I recently had dinner at a local Salvadorean restaurant with a bunch of UCSC alumni who came to speak at Kresge's Future of Journalism Conference, and when one alumna ordered in Spanish, I turned red. I wanted so badly to speak in Español so flawlessly like she did. Though I took Spanish for two years in high school, I knew when I had to order that whatever fading knowledge of Spanish I had left would not save me. (I can only speak in words, not whole sentences, which disappoints me because I know I could speak Spanish better. I just need to take the time to whip out the Berlitz.)
I had this fear that I'd sound as buffoonish as any goofball white tourist at a Mexican restaurant who would pronounce "tortilla" as if it rhymed with "Attila." And I did sound somewhat like a goofball, though my Spanish accent was pretty decent (I'm proud to say I'm part of that rare breed of Californians who pronounce "San Jose" as "Sahn Ho-say," not "San Ho-zay").
That dinner made me recall unhappier days during high school, when I was taunted by Pilipino classmates for not knowing how to speak any one of the many Pilipino dialects: Tagalog, Pangasinan, Ilocano and so on. At the Salvadorean restaurant, I was that ashamed 15-year-old kid again, feeling like half a person of color because the only language I knew was stupid English, the official language of the evil honky race.
It's tough to be a Pilipino American when you can't speak any of the dialects fluently; at parties, older relatives make cracks about you behind your back when you can't respond to them in a dialect, or you get dissed by young Pinoys proud of how their parents passed the dialects over to them (some of them can be so cruel they'll resort to calling you white, or "puti"). The former happened to my siblings when they were younger, and the latter happened to me, the only American-born member of my family.
I've had it up to here with being able to speak only a few measly words of Spanish, Tagalog or Pangasinan. Also, I'm frustrated with proper English and all its absurdities, complexities and contradictions. I'm tired of getting corrected by some snobbish, elitist punk every time I would slip and say, "He did that pretty good," instead of "He did that pretty well."
So I'm going to give up all those languages forever. I'm creating my own language, and from now on, I'm going to speak and write only in that language. I call my new language "Aquino-ese." I base Aquino-ese on the language of the Tamarians, that alien race in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok." Remember how the Tamarians spoke only in metaphors referring to oral literature from their planet (for instance, when a member of that race would say, "Shaka, when the walls fell," he was acknowledging his doom)? In Aquino-ese, I will speak and write only in pop-cultural metaphors. For example, if somebody would say to me, "Whassup. How are you feeling today," and I feel happy, I'll say, "Shaft, after he gets laid." Or when I'm telling an outrageous lie and I know nobody's buying it, I'll say, "Clinton, when he said he didn't inhale." Or when I feel suicidal, I'll say, "Biggie Smalls, at the end of the last track of Ready to Die."
Well, we've come to the end of my column this week. Stephen J. Cannell, tearing the paper out of his typewriter at the end of his productions. Roy Rogers, singing with Dale Evans at the end of their show.