Yes, I mean Chi Chi’s as in the restaurant and not chichis in Spanish as in … Well, you know what I’m referring to. That’s right, female breasts. In English, they would be boobs, boobies, etc. So, I always wondered why the Puerto Rican golfer liked to be called Chichi Rodriguez–of course, I had a few unsavory ideas of my own.
As a Mexican, I have to ask: Why would anyone name a restaurant Chi Chi’s if they don’t specialize in dairy products? So, one day, I’m driving down LaGrange Road in Orland Park with my three sons and I notice that I’m rapidly approaching Chi Chi’s restaurant and I instinctively start thinking about chichis (in Spanish) and some of my female grade school classmates who had big chichis. The girls who envied them called the girls with the big chichis, chichonas. Suddenly, I remember that I’m driving in my minivan with my sons and we’re rapidly approaching Chi Chi’s. Since I’ve driven this way many times before, I know the restaurants in the area fairly well. I dread what is soon appearing. As soon as we’re in front of Chi Chi’s, we will be right across from Hooters! I feel so guilty about exposing my sons to this. I tell my sons not to look out the window. I’m embarrassed because I have my sons with me, and I’ve been having impure thoughts about chichis. What kind of father am I? I have brought my sons to this place where we have Chi Chi’s to the left of us and Hooters to the right! Of course, they’re too young to appreciate this cosmic moment.
I just drove through the McDonald’s in Pilsen and was I ever surprised! You can now buy jalapeño peppers for 25 cents each at McDonald’s! Where were those jalapeños when I was little. Whenever we ordered at McDonald’s or Burger King, my father would invariably ask for salsa or jalapeños, depending on his mood. Of course, they would always tell him that they didn’t have salsa or jalapeños. And my father, being my one and only father, would say, “That’s okay! I brought my own!”
So, you’re studying Spanish in high school or college. Is Spanish class easy or hard for you? Do you wonder what you can use all that Spanish that you learned? Or are you afraid that you will forget all your Spanish after the last exam? Well, my friend Mike (he doesn’t actually know I exist, but I like to attach myself to successful people) used his one semester of Spanish very successfully. The One semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song on YouTube.com has more than one-million hits. It’s very popular. I found it by accident on YouTube.com one day while procrastinating instead of grading compositions. I must have listened to it about twenty times before I actually got back to grading compositions. Then, I sent the link to the video to all of my Spanish students. They loved it. And just for grins and giggles, I also sent it the UIC Department of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. I wasn’t sure how all these professors at a research university would react to such a silly video as this. Was I ever surprised! One Spanish professor even suggested making it our department theme song. That is, until a French professor then sent a link for a similar song in French, which she suggested become the official department theme song. Not to be outdone, an Italian professor sent a link for a very lame video by what appeared to be some extremely inebriated Italian 101 students sputtering Italian infinitives. No word from the Portuguese section yet since we don’t have a Portuguese professor. Well, here’s the link to YouTube.com in case you’re interested in watching “The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song”:
Here are the lyrics to “Spanish Love Song.” Granted they’re not profound and they don’t provide any new insights to the meaning of life, but they are fun to hear. I love all the non sequiturs. You can actually learn some Spanish listening to Spanish Love Song. Who ever said learning Spanish wasn’t fun?
Spanish Love Song
Hola, señorita. ¿Cómo te llamas? Me llamo Mike. Me llamo Mike. ¿Dónde está el baño? ¡Feliz cumpleaños! ¿Qué hora es? ¿Qué hora es? La ra ra ra ra Me gusta la biblioteca. Vivo en la casa roja. Yo tengo dos bicicletas. Muchas gracias y de nada. ¿Cuántos años tienes? Un momento, por favor. It’s “The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song.” Mi mamá es bonita. Mi gato es muy blanco. Perdóneme. ¡Perdóneme! La ra ra ra ra Uno, dos, tres y cuatro. Cinco, seis, siete, ocho. ¡Nueve, diez! No remembro how to say eleven. Antonio Banderas, Nachos grandes y Cinnamon Twists. It’s “The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song.” Au revoir.
I hope you enjoy this video. So, you see? Spanish is a very fun language. Please share it with everyone who teaches or studies Spanish!
I love the movie Napoleon Dynamite with Jon Heder so much that I’ve seen it at least twenty times. I saw it for the first time because my oldest son wanted me to rent it from Blockbuster. I thought I would end up seeing it all by myself as when I’ve rented other movies for him that he really, really wanted to see, like the Lords of Dogtown–and I ended up watching it alone, which I really loved by the way!
Anyway, I knew I had to own Napoleon Dynamite on DVD! When it first came out on DVD, it was only available at a clothing store called Hot Topic. Once I bought it, my twins started watching it repeatedly because they loved the movie, too. Well, I couldn’t walk by the TV without stopping to watch Napoleon and his misadventures. So, I watched it repeatedly along with my sons. Once we watched the movie all the way to the end and I told my sons not to start it over until I had read the credits; I don’t why, but I like to read the credits to see who the key grip is. (This goes back to the days of my youth when my friends Jim, Vito, and I would go to show and sit through all the credits so we could applaud for the key grip.) So, after the credits were completely over–yes, I read them all–there was another scene in which Kip marries LaFawnduh! My sons and I were pleasantly surprised!
Of course, this made me wonder what other surprises were in store for us on the rest of the DVD. Surprise, surprise! Not only does the DVD have subtitles in Spanish and French, but the movie is also dubbed in Spanish! I started watching it with Napoleon speaking Spanish, but my non-Spanish-speaking-Mexican sons wouldn’t watch it in Spanish!
Anyway, sometimes the topic of the movie Napoleon Dynamite comes up in Spanish class because the new student Pedro at Napoleon’s high school is Mexican. I often tell my students that they should watch the movie in Spanish someday. I was planning to watch it all the way through in Spanish one day. Since I’m always open to suggestions in Spanish class, last week, a student recommended that we Napoleon Dynamite in Spanish. I agreed if we didn’t use the subtitles. They resisted, but I insisted. Then, we reached a compromise: We would watch the movie dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Since the students were fourth semester Spanish students and most had already seen the movie, I knew they would understand the action and plot development of the movie. I was amazed at how much the students laughed!
Napoleon Dynamite is much funnier in Spanish, especially when Napoleon says, “¡Idiota!” I was wondering how they would translate words like “liger,” which is half-lion, half-tiger. Well, Napoleon says that he’s drawing his favorite animal, “el legre,” which is “medio león, medio tigre.” However, lost in the translation is, “But my lips hurt really bad!”, which is translated as, “Pero mis labios están resecos” and Pedro’s “Maybe I’ll build her a cake or something.” The Spanish used is standard Spanish and doesn’t really capture the slangy colloquialisms of high school teenagers.
Also, the subtitles don’t always match the Spanish dubbing. In the beginning Napoleon says, “¡Rayos!”, but in the subtitles, we read, “¡Cielos!” Obviously, there were two translators at work. Overall, the Spanish captures the feel of the original movie. I would recommend for all Spanish teacher to watch this movie with their high school or college students in Spanish. It was definitely a very entertaining way to reinforce some of the Spanish lessons learned in class.
I was curious as to who was actually reading my Blog. So, I did some snooping around, I mean some investigating. For some unknown reason, I keep getting hits from Russia. I can’t quite figure it out. My most viewed Blog entry is the one about Enrico Mordini, my Spanish teacher at Divine Heart Seminary. I guess I should go back and actually finish writing it and editing it since so many people are reading it. Now I feel embarrassed that I didn’t fix it up sooner. Another thing that really surprised me was the fact that people in Spanish-speaking countries are also finding my blog. I was wondering how they would read it since I mostly write in English. I went to the referring page and found that an automated translator could actually translate my blog into Spanish with a link on the search engine page. Wow! I mean, ¡Ay, ay, ay! The webpage is automatically translated into Spanish, but in very poorly-written Spanish at that. Upon reading the translation, I realized that people in Spanish-speaking countries will think that I don’t know Spanish!
Let me give you a sample of some of these translations. Well, it actually starts out quite well. The title at the top of my blog is David Diego Rodriguez, Ph.D. without an accent mark on the “i” of Rodriguez because otherwise all these strange characters appear and distort my last name thanks to the mysteries of computers and the Internet. However, the translator actually put the accent mark where it belongs! The rest of the translations are rather sad. For example, under my name I write, “¡Hola! ¡Yo hablo español e inglés!” For some strange reason that phrase is translated as, “¡Yo hablo español electrónico español!”, which somehow fails to convey my original message. I suppose if someone really wants to read my blog, they will gladly plod their way through this computer-generated translation.
When my Spanish students write compositions, I ask them to do the best they can. I ask them to write the composition in Spanish right from the start. I know that the student will make plenty of mistakes, but that’s part of the learning process. Sometimes the original text is upstaged by all my corrections in red ink. That’s fine by me if they make a valiant effort to write in Spanish. However, I do not want a student to write the composition in English and then translate it into Spanish. That’s double the work! And of course, I can always tell when they write it in English and then use an internet or computer translator. Well, the output hardly resembles proper Spanish. In fact, in many cases, I cannot even decode what the student wanted to say in the first place. All the words are in Spanish, but the composition is incomprehensible! I always ask the student to rewrite such a composition, “but in Spanish this time.” About the only word that doesn’t lose anything in translation is the English word “no” that also happens to translate to “no” in Spanish. Even an automated translator gets this translation right!
Chicago USA 