ESL

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April 14, 2011 | 12:54 PM | By

Pik-sa, pisa or pizza?

Pizza (or pik-sa, or pisa) con jalapeños, May 2009

A reader responding to a recent collection of awkward language moments experienced by English learners, or people who were raised by them, has shared a good one: “pik-sa,” better known as pizza.

Edith Padilla wrote:

I cannot seem to shake my habit of saying “pik-sa” instead of “pit-za.” I don’t make that mistake with the word mozzarella but pizza is a whole different story.

I’ve heard that one among Latinos, as well as “pisa,” like in the leaning tower of Pisa or the Spanish verb “pisar,” meaning to step or tread on. I visited my parents last weekend and shared a “pisa” with them for lunch. A Hawaiian pisa with barbecued chicken, which was quite tasty.

Have an ESL moment to share? Feel free to post anecdotes below.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Awkward language moments, English as a second language, ESL, ESL moments, Language
April 8, 2011 | 4:31 PM | By

Five awkward language moments

Photo by Visentico/Sento/Flickr (Creative Commons)

In a post earlier this week, I described what can best be called being haunted by the ESL ghost. I learned English in kindergarten and have no discernible accent, no trace of my native Spanish in my otherwise very American-sounding speech.

But growing up in a family of immigrant English learners, I picked up many of the mispronunciations that are common to those who learn English as a second language, and some of these dog me to this day.

In the post I shared a couple of awkward language moments, like times I’ve mispronounced colander as “co-LAN-der” and my tendency to call a skiing balaclava a “ba-CLA-va,” which sounds a bit like one of my favorite pastries.

Since then, readers have responded by sharing some of their own ESL moments. Here are a few, edited slightly for typos:

Rogelio Gómez Hernández wrote:

Try confusing chicken and kitchen. Or wheel with will (as in testament).

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Health/Education, English as a second language, ESL, Language
April 5, 2011 | 4:15 PM | By

What is your most awkward language moment?

It’s been well documented by now that growing up bilingual can be good for you. But getting there? Survivors of an English-learner upbringing can attest that it’s not always an easy road, and that the bumps along it – some amusing, some awkward – continue well into adulthood.

I began learning English in kindergarten, learning it at the same time my immigrant parents did. Because I was so young, I quickly mastered the American accent, as did my immigrant peers. But one of the pitfalls of growing up in a household where everyone is learning English is that along the way, you pick up many of the mispronunciations common to English learners.

These mispronunciations vary depending on who is learning the language. For Spanish and Tagalog speakers, for example, the double “ee” of “sheep” is often pronounced like the “i” in “ship,” and so forth. I got over the obvious mistakes fairly quickly.

There are other mistakes, however, that I’ve learned about as an adult, when I’ve said something to a friend, a co-worker (or worse, an editor) and am met with a perplexed look. These blunders are more baffling to people because, unlike others who learned English later in life, I have no discernible accent. But as native as my spoken English may sound, the ESL ghost haunts me.

It’s one thing when bilinguals code-switch, the term for jumping from one language to another, sometimes dropping in a first-language word when there is no substitute in English. It’s another thing when you think you’re puffing along merrily in perfect English – and someone smiles and points out that you’ve just pronounced the middle “e” in “vegetable.”

I’m collecting anecdotes from readers of what we’ll call, let’s say, ESL moments.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Bilingual, Bilingualism, ESL, Language
August 10, 2010 | 5:20 PM | By

El code-switching es normal, experts say

guys talking

Photo by polandeze/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A street conversation in August 2007, languages unspecified.

This afternoon I happened to catch a re-tweet of an interesting post that SpanglishBaby, a website dedicated to bilingual parenting, published a couple of months ago on code-switching. For those who don’t call it code-switching, it’s that thing that bilingual types, i.e. people like me, do when we’re having a conversation, say, with our mother or our cousin or a close comadre or compadre in English, then inexplicably switch to our native language, then switch back.

For bilinguals, code-switching is business as usual. For monolinguals who overhear us as we’re jabbering into our cell phones in the produce section at Whole Foods, asking “Should I get the organic fruta bomba?” of the person at the other end, it can be infuriating.

Code-switchers have been accused of being linguistically lazy, among other things. Not so, according to language expert François Grosjean, whose recently published book “Bilingual: Life and Reality” is highlighted in the post.  A quote from one linguist who is cited in the book: “Code-switching is a verbal skill requiring a large degree of linguistic competence in more than one language, rather than a defect arising from insufficient knowledge of one or the other.”

The reasons why people code-switch are explained, among them: to express an idea best captured in one language and not the other, because the code-switched words are the only ones available for a particular term, and yes, sometimes as a way to communicate in an exclusionary manner, which, understandably, annoys those who don’t understand.

In general, the author debunks “the beliefs that bilinguals who code-switch do so out of laziness or because they don’t know either language well enough to stick to just one language. According to the author, code-switching is actually not easy to do,” the post reads.

Thank you, SpanglishBaby. Me siento validated.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Health/Education, Code-switching, English as a second language, ESL, Language