Proto-spanglish

Curiously, as we drove down from Sweden’s Highlands to Paris back in July of this year, I noticed along the German Autobahn and other less known roads to Liege to Paris, that trailers from Portugal carried a legend in their back of their trucks that said: VEHICULO LONGO.

I loved it, and I would have taken a picture of it except that it is very difficult to do so in the freeway at those speeds, at any rate, I admired the words in those trucks as my imagination flew to prototype spanglish and how Portuguese has certain elements in its language that can be thought of as proto-spanglish, this came to mind today as the morning progressed with is daily chores.

I was sitting in the cafeteria, by building A at Stockholm’s University, waiting for an Argentinian friend to show up for a date we had agreed upon and as she came promptly and fashionably late a friend of hers tagged along. We had a very lively discussion until we came to the topic of spanglish and this friend of my friend said odd things about it, you know, you have to understand that my friends at this level of my studies are usually friends that I’ve made during the course of my studies and usually, they are at the same academic level as I am, but lo and behold! I had to confront the very face of ignorance while sipping my cup of coffee trying to understand this human being.

Well, suffice to say I was placed at a very odd position and left rather uncomfortable about it, it had been a while since I last seen this ugly sorts of prejudice hate to my language rear its head, so I was quite frankly bent out of shape, I thought that those issues were resolved once I learned that the very enemy of spanglish is ignorance, but ignorance seems to be a pretty nasty beast of sorts.

Well, my love for Spanglish and its Portuguese, as I call it, proto roots, got its reconfirmation today because as I was leaving my dorm, heading towards the computers I heard from one of the windows of the dorms, adios meshicano! being uttered by some Portuguese neighbors of mine! I was so ever glad to hear that …

Now, I don’t know about you, but if Meshicano doesn’t do anything for you, than spanglish isn’t your language …

-mesh (implication: mestizo)