Mexicanisms

Part of the reason I teach at the elementary level in Nashville is to break the prejudice toward the language that inevitably comes in high school. Student entering a high school Spanish class have already decided that they hate their teacher and the class. They walk in with a terrible attitude and that is the biggest challenge for the teachers to overcome. In my humble opinion. Teaching at the elementary level, where things can be fun and games, helps prevent that prejudice from ever happening. The students leave elementary school with a good taste in their mouth and a love for the language that can actually overcome even a bad teacher!
The other reason I love teaching at this level is that there isn’t a preconceived notion about Mexicans or other Latinos. The students are typically a blank slate in that category. There’s some cheesy joke about basketball and the punch line (because I can’t remember the joke) is cuatro cinco, making a joke that most Spanish words you just add –o to the end. Sink-o for the basketball humor. I don’t find the joke in bad taste. It’s one that makes me smirk instead of laugh, but I do think it’s relatively funny. My kids wouldn’t get that joke at all. They’re not mature enough in their outside culture to get that Spanish sometimes follow that pattern. Also, Spanish is just a part of their academic lives, so they don’t find it hard, therefore looking for the easy translation of just adding an o. The reason I go into all this is that on our road trip, the English teachers (after explaining a flyer to me that in effect would translate “How do you say red in Spanish? Red-o.” that was promoting a language center) were talking about how their students remove the o from the end of words to make an English word!
For example:
shoe zapato translation- zapat.
ball pelota translation- pelot.
I found it pretty hilarious that the same joke translates, pardon the pun.