Soy de Duval

Kamikaze0617, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons The Spanish language contributes and embraces words from all over the world. Many words part of our everyday Spanish originated with Native Americans. One must not confuse the phrase Native Americans solely with those from the United States. It is not uncommon to make that assumption, although Natives populated the entire Western Hemisphere or what is known as the Americas (North, Central, and South). Most of the native words that Spaniards confiscated (or borrowed if confiscated sounds too harsh) from the Native Americans came from those tribes that inhabited the Valley of Mexico. Perhaps the most prolific contributions came from the Nahuatl people. Here are some of the most commonly used Spanish words from the Native American language. aguacate atole barbacoa cacique cacahuate camote chicle chile chocolate cigarro coyote cuate elote guacamole guajolote hule huracán jacal macana ma...

Moors and donkeys fighting a bull. ( Francisco de Goya , printmaker) As we move along discovering our Tejano identity it is good to go back to the beginning. Tejanos’ linguistic identity is anchored in Spanish. But, of course, like any other language, Spanish has been influenced by other linguistic forms. The original Spanish, called Vulgar Latin, was a take-off from Classical Latin. With time it acquired its own identity as Castilian Spanish. In the eighth century, the Moors invaded and occupied the Spanish peninsula and ruled over parts of Spain for almost 800 years. It is not surprising that the Moors contributed many Arabic words to the Spanish language during that time, “along with cultural influences still evident in the design, art, and architecture of Spain.”  1   Next to Latin, the most influential contributor to the Spanish vocabulary in Arabic, with some 8,000-20,000 words in the Spanish language. Here are some common words that have Arabic origin.   ...

  Andres Tijerina (My good friend and fellow historian Andres Tijerina wrote to me regarding our ongoing discussion on Tejano words and language. I believe his thoughts are valuable and asked him if I could share them with you. Here they are, enjoy!)

  Flag of Spanish Languages Last week's blog spawned a lively conversation which prompted a second blog on the subject. Some, like Alan Lopez-Cadena, suggested espauda may come from the Ladino language spoken by Spanish Sephardic Jews that settled in the Monterey region of Mexico. Many of us hail from that area.  Indeed, my Ancestry DNA indicates that I am 10 percent Jewish. However, my Jewish ancestors were  European Jews, from the region p rimarily located in Belarus, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine.  Ladino, however, is at its core Old Spanish influenced by many languages, including   Hebrew ,  Aramaic , and  Arabic. In last week's column I indicated that Richard Santos believed that people in South Texas have a heavy influence of Old Spanish. As it turns, this is true of most of the American southwest, such as New Mexico.  Charmine Ortega Getz took me back to my conversation with Richard Santos. Getz poin...

Is there a Tejano language? Many years ago, the distinguished San Antonio historian Richard Santos asked me if I knew the Spanish word for baking powder. Before revealing my answer and our remaining conversation, let me sidetrack a bit.   I recently researched elements that make up the Tejano identity, and I ran across an article in San Antonio’s La Prensa of October 31, 1917, that treated a similar query. The question was whether “londrera” was a word. The newspaper responded that it was not a palabra castellana nor a palabra inglés nor tejana . La Prensa said that it was not a Tejano word because a Tejano language did not exist.   There was no Tejano language, the newspaper said, because there was no scientific authority to approve it, nor was there a civil authority to recognize its use. The Tejano spoken was partly Spanish, partly English, and adulterated and Spanishized English words. For example, “londrera” was a Tejano idiom for launderer or washerwoman. The correct...