Posts Tagged ‘language abuse’

This morning I am outside extirpating another section of the lawn, and my brain decides to practice explaining this to Salvador, who probably doesn’t care, but would understand it better if I used Spanish.  Since my opportunities to use the language of my forebears is somewhat limited, my Spanish is perpetually rusty, and it’s not nearly as cute to have around as all the rusted metal that people strew across their yards and porches as Folk Art [if you like that sort of thing].

Thus, my brain flails around the French and scientific words for “butterfly” as a monarch goes by, and pieces together “Mi esposa se encanta las flores”, after some debate about the gender of flowers.  I may have gotten it wrong anyway, but fortunately the flowers are immune to my vocabulary. [And aren’t most of them hermaphrodites anyway?]

Then I realize that there’s screaming going on down the block — the same woman who had decried the presence of workmen at my house has gone up against the construction crew at the end of the block.  They’re actually building a two story headquarters of some sort, and have been working most of the year on that project.  It’s dusty, messy, loud, and seemingly in that woman’s side yard. She is beyond angry about the infringement of her personal space.

My brain crunches on this, as if it’s been handed a brand new page of fill-in-the-blanks material in the Spanish II class:  “La mujer loca grita otra vez.”  Lovely.  My grandmother, rest her soul, would be sooo proud….


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