Ask a Mexican

Oil for Mexicans.

by Gustavo Arellano

Dear Readers: My recent column regarding the dissimilarities between Scots and Mexicans provoked a surprising amount of angry responses—by real Scotsmen furious that letter writer Great Scot could be so pendejo. Here’s the best reader carta:

Having just read Great Scot’s question and your response, I can’t help but think he’s one of those Americans who calls himself Scottish because his surname starts with Mc or Mac or his great-great-granny once drank a whiskey. These are the type of people who are so insecure about being American they have to latch onto any European heritage to feel like they have some history.

As I was born and raised in Scotland till the ripe old age of 21, I can tell you this: No Scottish person who identifies with Celtic history would ever boast about the 1707 Act of Union. So, Great Scot has given himself away as being not a Scottish person at all but rather an American who so desperately wishes he were Scottish.

Nothing annoys me more than people who, when they find out I’m Scottish, go on to tell me how they’re Scottish too, with their American accents. I even had one dumb-as-dirt female respond with a flick of her ginger locks and, “Oh, I’m Scottish too, can’t you tell?” No, because hair color isn’t really the best indicator of national origin.

Nice try, Great Scot. Maybe you should try passing yourself off as another type of foreigner in the U.S.because as far as acting and sounding Scottish, you’re just about as bad as Sir Sean himself.

P.S. America would be shit without Mexicans!

Dear Thrifty Gabacho: I didn’t realize you Scots were as jingoistic, macho and rambling as us Mexicans—gracias for the clarification and love!

Dear Mexican: Why shouldn’t the United States demand 100 barrels of oil from Mexico for each illegal Mexican as a compensation for the cost of their impact on our sovereign country?

Dear CHEVRON: Because if Mexico did the same—demanded 100 barrels for every time el Norte meddled in Mexican affairs—your Toyota would run on peat moss.

I accidentally broke out some Spanglish at an inappropriate time the other day and it elicited strange looks from my gabacho co-workers. It got me thinking: Do other immigrant populations mix languages the way Mexicans do? Do Koreans always find themselves accidentally slipping into the native tongue of their parents? How about when Italians were the new wave of immigrants—did their kids grow up speaking their own form of hybrid English? And what about immigrant populations in the rest of the world?

Dear Wab: Yes, ne, sì, sí. Don’t believe the custodians of Cervantes: Spanglish is a beautiful cosa, as is every other pidgin tongue. Such mongrelization is inevitable, and proof that a language is alive and a culture can not only adapt to new environs but thrive and even enrich the host nation. I don’t know about language patterns among immigration populations save for those who invaded America, and their impact on American English is what makes it so vibrant—on that subject, I defer to H.L. Mencken’s pioneering The American Language or the recent How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads. Buy those gems after buying my recently released paperback—what, ustedes thought I’d go a week without a shameless plug?