Nora Muñiz at the European Review of Books:
Sometimes it feels as if the tacos have been rubbed out of my tongue. For four years, I’ve been speaking a language that doesn’t belong to me, one that exists only through synonyms that are foreign to me. I’ve been living in the US for four years. The problem is not English — though I sometimes mistake a conjugation — but my own native language. My Spanish has not worsened, but it definitely has changed. My mexicanisms appear with lesser and lesser frequency in my daily speech. When I’m teaching Spanish and my undergrad students ask me the word for short, I have to fight my own instinct. I no longer say chaparro but pequeño. No longer cuate but amigo. No longer my Spanish but Spanish 101.
For a while I thought that this neutral Spanish (neutral for whom?) was limited to my classroom. That it was just a pedagogy tool so my undergrads could communicate with any Spanish-speaking person, as if the mark of a good teacher was her disappearance. However, on 3 December 2023 I realized that the erasure had started affecting me. That day, at around 8pm, I texted my mom: « how is this called? ». Attached was the image of the kitchen basin. Fregadero, she answered. I felt as if I was learning Mexican from my mom as I had done when I was a baby.
More here.
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