The Post Where I Dust off Old Grammar and Spanish Skills
Pundette has called the Grammar Cops on Judge Sotomayor, who has made the rather amazing claim that there are no adjectives in Spanish.
No, really. That’s what she (Sotomayor, not Pundette) said.
When my first mid-term paper came back to me my first semester, I found out that my Latina background had created difficulties in my writing that I needed to overcome. For example, in Spanish, we do not have adjectives. A noun is described with a preposition, a cotton shirt in Spanish is a shirt of cotton, una camisa de agodon, no agondon camisa.
Sorry, but I’m not buying her tale of A Heroic Latina Triumphing Over the Oppression of the Anglo Linguarchy. Her story makes no sense, for a couple reasons.
First, the Spanish word for “cotton” is “algodón”, with an “L” and an accent over the last vowel (so you know which syllable to emphasize). It would have been helpful if she had gotten that right.
On the Case of the Missing Adjectives, let me say that Pundette is a gracious and kind woman to give the judge such a generous way out of her embarassment. I’m not quite that gractious or kind, though.
It’s been a long time since my freshman year in high school, which is the one and only year in which I took Spanish, but I still remember quite a lot (for that I thank my teacher, Señor Hartman, who was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had). One of the things I remember is that Spanish does indeed have adjectives, a whole lot of them. Here are a couple or three I remember, right off the top of my head.
“Open” as in “the open door” is “abierto” as in “la puerta abierta“.
“Pretty” as in “The Pretty Island” is “bonita” as in “La Isla Bonita” (for all you Madonna fans out there).
“New” as in “New York” is “nueva” as in “Nueva York” (though a Latina from Nueva York is a “Latina neoyorquina“).
Pundette’s escape hatch only involves what happens when you make a noun into an adjective or when you need to use a possessive. Mind you, it’s been a couple decades since I was in an English classroom, but here’s now I recall it. In English, we have, over time, squashed what would normally have been a prepositional phrase that acts like an adjective (shirt that is made of cotton) into a single word that does the same job then moved that word in front of the noun (cotton shirt). In that, at least, the judge is correct. Spanish doesn’t compress an adjectival phrase into its essential noun like we do with English.
However, that doesn’t quite explain why she thinks her native language doesn’t have adjectives, especially since she’s from the island named Puerto Rico (“Rich Port”). What part of speech is “Rico” if not an adjective?
I’m really not sure what Judge Sotomayor was trying to say and I suspect that she doesn’t either. My guess is that she was trying to come up with another story to embellish her backstory and figured that a heartwarming story of how she had to overcome tough odds and engage her Wise Latina Powers to overcome the subtle and tricky roadblocks of the white man’s educational system would help her with the mushy-hearted crowd.
No matter her reason, it was a ridiculous thing for her to say and I’d very much like some cheeky Republican Senator to ask her what her stance is on adjectives in Spanish today.
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Category: The Social Issues
hello!
it sounds like she meant to say that there are no nominal appositives in spanish. you're right, that's different from an adjective!
tell me, do you remember how to say 'petty' from spanish class?
I'd ask the Judge, but I'm not sure if she could tell me.
But, hey, I'm not the one trying to become one of the nine most powerful jurists in the country. I expect just a bit more depth of knowledge than she's shown thus far.
Question: If Sotomayor were a similarly-placed Republican nominee, would your opinion of my post change?
no, it wouldn't
i realize you must update your blog regularly, but stuff like this undermines your more serious posts
an anecdotal record of someone recalling grammar incorrectly? the grammar of her cradle language? c'mon now
You really wouldn't have thought anything amiss if Samuel Alito had claimed that English didn't have any adjectives?
Does it matter to you that Judge Sotomayor graduated from a top prep school and was in an Ivy League university at the time she was pondering what happened to all her adjectives? Or that someone who relies on the ability to communicate clearly in writing is more than a bit dodgy on her grammar?
I'm guessing that it doesn't, but it should. The President has several other very smart judges he could have nominated, but he picked Sotomayor.
Jimmie,
On the Court, she will rule adjectives without prepositions unconstitutional.
How dare you racistly criticize this woman de wise y de Latina?
Jimmie,
You are correct on the adjectives. I took 5 years of Spanish in high school, tested out of two courses in college, then took two more, just for fun. I do remember a little bit.
*whew*
I was waiting for the flood of Spanish grammarians to show up, chiding me on my childish level of knowledge (well, they would have been right, but still…).
if he'd claimed it 13 years ago about a language he grew up with but never studied formally, i think i would let it slide
i'm going to drop this one, jimmie. you're not saying what you mean here; this post is just mean-spirited
Wait…you're telling me that a woman who graduated summa from an Ivy League college in 1976 still didn't know, 20 years later, what an adjective is. Seriously.
Yeah, I am saying what I mean here. Judge Sotomayor doesn't have the smarts I expect of one of the nine highest jurists in the country.
so who would be your pick for justice?
a gentleman's bet: you name the man or woman more qualified than sotomayor, and i bet you i can find a factual error they've made in the last two decades, using nothing more than the internet and my humble liberal-arts education.
I can handle a routine factual error. I can't quite get past one that asserts that one's native language doesn't have a basic part of speech. That goes well past "factual error" into "Whaaaaaa….?"
and i HATE that you've dragged me down to this, but 'abierto' is a participle, not an adjective.
The dictionary claims it is an adjective, Adam.
http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/abierto
participles may act as adjectives, but they are a different part of speech.
that is why 'adjective' is listed second — because it is a functional definition, not a classifying one.
the concept is explained here:
http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/pastpart.htm
i feel my grandfather's pedantry rising up in me
That's fine, but it is doesn't really help the discussion any. In order for a participle to function as an adjective, there have to be adjectives.
As for your other venture into pedantry (affect vs effect), you're just being silly. You seem a smart guy, conflating a simple typo with not knowing an entire part of speech exists are remotely similar.
you made the mistake twice; it wasn't a typo. if i were uncharitable, i'd say it was a gap in your knowledge.
i went on to use context clues to figure out what you meant. likewise, sotomayor's examples clarify her meaning. the most damning thing you can say about her is her knowledge of spanish is colloquial. show me something that challenges her english; that's what she'll be wording legislature in, after all.
your strict requirements for her knowledge of spanish do beg the question, though: how many of the other sitting justices speak foreign languages?
haha, i'll be damned; are we neighbors, jimmie? chevy chase circle here.