Surprising News
This morning, UNH Today, a daily e-publication of the University of New Hampshire, reports that 1/2 of the population of the United States is now Hispanic. The reason is that the number of births in that segment outstrips deaths. Even without more immigration statistics, the count is increasing from within this designated group.
Someone pointed out that this may be why we have to push a button on the phone for “English,” when calling large companies.
There are areas, even some in New Hampshire, where you can go if you want to hear Spanish. For example, just go to the Food Court in the Nashua Mall. At many of the fast food establishments of the southern tier of New England, (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island) that is the case. Portuguese is a language also heard in food establishments.
Certainly, the NH state prison has seen its share of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. The INS shows up, every now and then, to effect deportation.
Probably due to distance, we do not see many Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, or people who hail from Spain, in New Hampshire. There are hundreds of languages spoken in Concord, New Hampshire, and many of those are spoken by African immigrants whom the Lutheran Church and other groups have sponsored. Off the top of my head, I believe the last reported number of languages spoken in our capital city was 263.
The one point I want to make is the same one that is mentioned in the UNH article. It is not correct to assume that everyone who speaks Spanish is the same (that is racial stereotyping), nor do they even speak exactly the same. Anyone who speaks Spanish can understand another Spanish speaker, just as speakers of American English can understand the British though there are many variances.
In Spanish, individual words may differ. For example, the word for “car” in Spain is “coche”; but in Mexico, it is “carro.” In English, the word for restroom may have other equivalents that mean essentially the same time, the more euphemistic being “powder room.” In England, the area might be called the “loo.” My point is that the same basic language can be different, even though English is English and Spanish is Spanish.
The other difference in Spanish is the manner in which words are pronounced. One example is the dropping of the final “s” in words spoken in Puerto Rico. Another example is the insertion of a “th” sound in certain words spoken in Spain. “Cinco,” the word for “five,” become “Thinco,” as spoken in Spain.
So, not only the words but how they are pronounced are often different and vary between Spanish speaking countries. We are also in the habit of lumping speakers of Spanish under the umbrella term of “Hispanic,” a term that indicates that a person is from Spain. That is correct, according to the Oxford American Dictionary. However, a more specific term for people who originated in this hemisphere is “Latino,” a term that is preferred, according to a professor I once consulted about this matter. However, he does point out that the distinction is not critical. “Hispanic” and “Latino” are words always interchanged in the media.
In this present election process, it seems that the emphasis on Latinos and their purported draining of our resources for health care; and our need to have a wall between Mexico and the U.S., have not been given much play time. On strictly a personal level for immigrants, the situation seems tragic: to have to live in fear of being “found out;” to have children that cannot look forward to much in the future because their education is limited; and to have teenagers who cannot get a driver’s license at the same time their school mates do, is sad.
The whole issue of wanted/yet unwanted immigrants has been overpowering, at times, and has caused much division among people. As we try to make a better life for all, we leave a lot out of this discussion of how we can do right by ourselves and by others. All I know is that we are in this boat called “LIFE,” together, and unless and until we start acting as though we all belong to a collective body called “humanity,” the ship will start sinking fast.
Patricia Cummings
