Dear Readers: The paperback version of my book is out in stores now, cheap enough so that even a Guatemalan can afford it. Buy, por favor! Now, on to the preguntas. ..
Dear Mexican,
Lately, I've been hearing how punks and metalheads in Mexico are trying to beat up emos because it's been said emos make Mexican culture look bad. As a metalhead, I support this because I don't see the point in being emo since they are very sensitive and guys dress like girls, but I still believe everyone has the right to be whatever they decide to be, no matter how bad it seems to people. What's your perspective on this issue—do you think it's a good thing or it is a bad thing? And do you agree that the emo trend is a poison to the Mexican culture?Mosh 'Til You Die
Dear Wab,
The emo riots that have spread across Mexico for the past month have been a source of joy and frustration for the Mexican. On one mano—as I told Wired reporter Alexis Madrigal for his fine story on the madness—I'm loving the clusterfuck that feuding Mexican emos, metaleros, punketos, and other modern types present to the gabacho mind, which still largely thinks Mexico is one giant, continent-spanning sombrero. I personally don't like emo, but not because I think it's somehow not "Mexican"—last I checked, the punk and metal movements that spawned the movimiento anti-emo didn't originate south of the border either. And those pendejos going after wabs in Dashboard Confessional T-shirts embody the worst tendencies of the Mexican character: intolerant of anything it doesn't consider "Mexican," preferring to bully weaklings instead of facing the big niños, and hopelessly outdated. Oigan, anti-emo folks: Hating emos is so 1998. Porque no you guys go after a true Mexican plague—like, say, your immigrant-producing economy?
Why is it that Mexicans have the impulse to preface any English word that begins with the letter S with the letter E? Estupid, espeaker, esit and esleep, espeak eslowly—what's the deal?Johnny Chingas
Dear Wab,
Linguistics at trabajo, amigo: it's a form of prothesis, the placing of a vowel at the front of a word. In the case de eSpanish, plopping an E before any English word estarting with an S is a legacy of the language's long-ago esplit with Latin, which esaw medieval eSpaniards adding a prothetic E to Latin loan words that began with an S-led consonant cluster: schola (school) turned to escuela, for instance, or stella (star) to estrella. When Mexicans espeak English, they naturally apply their native tongue's linguistic rule to the esecond language. Gabachos can laugh all they want at the quirk, but let he who casts the first estone try to pronounce "¿Hablas japonés en México con tu xoloitzcuintli lleno, gitano zorrero?" correctly without sounding like a pendejo.
Reader Comments
"...cheap enough so that even a Guatemalan can afford it..."
As a Guatemalan I expect one of your usual smart explanations about this comment. Am I asking "mucho"?
Sincerely,
Confused Chapín.