Foreign Languages

It pays to be able to speak more than only English.

Foreign Languages

Three events over the past two days have driven home to me the importance of being able to communicate in more than just English.

First, while on vacation on Friday afternoon I saw a “Dr. Phil” TV-show episode in which a woman used French with her son to bad-mouth the son’s wife, who spoke only English, right in front of the wife!

The couple eventually divorced. I believe that a contributing factor in the divorce was that the mother-in-law could use her and her son’s fluency in French against the English-only-speaking daughter-in-law.

Second, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing on Friday night highlighted a small boy who had rescued a couple of his classmates from the recent Sichuan earthquake.

Given his heroism, the boy was already endearing, I’m sure, to billions of viewers around the world. What made him even more endearing to Americans and others was that he already was speaking some English at the tender age of nine.

Third, my wife met a Spanish-, French- and English-speaking black woman from Colombia yesterday who told my wife that she recently overheard a Hispanic woman tell her son in Spanish to be careful what he says because he can never be sure who is listening and understands what he is saying in Spanish.

The Colombian woman also said that she often overhears Spanish speakers here in Houston talking openly about her in Spanish because they assume that she is African-American and therefore that she probably does not understand anything that they are saying.

As these three anecdotes indicate, it pays — beyond any kind of financial gain — to be able to communicate in more than only English. To learn about more non-financial benefits of speaking another language, please read my discussion about Visual Link Spanish.

“et al”

Abbreviations, Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages

I saw this yesterday in an online news story.

Problem:
A period is missing.

Explanation:
There are three Latin phrases that mean and others:

  • et alii — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-I — which is masculine;
  • et aliae — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-A-E — which is feminine;
  • et alia — spelled E-T followed by A-L-I-A — which is neuter.

The correct abbreviation of any of the three Latin words for “others” requires a period after A-L.

An example of proper use is “the report presented by Jones et al.” (notice the period after A-L).

Solution:
“et al.”

“Lagniappe”

Apostrophes, Foreign Languages, Nouns, Outsider's Perspective, Plurals, Possessives

This post is not about a problem, explanation, and solution.

Instead, it’s about an interesting word whose use is designated as Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas.

I first saw this word when I moved to Houston, Texas. It was on the sign of a popular restaurant and was written with an apostrophe and ‘s’ as “Lagniappe’s”.

I don’t know whether this apostrophe-‘s’ form on the sign was meant to be a possessive or was supposed to be a plural noun but was a blunder by a sign maker who is part of the crowd of sign makers who insert apostrophes where they don’t belong.

Leaving aside the possessive-apostrophe/plural issue and focusing on the singular noun, a “lagniappe” is something that is added to a purchase as a gift by a merchant, to say “Thank you!” for doing business with the merchant.

A commercial, mass-marketing version of a “lagniappe” could be a cosmetics bag given with a purchase of Lancôme perfume. However, the noun “lagniappe” is traditionally reserved for what an individual merchant adds, such as a small bag of fertilizer when the customer buys several flower bulbs.

The noun originally was “yapa” — Quechuan for that which is added.

Spanish speakers in Mexico turned this into “la ñapa”.

I don’t know where the French speakers from Louisiana first heard “la ñapa” and converted it into the French spelling — “lagniappe” — for the same pronunciation.

But I imagine that the greater Houston area could have been that location, given its mingling of people from Mexico and people from New Orleans and other French-speaking parts of southern Louisiana.

So there you have it: an American English word tied to Houston at the intersection of Spanish and French speakers.