Monday, May 01, 2006

"Don't forget to dot your i's, cross your t's and accent your nasal consonants..."

I just stumbled across a great blog on grammar & linguistics and wanted to share this particular gem of an article, as it illustrates something I try to explain to people quite often:

April 25, 2006
Full tilde
Jim Gordon recently complained about how the New York Times crossword puzzle elides diacritical marks from foreignisms even when this results in a different word in the relevant language. The most egregious example, Jim noted, is the use of "year, in Spanish" as a clue for ANO, even though ano differs crucially from año. Below the jump, a real-world example illustrating the perils of de-tildeing año(s), provided by Matthew Baldwin of The Morning News.

My friend Rebecca is a prosecutor and, whenever I see her, I insist she fill me in on her recent cases. Though most involve routine litigation, she occasionally tells a gem of a tale.

The last time I asked, she told me about the Anus Motion.

"This guy gets pulled over on suspicion of a DUI," she said, "And it turns out that he only speaks Spanish. So the cop radios for a Spanish-speaking colleague. A second officer shows up, reads the driver his rights in Spanish off of a little card that all cops carry, and they administer the breathalyzer test. Sure enough, the guy is soused.

"We figure this case is a slam dunk. But a few weeks later the driver's lawyer submits a motion to have the results of the breathalyzer voided, saying that the defendant didn't understand his rights before we gave him the test. And we're all, like, 'Nuh-uh! We read him his rights. In Spanish, even.'

"But the defense somehow got a copy of the Spanish language card that the officer read from, and noticed that the little squiggle was missing from above an 'n' in the sentence: '¿Tiene veinteuno años?' In English that literally translates to 'Do you have 21 years?' — in other words, this was just a routine question to make sure the guy was an adult. But without the tilde over the 'n', the word 'años' becomes 'anos' — Spanish for 'anus.' [sic: it's Spanish for 'anuses.']

"They're claiming that the driver thought the officer asked 'Do you have 21 anuses', despite the fact that the officer reading the card spoke fluent Spanish and would have pronounced it 'años' anyway. And the defendant said 'si.' We're supposed to believe that the guy genuinely thought he was being asked if he had multiple anuses and answered with an enthusiastic 'yes!' [read more]


This further supports my idea of having shock buzzers on students' desks that are wired to the teacher's wristwatch and every time he/she forgets an accent mark, a healthy buzz is administered. Getting a mild shock now is better than getting fired from the state police office later because of a lousy tilde or cedille, isn't it?

3 comments:

Mme.G said...

Sorry! I've been so busy lately and I admit that I couldn't find anything that interested me enough to write about recently.

I'm ok, really I am :-)

BeckEye said...

Well, I believe the driver. Obviously he's not full of shit if he has 21 anuses.

Ba-dum-bum.

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week! :)

A Bear in the Woods said...

HI, funny post. I have to admit that I get very slipshod about my Spanish diacritical marks. I don't have a good spanish keyboard program that will enable them easily. It's just a hassle.

And I love the French, with all their retro ways. Even when they're snotty, it's usually because they're insecure. There's usually a gentle heart underneath. I have the best time with the French.
Oh, this was about wine, wasn't it?
oh well,
Daniel