For: Georgina Palencia.

If there is one thing that linguists and psycholinguists believe in, it’s the power of language. And without any intention of labeling, since I am not a big fan of absolute categorizations, I must say that some linguistic forms of Spanish may have caused us some harm in the acquisition of social habits. In fact, my Spanish students have reinforced this idea in my classes. I would like to give you three examples and I would love to know what you think.

1-Unspecific forms to express time

I don’t know if other languages use unspecific forms to express time as much as Spanish does, but we have at least these and we use them a lot:

• A eso de las 3; which translates to something like “at about 3”.
• Alrededor de las 3; which is equivalent to “around 3”.
• Pasadas las 3; which is something like “after 3”.
• A las 3 y pico; which seems to mean “past 3”.
• Tipo 3; and this one is true, I don’t know how to translate it.

I can assure you that it’s not just once but every time I have to teach these useful phrases in my Spanish class, my students say something like: that’s why Hispanics are so unpunctual. And all I can do is to become an accomplice of that belief with my face of undisguised embarrassment. And yes, I know that we can be very punctual Hispanics, there are many of us, but no one can save us from the stereotype.

Let’s be honest. In a sentence like: “We’ll meet at the cafeteria at about 3, and around 4 we’ll leave for the gym, to come back home after 5 to have dinner at about 6:30, and watch the movie around 8. How can we be punctual if the agreement on time is so imprecise?”

2-The impersonal SE

Years ago, I participated in a very active, creative and successful production team in Venezuela. But at every meeting, I noticed a rather strange practice in the use of language and the pretension of action. It was the use of the impersonal SE pronoun. Sentences like “Se tiene que estudiar el mercado” (the market has to be studied), “Se necesita comprar carteles” (signs need to be bought), “Se debe crear una campaña” (a campaign must be created), “Se puede notificar al alcalde” (the mayor can be notified) were used frequently. And I, who assumed the role of an operational assistant because no one was taking notes of those initiatives, one day realized the linguistic strategy to avoid involvement and not go from saying to doing. And then I asked: Who is this lady Se who has so many tasks to do?

Some people use the impersonal SE pronoun to substitute the real subject of the action and leave it in the air who should do the action. It is an evasive strategy not to name the subject: “I have to study the market,” “You need to buy signs,” “He must create a campaign,” “She can notify the mayor.” So be careful, the impersonal SE pronoun has its specific uses of generalization, but it is also a strategy to make the person who should perform an action invisible.

3-Levels of responsibility expressed by the presence or absence of the accidental pronoun

We have an interesting phenomenon in Spanish that registers different levels of responsibility in an action, and in some way, we use it as a strategy to decrease our participation. When we say “Quemé la comida” (“I burned the food”), we make ourselves absolutely responsible for the action. Subject-Verb-Direct Object.

When we say “Se me quemó la comida” (“The food burned on me”), we diminish the responsibility somewhat, accepting that the food was under our custody and it burned due to a mistake on our part. We include the accidental “se” pronoun and the indirect object pronoun, which shows the responsibility.

When we say “Se quemó la comida” (“The food burned”), without even that residue of the indirect object pronoun, many times what we want is to escape from our responsibility. And this, although it is a grammatical structure, is also one to which we must pay attention in our relationships of coexistence, in order to be increasingly responsible for our actions.

As you can see, at www.spanishperfecto.com we love to reflect on our uses of Spanish and not only teach the correct forms, but also what is beneficial for us as socially responsible beings.