MCAH Online

Lunch-time with my mother and Daughter. My mother is playing a game with Daughter: “How do you say dog in Spanish?”

“PEH ROH!” Daughter says (no rolled rs in sight).

“And what is a perrito?” my mother asks.

“A LITTLE dog!” Daughter says.

“And what is a perrote!” my mother asks.

“A BIG dog!”

“That’s right!” my mother says. “A perrote is a big dog, a grande dog!”

Listening with my cheek in a palm, I frown. In my hazy ‘was never formally taught’ memory, the diminutives and augmentives take the gendered endings: perro, perrito. So… “Why is it not perroto?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” my mother says.

“Maybe perroto is a big dog that’s broken,” I say, because the word for broken is roto.

This makes us both laugh. My mother says, “You just made a Spanish—”

“Pun, I know,” I say, deeply pleased with myself.

My mother goes back to playing the “what’s it called” game with my daughter, pointing at her eye. “This is an…”

After some prompting: “Ojo!”

“And a small eye is an… ojito!” my mother continues.

I frown, puzzled. “Do we say ojoto? Ojote?”

“Well, ojaso,” my mother says.

I shake my head and pity the person trying to explain this logically to anyone else. Are the rules written down somewhere? Were the people writing them as confused as I would be trying to explain them? No wonder I grew up interested in languages. They are their own perro roto, a broken dog of puns and special cases, a perfect reflection of the minds of their conflicted and innovative human makers. To study them is to get an insight into who we are.

Also now I want to write a children’s book. Perroto! Tales of the giant dog who needs fixing!

…and now I’ve made an English language pun, haven’t I. -_-