Bassackwards by Jay Nordlinger

Bassackwards: Construction Spanish and Other Signs of the Times by Jay Nordlinger
America, of course, has always been a place of many languages, along with our common tongue, English.
German, its cousin Yiddish, Chinese, Italian, Polish–they have all been spoken here, especially in homes
and community centers. But Spanish in today’s America is something else: a language coddled, bowed
to, enshrined. We could talk about “bilingual education,” which too often turns out to be monolingual
education, and in the wrong tongue. We could talk about Spanish-language election ballots. We could
talk about “For English, press 1. Para espanol, oprima el dos.” But let’s talk, instead, about Construction
Spanish. Classes in–shall we call it “Con. Span.”?–have sprouted up all over America. These are classes
designed to teach contractors, supervisors, and other bosses in the construction business how to speak
to their Hispanic workers. The bosses aren’t learning Spanish, exactly; they will not be reading Don
Quixote. This is a specialized language: casco for hard hat; montacarga for forklift; pistola de clavos for
nail gun. But wouldn’t it be better, for all concerned, if the workers learned “hard hat,” “forklift,” and
“nail gun”? We must put off such foolish questions, for the moment. Construction Spanish is an example
of what has been called “Survival Spanish,” or “Command Spanish”–bits of Spanish acquired for a
specific purpose. You can get trained in Restaurant Spanish, Fireman Spanish, or Health Care Spanish.
And this last Spanish has sub-branches, such as Dental Spanish and Physical Therapy Spanish. Also, you
can buy books and tapes that tell you how to converse with your gardener or maid, if that is your need.
But Construction Spanish has loomed especially large lately, for an obvious reason: the predominance of
Hispanics in that field. Go into a Lowe’s or Home Depot–stores that sell building materials–and you will
see signs in Spanish (quite naturally). And you can buy any number of glossaries or handbooks. My
favorite is Spanish on the Job, for its ad copy: No previous knowledge of Spanish is necessary. All words
are phonetically spelled out to assure correct pronunciation. Trust me, yelling in English isn’t going to
help. Let me yell, just a little bit. The old deal was, you came to America and you assimilated into the
culture. You presumably wanted to, otherwise you wouldn’t have immigrated. You retained your mother
tongue, of course, and you figured your children would know it, and you hoped your grandchildren
would be interested (although that was no guarantee). But you were in America, and America included
English. Hooray! And what of now? Forgetting an immigrant mindset, what is the general American
mindset? An article published in the Washington Post a few years ago shed some light. It concerned a
Northern Virginia county, Fairfax, which had trained 450 of its employees in Spanish. A Fairfax official
explained, “As we saw the changing demographics of the county, we said, ‘How are we responding to
the needs of new residents of the county?'” Not by encouraging their assimilation, that’s for sure.
Hispanic immigrants had joined the sanitation department, so an assistant superintendent there took
Spanish for Garbage Workers. (Really.) He said, “In our type of business, it’s something we’re gonna
have to learn.” It was not too long ago that immigrants thought English was something they had to
learn. They did not expect their employers or supervisors to take Survival Polish or Survival Serbian; they
saw to it that they acquired some Survival English. The Post’s reporter found one person, a middle-aged
“supervisor on building projects in downtown Washington,” who was not too happy about the new
order. He acknowledged to the reporter that he wished his workers would simply learn English. But they
were not–so he enrolled in Construction Spanish. “I’m not saying I like what’s happening,” he said. “But I
figure I can’t fight it.” Which is a near-perfect expression of cultural defeatism.