The issue of language keeps coming up in the polemics about Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S.A. and the integration of Mexico into the North American Union. Though many times the opinions expressed in these debates are thinly veiled hostilities towards the Spanish language and Hispanic culture, there is actually a valid argument with regards to the relationship between language and cultural identity, much as Abdelkebir Khatibi suggests in his novel Love in Two Languages.

 

Like Khatibi, I am “bilingual” in the purest sense of the word since both Spanish and English function as though they were my first language. However, the term “bilingual,” as Mr. Khatibi posits, is an inaccurate description of one’s lingual dexterity. To possess two languages intimately is to live in parallel worlds of consciousness. More than a construct of classifications which corresponds directly to the empirical universe, language is also a system of untranslatable subtexts.  

 

Nothing drove the point home harder than when I was watching the news on a Spanish-language station during Thanksgiving. The newscaster kept referring to Thanksgiving as “el día de admisión de gracia.” Though technically correct, the translation rendered a two-dimensional portrayal of the holiday’s significance. The word “thanksgiving” echoes an older form of English and its use of the kenning. That the verb “to give” is in the participle form signifies that the English colonists were in a continuous state of gratefulness for the miracle of life in the strange and violent wilderness of America. The proof of this sentiment is found in the chronicles of the English settlers, and in reading those words one senses that they experienced the presence of Divinity itself. Thus, because those feelings were expressed in the sensibility of the English language, “Thanksgiving” cannot be properly translated but merely transliterated as admisión de gracia.

 

 

The same logic applies to the Spanish language and its highly textured connotations. A “translation” of the Mexican national anthem or the Pipila narrative will ultimately strike the English listener---especially those disinclined to Hispanicism in general and the Mexican culture in particular—as grossly nationalistic, melodramatic, and sentimental. But in those cadences and rhyme schemes is an authentic, passionate human aspiration for liberty. Likewise, Spanish poetry and musical lyrics may seem silly in translation but to live those words in Spanish opens up the possibility for the discovery one’s most secret self through romantic, erotic love. 

 

 

For intransigently monolingual Americans in particular to understand the essence of language and being, I would suggest they read The Pearl, the 14^th century religious poem written by the Gawain poet in a non-London dialect of English. The poem in a modern English translation entirely misses the poet’s thesis and the era’s sensibility. Even the best translation renders a dull and simplistic expression of faith, as if the poem were the creation of an impoverished imagination. However, reading the poem out loud in the 13^th century dialect, one not only discovers a different meaning but a different way of feeling life, with the very rhyme schemes and intonation evoking a meaning beyond the literal words. The poem awakens a primal sense of the magical that is completely lacking in modern English. It is as though the transformation of the English-speaking cultures into industrialized, hi-tech societies has created what T.S. Eliot once described as a “dissociation of sensibility.”  

 

While contemporary English possesses a beauty of clarity and preciseness, it lacks the element of wunder of Old and Middle English. On the other hand, Spanish retains much more of its original Latin sensibility perhaps because of the confluence of history, conquest, and collective stubbornness. When we recall that Spain was under Muslim influence until the reconquista was completed in 1492, it is not difficult to imagine the culture’s isolation from the rest of Europe, and more importantly its own sense of self-triumph and self-assuredness.

 

As the post-modern world moves towards an inevitable integration, the question remains as to whether the fear of losing one’s language is justifiable. I believe the answer has already emerged. First of all, it’s the English language, not Spanish, that has become the de facto post-modern lingua franca, so the apprehensions of Americans are groundless. However, the adoption of any one language, no matter how convenient it would be for the exchange of information and facilitation of commerce, at the expense and extinction of others should be resisted. To do so is to extinguish memory and destroy the diversity of sensibility.