More on Spanish language influences on Tejanos

 

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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 primarily 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 pointed out that her mother's family, which lived in the Big Bend, spoke a dialect called "antiquated Southwestern Spanish." In parts of Mexico, they would call it "pocho," a word that puts down Tejanos who cannot speak proper Spanish. 

Santos believed, however, that Tejanos in the Nueces Strip, between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers, spoke Castellano in its purity, unblemished by the modern world. They spoke it because they lived in very isolated areas where outside influences could not infect their language. Santos gave several examples but the one that still sticks to my aging memory was the word "trujo," which norteños make fun of, preferring the modern word trajo (to bring). Either word is correct according to Santos, but trujo is more authentically Spanish. However, if you try to look for trujo in Google translator it thinks it is an Esperanto word. Esperanto, however, is not a natural language but a constructed one. 

Getz' mother's recollection of this language, I believe is interesting and on the mark. Among other points, she recalls some people believe this style of speaking Spanish is "like listening to Shakespearean English."

Circling back to the beginning of this conversation, looking for espauda online is a challenge! But I decided to take it on. I didn't find it in English to Spanish translators and did not have any better results in the Sephardic-English Lexicon. I couldn't find it because it is neither a Spanish nor English word. And it isn't Ladino. It is what we call Tex-Mex, but probably more appropriately Spanglish since its usage reaches beyond Texas.

When working on my father's book La Voz de Amor (MCM Books 2016) I found that the best place to find rare words is Google Books. So, after failing to get any hits on Google that's where I went and lo and behold, I found it in spades:

"Traime el jarro de espauda (Bring me a can of baking powder)," 

appears in George E. McFadden, "Spanish Spoken in Chilili, New Mexico," University of New Mexico Bulletin," vol 2 no. 3, September 1930, 72-102, p. 89. While this entry is for "jarro" it notes that

 "espauda" is a "word of uncertain origin."

In Platicas del Pasado, Conversations of the past (Tumbleweed Press, 1976 - Las Placitas (N.M.) - 39 pages0) I found the following recipe:

In another book (below) appears: "Espauda, usan en vez de powder levadura en polvo y bisquetes, es mexicanizacion de biscuits."

And in the book below the authors surveyed language usage. Two hundred twenty-three people used the term espauda for baking powder while another thirty-four offered a variation of the word, such as, espaura, espaudra, and espaure. Bills and Vigil explained that "Espauda is an adaptation of yeast powder. "Although that term has now pretty much disappeared from English and been replaced by baking powder, it lives on in New Mexican Spanish."

Some people insisted that the espauda used be from the can marked "KC". KC Baking Powder was primarily sold in the Southwestern United States. 

And such is the legend of the unique word espauda. In the Tejano lexicon it is a STAR, for without it we would not have tortillas de harina. That, my friends, is a completely other story, which someday we may take it up for discussion.