Puerto Ricans in Florida: the swing vote?
Even as their numbers in Puerto Rico vanish
the Ricans are increasingly on the go
especially to areas around Orlando,
so just as Miami became almost Cuban
so just as Miami became almost Cuban
upstate Florida is getting more Borinquen
resulting in a daily scene
becoming rather Caribbean,
and as more often Spanglish mixes with y'all
it soon may not seem North American at all.
Yet, despite all the political invective
what is needed now is a sense of perspective
so, as our country approaches its December
and you think such change may be for the worst,
I can also ask you please to remember:
after all, the Spanish were here first,
and that five centuries before the mobile phone
there lived an explorer called Ponce de Leone.
HzL
7/10/16
Puerto Ricans in Florida: the 'outsiders' with a powerful swing vote
And though many Puerto Rican voters in Florida are focused on the financial crisis on the
The Guardian - 1 day ago
And though many Puerto Rican voters in Florida are focused on the financial crisis on the island, that doesn’t mean that they’re unconcerned with the rhetoric around immigration and “Mexicans”, as epitomized by statements made by people like Donald Trump. Like many Latinos in the US, they know full well that most white Americans who run around insulting “Mexicans” are using it as a substitute for “Latino”.
*Translation of swing in Spanish:
intransitive verbpast tense & past participle swung
*Puerto Rican Spanish
The Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico shares linguistic features with other West Indian islands and the continental Caribbean, but it has its own characteristics.
Undoubtedly, Puerto Rico’s history is a determining factor of the Spanish spoken there today. The influence of the indigenous language spoken in Borinquen (as Puerto Ricans call their nation) on the language brought by the Spanish is still evident. There are many inherited words, such as hamaca, macana, canoa, güiro and maraca. There are also many rivers and towns that have Taino names, such as Bayamón, Humacao, Guayama, Utuado and Vieques. Many of these words are exclusive to Puerto Rico and are not part of the international Spanish lexicon.
Some of the Puerto Rican words that are not in the Royal Academy Dictionary are: mofongo, envejeciente, candungo, guille, enfogonarse, pichear…
Another influencing factor on the language are the African languages that came to America with the slaves in the sixteenth century. Some of the “Africanisms” incorporated into Puerto Rican Spanish are: mondongo (tripe soup), gandúl (loafer), fufú (a spell), and malanga (a tuber).
Of course the biggest influence on the Puerto Rican language and culture comes from Spain. The original colonists that came to Puerto Rico in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, came from Andalucía. For this reason Puerto Rican Spanish has features that characteristic of Andalucian Spanish.
For example, the endings often omit the intervocalic “d” (ado-ido-edo). In both Seville and Puerto Rico people say “hablao” instead of “hablado”, “vendío” instead of “vendido”, and “deo” instead of “dedo”. Also from Seville comes the tendency to aspirate post-vocalic consonants, especially the letter “s”: for example, “lo do” instead of “los dos”. The south of Spain is also responsible for the trait of pronouncing “l” instead of “r”.
In the nineteenth century there was a new wave of colonists who arrived from the Canary Islands, which resulted in another strong contribution to Puerto Rican Spanish. As a result, the Canary Islands and Puerto Rico share a very similar intonation and syntax.
The Spanish-American war in 1898 resulted, for the Spanish, in the loss of their colonies in America and Asia, which were ceded to the United States. Although there was an attempt to impose English on the island (between 1902 and 1948 English was the main language taught in the country’s public schools), Spanish remains the mother tongue of Puerto Ricans. English has become the second official language in Puerto Rico.
Many Puerto Ricans have chosen to live in the United States and the influence of US language and culture in Puerto Rico is undeniable. Today, as many as four million Puerto Ricans live in the US. Recent reports indicate that in 2003, for the first time this number exceeded the number of people in Puerto Rico. The biggest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the United States is in New York.
Among other things, this migration has resulted in a phenomenon called “code-switching”, which is commonly known as “spanglish”. The mixture of languages is neither a separate dialect nor a unique characteristic of Puerto Rican culture. It is simply a convenient method of speaking used by people who are not entirely fluent in either of the languages.
A common “code-switch” in Puerto Rican Spanglish is the use of the word “so”: “Estoy tarde, so me voy”, instead of using the Spanish “porque” in a different configuration (“me voy porque estoy tarde”). Spanglish is also characterized by numerous words borrowed from English. But of course, in some cases, Spanglish becomes simply the misuse of English.
Pronunciation
Puerto Ricans, from various social classes, articulate “rr” with a “j” sound, such as “ajroj” for “arroz”. They also tend to neutralize the “r” and the “l” at the end of a syllable, as in “dolol” instead of “dolor” or “amol” rather than “amor”. The aspiration of the “s” at the end of a syllable, such as “ehcuela” instead of “escuela”, is also a common trait. The pronunciation of the letter “r” is also converted into “l’, for example, “corbata” becomes “colbata” or “cobbata” and “carne” becomes “calne” or “cahne”.
Sentence construction
Puerto Rico shares with much of the Hispanic Caribbean both pronominal redundancy and using the subject pronoun at the start of interrogative sentences. For example, the construction “¿cuántos años TÚ tienes?”, instead of “¿cuántos años tienes TÚ?”.
Puerto Rican identity
To be Puerto Rican is to have “la mancha de plátano” (the plantain stain). In his poem “La mancha de plátano”, the Puerto Rican Luis Lloréns Torres describes the stain as one that “neither soap nor an iron could remove from me“ and that Puerto Ricans “carry the stain ‘por secula seculorum’”, that is to say, forever.
**
The Ponce de León Fountain of Youth Myth
Though stories of a Fountain of Youth can be traced all the way back to 5th century BCE Greece and across diverse cultures for the thousands of years since, the legend of such a fountain became particularly prominent in the 16th century when it was first associated with Juan Ponce de León. Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who lived from 1474 to 1521. Among his many triumphs, he was one of the first settlers of Puerto Rico and became the first recorded Spaniard set eyes on what is now the state of Florida in 1513.
Legend has it that it was on that history-making voyage to Florida that the adventurous Ponce de León was actually searching for the Fountain of Youth. The lands of Florida were thought to be the site of the mythical fountain because of native stories in the Caribbean of a restorative spring located north of the Bahamas.
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