“We got down from the car and went inside.”
Language changes, and if it is used in a way that has any kind of underlying logic that enables communication, then there’s no such thing as “bad” grammar, just more or less popular dialectical choices (though of course at the fringes these can affect how broadly your message can be understood), and signifiers that are more or less prestigious to a given group. Even something as basic as “don’t use double negatives” only makes sense because there are multiple semantic frameworks one could set up around what a double-negative means (e.g. is it a logical negation, a sematic intensifier, or an emotional intensifier?), and it will often, though not always, serve your communication needs better to treat it as a logical negation. Basically, language evolves; communication has a cultural context; don’t be a pedantic dick.
Almost completely shifting gears, and pulling something tangential from the article, a few weeks ago, I ran across some folks online complaining that they were being enthusiastically served chicken when they’d mentioned they don’t eat “meat.” This snippet from the article helped me clarify how it could be a language issue:
In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef”—as in, “I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.”
In Spanish, “carne,” which translates as “meat,” can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying “meat” to refer specifically to “beef”—as in, "I’ll have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.
Reminds me of where I grew up, we used “coke” to mean soda/pop. As in, want a coke? Which kind? Coca Cola, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, etc.
I am assuming you’re from the southern-ish US, and so am I. I’ve always thought that while it’s true enough, there was more nuance to that trope than is given out. At least in my experience, using “Coke” like that wasn’t an all-purpose term, exactly, but more of a social dance where the word does more work than it would elsewhere, but also retains its meaning as a specific product. This would be as opposed to something like Kleenex, where there is still an understanding that there’s a brand with that name, but the sense of its being a generic synonym for tissue is much more important and “semantically compact,” if you will.
Like, I don’t think anyone would offer you a “Coke” if they didn’t think that full-sugar Coca-Cola was one of their available options, and if you ask for a “Coke” you may well be planning to pick something else if they offer, but you’re usually signifying, as a social grace, that you’re willing to accept full-sugar Coca-Cola (and probably Pepsi) as an option if that is all they have or the other choices are not to your liking.
By asking for the regionally dominant product, you’re showing that you know what’s easy and normal, and that you’re a part of the same regional culture and you don’t intend to be difficult. I guess I’ve heard people say “what kind of coke do you/y’all have?” but even that is more just skipping a skip in the same type of interaction.
Or maybe I’ve just thought to much about this, and I’m trying to square a circle when no one asked.
“we got down from the car and went inside” can make sense. Assuming the ‘car’ is a truck… and it’s lifted. or just a new model ford or chevy.
If you grew up with people who’s first language is Spanish, you probably don’t even think about it. I honestly had to read it a bunch of times to understand the issue, and English is my first language.
I agree. After reading the article it seems less surprising than the title reads. Just English words in the order Spanish words typically would be.
I had a friend who was from Louisiana. This was a commonly used phrase there.
In my mind, it made sense immediately but that is, of course, because my mother tongue is spanish xD
I’m from Montreal and the Anglo community has a bunch of these.
“Leave me the mannet before you go to the dep. If there’s a guichet, get that $20 you owe me.”
I wonder if other Spanglish phrases are going to get the “down from the car” treatment, like:
- “Yo tengo calor”: “I have heat”
- “En grupos sociales”: “In groups socials”
In groups socials
Or maybe In groups social. English has got some postpositive adjectives, but -s ending is too ambiguous. (socials = plural of a social, of adj. social, or 3rd person sing. of to social?)
Agreed. I tend to think where English has simplified choices compared to the “partner” language, it will hold on more stubbornly. For instance, English used to have a much wider variety of which words had inflectional endings and how many, but relying on word order was a simpler concept to memorize for a learner and more forgiving when used “sloppily”, so over time it won out, and few loanwords retained any significant number of inflections from their original languages.
We almost never pluralize adjectives, and very rarely gender them, and while not a difficult concept, doing so involves extra effort and choices. Postpositive adjectives, while rare, are not inherently more complex, so I think they could more easily make (further) inroads. All the governmental, legal, and military terms from Norman French may have some new friends in the decades to come, LOL.
