La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for February 11, 2010

Joe, I’ll humbly concede that we may both be right. Lalo, I perceive, enjoys playing with his native tongue, and I was making a point of pointing that out.

Admittedly, I AM an insufferable, know-it-all, proscriptivist, and bad Spanish, as I perceive it, gets in my craw. Excuse me for stepping on your toes.

Just for my clarification, you were a college professor or high school teacher? I’m inclined towards the former, as you seem to have dug further into the history of the language than I did.

Big Pink Mom: I think being humble is when you try to avoid adulation for skills or erudition you actually possess. I’m sure there’s a more appropriate word for what’s missing in this case.

Then I don’t want to be “buttered up”.

¡Amuck Pato!

LOL! Haven’t heard those jokes before.

Yes, I’m quite familiar false cognates, and, as a proscriptivist, I feel that Border Spanish is an abomination. Spanish survived 1000 years without experiencing any major evolution, and now American English has started to infect it.

I learned academically correct Spanish and have been told more than once by a native that I speak Spanish better than they do. Also, when living in foreign language student housing at BYU, I successfully argued the finer points of Spanish grammar with the native facilitators, and corrected the other gringos more often than they did. That is part of the source of my pomposity.

Sadly, I haven’t used my Spanish much in the last five years and, as such, mourn the loss of 2/3 of my original proficiency.