie's OR, the cyst is draining really well. However, there's a little bleeding. Meredith calmly explains they just need to find the source. In order to do so, they need to extend the craniotomy a little. So Lexie does.

Cristina is explaining to her patient's husband that the patient is only breathing because the machine is doing so for him. The man thinks his husband will die if they put off the machine, but Cristina explains he has already died. Emily comes in with an EEG of another patient. Cristina shows him there is brain activity, whereas his husband has had no activity at all for the past 72 hours. The man asks her to stop. Cristina says she's just trying to explain things, but he doesn't want to hear it. Emily interferes and tells Sam he can take all the time he needs. Cristina agrees to this and leaves, watching from outside the room how Emily comforts Sam.

Lexie's extended the craniotomy and fixes the bleeding. They then see the tumor and Lexie asks if they should take it out. It's so easy that even she could do it. Meredith asks a nurse to call Derek in OR 2 to ask him about this. He's about to finish his surgery, so he'll be here any minute. They'll wait for him.

Derek has stabilized Callie's patient's spine. Alex comes in, saying he needs Derek now in OR 4 for Tommy's brain bleed. Callie informs Derek that Tommy is intern Morgan's baby, which convinces Derek to go. Callie will finish.

Jackson tells Mark his mother is trying to set him up with Mara and reminds Mark about their deal to tell Catherine that they were busy, but this was a great opportunity for Mark to get Jackson laid. Mark wants to get him laid, as it's also good for him. He wants to pass on wisdom. He says Mara is a good catch, as she's only here for one night. Jackson refuses to give his mother that satisfaction. "Not your mother that you should try to satisfy," Mark jokes.

Cristina walks into Mike's room and asks Sam if she can answer questions, but he declines. He'd appreciate it if she stopped circling like a vulture. She nods and leaves. Outside the room, Emily once again offers to talk to him, but Cristina refuses. Emily says Sam is grieving as he's losing his husband, but Cristina wants him to think clearly. Emily tells her how Mike ended up in the hospital to prove she's gotten to know them pretty well. Cristina asks if she's ever been married. Emily hasn't. Cristina tells her to stay out of it then, because she claims Emily can't have any idea what is going on then, nor what Sam needs.

Meredith finds Derek in Arizona's OR and says the surgery went great. Lexie even managed to take out the tumor and she did perfectly. Derek asks why the hell they would do that.

Derek says they did not have consent for the surgery, but Meredith objects that the patient would have to have another brain surgery then and the tumor was right there. Derek says they should have paged him. Meredith says Lori is fine, but Derek says they have to wait until she wakes up to know for sure. He asks for scans as he wants to know everything they did.

Catherine and Richard are operating on Irene, talking about Irene's life. Bailey is preparing the bladder and notices Catherine's flirting again. She tells them she's ready with the bladder, in case they were interested. As she brings it over, Mara comes in and says she lost track of Jackson, so she would like to scrub in with Catherine. Catherine doesn't allow her to and tells her to find her son if she wants to go to the benefit tonight. Richard comments the benefit sounds fun, but she says it hasn't been since she became an Avery, as she's always representing the Foundation so she has to look fancy. Also, in the OR, people expect her to do Harper Avery Award winning work, even though she can't win the Award. She says you can crumble and burn out under the Avery pressure, like Jackson's father did. She doesn't want it to happen to her son as well. Richard understands. Catherine wishes she could go back and be Catherine Fox again, as she was way more fun back then. He comments she's still fun now. She's glad he noticed.

Cristina is searching for food in April's fridge. Meredith comes in too, not liking the lunch served in the cafeteria. They find food and sit down. Meredith tells her about the tumor removal and Derek's worries. Cristina says she spent all day with Owen's nurse. "Owen's nurse?" Meredith asks, but Cristina quickly corrects herself to stupid ICU nurse. She avoids the subject by talking about the food. Alex comes in for food too, and Cristina asks him how long he's been sleeping with Morgan. He says he's not, but Cristina recalls seeing them in the on-call room together before dawn. Yes, studying, he says. And feeding her, Cristina adds. While Alex says she's a patient and his intern, Meredith thinks this is gonna be like Rebecca. Morgan will fall for him and go crazy and pee on Meredith's couch. He tells the two of them to go to hell, but Meredith asks him to keep her of her couch anyway. Just as Meredith asks Cristina about Owen, April comes in and takes her food from Cristina. Jackson comes in and tells April to stop Facebooking his mother, but April isn't. Jackson asks how she knows then that he and Lexie broke up and now she's trying to set him up with a urology fellow because of that. Jackson steals food from April as well, just as Mara knocks on the door. April tells her Jackson is right there. They go off to continue the tour. Meredith wants to talk about Owen again, but Cristina tells her to drop it. She assures her everything is fine.

Mara proposes they go to the cafeteria to grab something to eat and talk, but Jackson tells her he knows about his mother's plan and apologizes, but he's not interested. Mara says she's not here to service him, she's here to serve his mother for a grade. She has to find out as much as she can about his life, including when he'll stop screwing around in plastics. Jackson realizes she's a spy then, but Mara says she ranks this task slightly above wiping vomit from bedpans, and his mother is very demanding. He knows his mother, so he must know she can't go back empty-handed. So, if he were really sorry and not just a presumptuous pig, he'd tell her whatever he wanted her to tell his mother. And if possible, he'd do in the cafeteria because she's starving. Not a chance, he says, because it's jamabalaya day. He asks her to come with him.

Meredith and Derek are in Lori's room. She hasn't woken up. Meredith sent Lexie to wait for Lori's labs, but she's confident Lori will be fine. Lori's parents rush in. Meredith tells her the surgery went great, but they won't know more about her condition until the anesthesia wear off. Lori then wakes up, and initial exams are good. She's responding well. However, she is unable to speak and panicks.

Outside the room, Derek is explaining to the parents that the part of the brain that forms words has been damaged in the surgery. There's a chance that she can regain some of her function with therapy. The parents are furious. Derek says he did his best, but this was not an outcome he did foresee. He made a mistake. The mother says they're suing him because their daughter's life is ruined. The parents walk off, as their daughter can hear them. Meredith tells Derek it was her mistake, he wasn't even in the room. That was his mistake, he says, leaving them alone. He does say however that she didn't think at all in the OR. Meredith wants this to be her mistake, as it will destroy Lexie's confidence. He says she should know, and if she's not strong enough to handle it, she shouldn't be a surgeon. As he walks into the room, Lexie comes over.

In post-op, Catherine is telilng the story of the OR to Irene in a funny way to make her laugh, but she doesn't have to pee anymore, which makes her extremely chipper.

Outside the room, Catherine tells Richard they're quite a team. What would make this day even better if he were to replace Jackson as her date for the benefit tonight, as she would like a grown up along. He starts saying he wishes he could, but when he looks into her begging eyes, he says he'd be happy to. They walk off, arms hooked, with Bailey looking after them.

Emily is in the room with Sam, telling him he needs to stop seeing this as giving up on Mike. He's helping him. Cristina calls her name, but she ignores her. She says it is a hard step, but it is what Michael needs. Cristina steps in and says it would've been better if Mike died in the crash, as he'd be just as dead, but Sam then wouldn't be feeling like this. This way, he's died in slow motion. She explains he can take some comfort in the fact that he could have find comfort that it would be the same if he had seen Mike die at the side of road, and she imagines Mike would want him to have that comfort. This makes Sam asks her to bring him the papers.

Jackson and Mara are eating in April's office, eating candy and talking about Catherine ignoring boundaries. He advises her to stick to her guns, as that will make his mother respect her. She claims she's unarmed, but he can tell she has guns.

Meredith is explaining to Lexie that they damaged Broca's area. Lori can understand speech and know what she wants to say, but she just can't say it. Lexie thinks Derek must be able to fix it, but it's irrepairable. Lexie feels horrible, thinking there must be something they can do to fix it. Meredith says it's her fault too. Lexie breaks down, but Meredith says they can't cry right now. She's gonna have to go to Derek, and he'll be pissed and disappointed and he won't talk to her for days, but she can take it, learn from it, and never make this mistake again. Lexie nods.

Callie overhears Alex and Morgan talking about Tommy's case and Alex's career. She teases him about failing his boards and asks him to come with her to see her boy. He stays behind though, and Callie asks him if they're a thing. He says not, she just needs someone to keep an eye on her since her boyfriend dumped her. And she's his intern. Callie talks to him about the process of imprinting in animals, where the little kitten lets the big gorrilla cuddle it because there's no mother or cat boyfriend in town to do it, and compares it to Morgan and Alex. She says Morgan's smitten. He angrily walks off, not thinking this is that. "Big dumb gorrilla," Callie says.

Richard is getting dressed in a lounge. Bailey comes in and asks if she's ready for his dead. It's just professional, he claims. She asks if Catherine knows that too, meaning they way they have been flirting all day. He says he's not flirting, he's a married man with a wife that he loves in a nursing home. Bailey knows he loves his wife, he's killing himself and not getting any sleep because he loves his wife and to make sure she knows she's loved. While she takes care of Richard's bow, she says it's okay that he's giving himself a break, because everybody flirts with each other at this hospital. He's a good man, they all know it, even Catherine. There's flirting for fun, and flirting for profit, Bailey says. She knows which one he's doing and leaves him to think about Catherine's flirting.

Mike's been taking off life support. Cristina explains it's only a matter of time now. Sam thanks her and sits down on Mike's bed. He says this is the reason it took him three years to tell him he loved him and another three years before he moved in. He wasn't scared to commit, he was scared of how much he loved him and of this feeling that he'd never be able to find happiness without him. He breaks down and Cristina leaves the room. Emily follows her and asks if she can do anything for her. "Can you stop screwing my husband?" Cristina asks.

Cristina is walking off, saying she has no idea why she said that. Emily follows her and stops her. She and Dr. Hunt are not. She admits she flirted with him, but she flirts with everyone, it's how she gets through a long shift. It doesn't mean anything to her and they've never done anything. She switched shifts because of something with her boyfriend. She offers Cristina to call him and look through her text messages, but Cristina says it's fine. Emily swears she'd never do such thing with the Chief and apologizes as Cristina walks off.

Meredith walks down a hallway and hears Derek screaming at Lexie about sticking to a surgical plan. Meredith stops and shares a look with Lexie, convincing her to stay strong during his yelling.

A dressed up Mara and Jackson approach a dressed up Catherine. Jackson encourages Mara to tell Catherine she and Jackson decided not to join her to the benefit tonight. Mara does so, but says unless Catherine really wants them to come. "Guns," Jackson reminds her. "Since you brought me across the country to run a personal errand for you when I could've been gaining valuable surgical experience, I've decided to take the night off," Mara says. She wants to continue standing up for herself, but Catherine suggests she stop right there. She figures out Jackson captured her spy. He did. He tells her to have fun and fly safe and kisses her goodbye. He and Mara then leave, with Catherine screaming after them that she was gonna uninvite them anyway, as she has a date.

Morgan is talking to Tommy while Arizona and Alex are discussing the case. Callie comes over to talk to Arizona and Morgan asks her to take a picture of her and Tommy. Callie takes her phone while Morgan asks Alex to come over and be part of the picture. He does so, and Callie takes picture. She shows it to Alex. It shows Morgan holding his arm and resting her head on his shoulder. "Smitten kitten," Callie whispers to him, making him feel awkward.

Richard approaches Catherine and says she looks lovely. She already thought he was going to stand her up. He's afraid he is. He apologizes. She asks if it's about the flirting, because he knows she's just having fun and his wife has nothing to worry about. He says his wife has Alzheimer's. It's bad and she's in a care facility. He goes to see her every night and she usually doesn't know who he is, and even though she knows he's a friend, he knows she's not really there. He misses laughing and talking with her, and feeling like a man. Today, he felt like a man again and it felt good. So he doesn't trust himself going to dinner with her. And his wife needs him, and he needs to see his wife. Catherine tells him he's a good man. They hug and he thanks her for the fun day.

Jackson shows Mara to an on-call room. He asks if she's sure she wants to change, because they could also go to somewhere where she could look that amazing. Actually, she's not that hungry. She kisses him and asks him if he could help her with her zipper. He closes the door as he starts unzipping her dress.

Richard is taking off his tux.

Jackson and Mara are having sex in the on-call room.

Tommy is on the oscillator again, with Alex overseeing things.

Lexie is lying down in the on-call room. Meanwhile, Meredith's voice over talks about how surgeons always have the best intentions, but have to push boundaries sometimes, which causes them to sometimes take things too far.

Derek is lying in bed, thinking about Lori. This is why she can't come back to neuro, she says. He can't even look at her right now, so it's no good for them. She sits down. He doesn't want to talk about it, not does he want to take his mind off it. He doesn't want her to leave him alone either, so she lies down next to him and takes his hand.

Owen comes home and Cristina is sitting in bed, awake. She says he didn't come home and she already replies for him that there was a some sort of crash. She asks why he's staring at her. He is doing so to figure out how upset she is and if he wants to get into this. She says he does want to get into this with her. He walks into the bathroom, saying he's tired and it's late, but she says that's the point. It's always late. It shouldn't be, and he should want to get into this with her, but he doesn't. She asks where he is. He walks back into the room and says he's right freaking here, home. "No, you're not," Cristina says. He sits down and she says he needs to be honest with her, because she's going crazy. She asks if he loves her. He says he loves her so much it hurts. Cristina says they can work on that and talk about it, but they need to talk, because she means it when she said she was going crazy. She even accused Emily of sleeping with him. She apologizes, but her whole body felt like he was cheating on her and then he comes home saying he loves her, which relieved her. He recalls he said he loves her so much it that it hurts. He said it hurts to love her. "Just say it," she says. He turns around and looks her in the eye. He's not cheating on her with Emily. But he did cheat on her. Tears well up in her eyes.

Irene, 50, was in the hospital to receive the bladder that had been grown from her stem cells. She had urinary incontinence before her surgery, but that was resolved with her surgery.

Thomas had a small brain bleed that was being monitored. He also had a pericardial tumor that he needed surgery to remove. Callie told Morgan that his hip displasia could be treated with a harness. While they were in surgery, his brain bleed progressed to stage 3, so Alex went to get Derek, who came in and repaired the brain bleed.

Lori, 27, came into the hospital after having dizzy spells, which were found to be caused by an arachnoid cyst. She also had a brain tumor, but since it wasn't causing any problems, they decided to leave it alone and just drain the cyst. While the cyst was draining, Lori had some bleeding. They extended the craniotomy to find the source and cauterized it. Extended the craniotomy exposed the tumor. Lori woke up from her surgery, but presented with aphasia, caused by damage to Brocca's area. Derek informed them that with therapy, she could regain some of her function, but not all.

Michael had been in a car accident. His heart ruptured on Monday and that was repaired. His lungs collapsed on Tuesday and his kidneys failed on Thursday. Three days after that, he was brain dead. His husband, Sam, had signed the papers to end life support. However, once the machines were turned off, he told Cristina to turn them back on. Cristina explained that they hadn't seen any brain activity for 72 hours and that Michael was already dead. Cristina explained how he had died in slow motion, but he was still dead. Sam agreed to turn off the machines.

Callie had a patient with a c-7 fracture. She called for Derek to keep an eye on the cord while she operated. Derek said his motorcycle days were over, but he believed the cop would walk again.

"Stone In My Heart"

Graffiti6

Cristina keeps checking on Owen.

She finds Alex and Morgan in on-call room and Owen sleeping in the room next door. She makes up an excuse for being there in the middle of the night.

Nurse Emily walks by the on-call room.

While sitting in the tub, Derek asks Meredith to come back to neuro.

"Shuffle a Dream"

Little Dragon

Bailey notices Catherine's flirting.

The residents steal April's food and talk about their days.

Jackson is forced to continue his tour with Mara.

Meredith wants to talk about Owen, but Cristina doesn't.

"No Way"

The Naked and Famous

Jackson advises Mara on how to stand up to his mother.

Meredith talks Lexie their patient won't ever talk again due to their mistake. Meredith tells Lexie how to handle Derek's anger.

Alex and Morgan talk about Tommy.

Callie warns Alex to make sure Morgan won't fall in love with him, comparing it to animals imprinting.

Bailey tells Richard that Catherine is flirting for profit, whereas he flirts for fun.

"This Man"

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Emily denies that she has an affair with Owen.

Meredith hears Derek yelling at Lexie.

Mara stands up to Catherine and walks off with Jackson.

Morgan asks Alex to join her for a picture with her. Callie warns Alex again when she sees the picture.

A dressed up Richard meets a dressed up Catherine.

"Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake"

Zola Jesus

Jackson and Mara make out.

Richard changes in a lounge.

Alex watches Tommy while he thinks.

Lexie rests in on-call room.

Derek feels bad about today. This is why Meredith can't come back to neuro. They lie down together.

Cristina and Owen finally. He loves her so much it hurts. She admits she's been going crazy and that she accused Emily of sleeping with him. He says it hurts to love her and then reveals he did cheat on her. She starts crying.

Grey's Anatomy 8x17 promo

This episode's title originated from the song One Step Too Far, originally sung by Faithless.

This episode scored 9.62 million viewers.

Derek: That's a perfect craniotomy right, Dr. Grey?

Meredith: You dragged me back into neuro to watch Lexie do a boring procedure?

Lexie: Hey, it is not boring.

Derek: It is not boring. It's her first solo cyst. Be a big sister. Cheer her on.

Arizona: Alex Karev is trying to be more human, and I think that we can thank me for that.

Mara: I'm not here to service you, Dr. Avery. I'm here to serve your mother for a grade. And she has tasked me with digging up as much as I can about your boards, your standing, your love life, and when you're gonna stop screwing around in plastics.

Jackson: You're not a setup. You're a spy.

Mara: I rank this slightly above wiping vomit from bedpans, but your mother is a very demanding woman, and if you know anything about her, you know I can't go back empty-handed. So, if you're really sorry and not just a presumptuous pig, you would do a girl a solid, and you will tell me whatever it is that you want me to tell her. And you can do it in the cafeteria, because I'm bloody starving!

Jackson: Not a chance. It's jambalaya day. Come with me.

Miranda: Getting all ready for your date?

Richard: It's not a date. It's a function with a colleague.

Miranda: Mmhmm. Does she know that?

Richard: What do you mean?

Miranda: I mean, the way you two have been flirting with each other all day.

Richard: I am not flirting.

Miranda: Well, why do I feel like I need a shower?

Richard: Are you suggest-- Look, I am a married man with a wife in a nursing home.

Miranda: I know that.

Richard: I am not... Oh, god. I love my wife, Bailey.

Miranda: Oh, Dr. Webber, I know you love your wife. You're killin' yourself because you love your wife. Not gettin' any sleep, you're trying so hard to make sure she knows she's loved. You can give yourself a break. Okay? Everybody in this hospital flirts with everybody else. It's fine. You're a good man. I know it. We all know. But I don't know if Dr. Winky Pants knows it. What? I'm just sayin' there's flirting for fun and then there's flirting for profit. I know which one you're doing.

Owen: I love you so much that it hurts.

Cristina: Okay. Well, okay, then. Then we can work on this. We can talk. You know, we have to talk, because I cannot be like this anymore. And I mean it when I say that I'm going crazy, 'cause that nurse Emily? I mean, I accused her of sleeping with you.

Owen: You what?

Cristina: I'm sorry. I just... I mean, I feel like... My whole body feels like... Like you were cheating on me. And then you come home and you tell me that you love me, and I'm relieved. I mean, I'm so relieved because...

Owen: Stop. Stop. I said I love you so much that it hurts.

Cristina: Okay.

Owen: I said it hurts to love you.

Cristina: Just say it.

Owen: I'm not cheating on you with Emily.

Cristina: Okay.

Owen: But I did cheat on you.

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One Step Too Far Cristina works together with the nurse she thinks Owen is cheating on her with. Episode Information Airdate March 15, 2012 Written by William Harper Directed by Ed Ornelas One Step Too Far is the seventeenth episode of the eighth season and the 165th overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.