Episode Transcript
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Xorje Olivares: I’m giving you two seconds to tell me how to say the word grapefruit in Spanish. Alright, guess the one. Now, the correct answer, at least the one I know, is toronja. But the judges here are telling me that we’re also accepting pomelo. So if you said either one of those two, felicidades, te debo unos cancitos. But if you had asked 10-year-old me, I would have yelled out, fruta de uva! Fruta de Uva. You guys, that is not a hypothetical situation. There was a time, I was at a restaurant with my grandmother and I asked her if she wanted some fruta de uva, qué vergüenza. But, hey, at least I know the difference between avergüenzado and embarazado, eh? Por favor, I’m not that pocho. Pendejo a veces, pero pocho, no. Now, I feel like a native Spanish speaker would say differently, because I am not one. Yes, I grew up surrounded by English and Spanish on the border, but I’ve never been able to confidently say that I am incredibly fluent. Can I carry a conversation with my Spanish monolingual relatives? Sure. Am I able to respond to questions from my suegros? I’d like to think so. But deep down, I feel like they’re always thinking, “Pobrecito no sabe.” Because the further I get away from my Spanish, the closer I am, I think, to losing my Latino card, which I’m holding onto for dear life. But the truth is, I am a product of my third-gen, Mexican-American circumstances. So how do I exist between these two languages? I’m Xorge Olivares, y hoy preguntamos, how does language make me who I am? This is Hyphenación, where conversation and cultura meet.
Xorje Olivares: All right, I just shared a very embarrassing story about my inability to know Spanish that well. So I wanna ask each of my guests if they have a similar moment, embarrassing moment, something that they’re like, oh, I never wanna relive again when it comes to either English or Spanish. So first excited to welcome to the program, Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss, who I must bow down to as one of the OG Latino podcasters has paved the way for me and many others in this field. She is the host of the Latinos Out Loud podcast. She is also an adjunct professor at CUNY, which is the City University of New York. Rachel, thank you for joining me for this conversation.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Thank you for having me. Thank you for that really warm introduction. I’m really, really happy to be here. I have so many embarrassing language stories, but this one is still pretty fresh. And it all happened when I was maybe seven years old, which was a really long time ago. My mother’s Dominican. And I remember one time as, you know, mind you, I grew up half Jewish and half Catholic. So like just mixed race and mixed up. So we were at my Tia’s house and she told me in Spanish, She was like. Pide la mano de tu tía. So I took my tía’s hand. And I’m like, okay, what do you want me to do with it now? And she was like, no, no no no, es que cuando tu pide la mano le está preguntando por una bendición. So like pide a mano is asking for a blessing from your tía and I had no idea. I just thought she told me to grab my tia’s hand and you know, you do what your mom tells you to do no matter how weird.
Xorje Olivares: I mean, I would have done the same thing. Even now, I wouldn’t have thought that that’s what she was telling you to do.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Totally, and then after like she told me in english what to do i was like oh bendición tia and then of course she was like dios te bendiga so ever since then i’m like oh that’s how you pide la bendición like the Dominican way got it.
Xorje Olivares: Got it. Okay, okay. See, now I’m putting this in my back pocket so that way if anybody ever asks, I can say that this is what that particularly means. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Also excited to welcome to the program Angelo Colina, who is a stand-up comedian. I’d like to say I was telling the group here, my production team, that my algorithm serves me up drag queens, gay men, and Angelo Colina comedy sets. So that’s how deep in I am in watching Angelo’s comedy. But he is the creator of the Gente Funny comedy showcase, that is a Spanish language comedy showcase that is touring the country right now. Angelo, thank you so much for joining us. And do you have an embarrassing moment that you’d be willing to share with us?
Angelo Colina: First of all, nice to meet you both. Second, I think the reason why I come up in your grade, it might be my high waist pants or just my mustache. It’s both of them, I get in the mix of those mixes you were mentioning. And for me, it was the other way around. So that’s funny because I didn’t grow up here. I’ve only been here for eight years or so, seven years. And so… It wasn’t that way for me. It was mostly, and when I was learning English, we were just learning. So you’re kind of allowed to make mistakes. And so I didn’t have that embarrassing moment. And then when I came here, I already spoke English. And so for me, it was the other way around because I used to be an English and a Spanish teacher. For me, how do I correct this person without making them feel embarrassed about themselves? But the things I heard were actually. The reason why I started doing stand-up like my first show was about those mistakes like we call them in when we do the English lessons we call it false friends which are words that look like familiar to you in a language but then they’re not and so like I had students telling me, teacher, I don’t import, like no me importa.
Angelo Colina: So for me, that was all the time, how do I correct them without making them feel embarrassed? So once a student told me that in Colombia, he said, teacher, I don’t import, I’m like, no, no. You export. And then a couple of students got the joke. And that’s how, that’s I started teaching the differences. So that’s funny, but I would have been your tia is what I’m trying to say.
Xorje Olivares: I love, you know, what’s interesting is that my dad was a Spanish teacher, a high school Spanish teacher for many, many years. And so I feel like for me, even though my dad was a Spanish teacher, I don’t have the best command of Spanish, so I actually want to start the conversation there, Rachel, if we can talk about how you feel like you have a good or maybe not so good command of Spanish, considering how you grew up.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Yeah, well Jorge, we’re more connected than you think, because my father was also a Spanish teacher, okay? That’s how, like, my parents met. My mother didn’t speak English. My father was studying to be a Spanish Teacher that summer on Brighton Beach, and they hooked up. Pero, that will save that for another episode. But I feel like my command of Spanish should be so much better being the daughter of a woman born in the Dominican Republic where Spanish is her native language, and the daughter of a Spanish teacher in New York City public schools for close to 30 years. However, let me give myself some grace, okay? Before I took the dive into comedy, I was working a corporate gig. I was at like every Spanish language magazine. Remember magazines? Like the thing that you turn with your.
Xorje Olivares: mhmm! People en Español!
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Yes! So I worked at People en Español for a really long time. I worked a Latina, I worked in Vanidades, a bunch of different magazines. And my command of Spanish was so much better during those years. Like, I was able to read in Spanish, write in Spanish. And now, I find it so hard to, like, get words that I need. But I speak Spanglish fluently, AF.
Xorje Olivares: I thank you for saying that because I always say that my first language is actually Spanglish because I don’t know when Spanish happened. I don’t know when English happened. It just tada! I knew both languages somehow when I was three or four, whatever age it was. So I’m curious for you, Angelo, one, about your command of let’s say English because you were born in Venezuela, correct?
Angelo Colina: Yeah, I was.
Xorje Olivares: So maybe let’s talk about command of English. And I am curious as we’ve brought up Spanglish, if you have any particular feelings about the usage of Spanglish.
Angelo Colina: Yes, I do. And I was actually, I’m on the other side in the sense, it might be a generational thing because so, I lived in Venezuela for 20 years, then I lived in Colombia for two years, then I came here to the States. What I used to see was that there was some type of shame between, well, coming from the Latinos who grew up in Latin America to the ones who were born in the States and they didn’t speak Spanish fluently. And there was that type of shame in that entire conversation. Uh, everyone would make jokes about it. Like for me coming to shows in Spanish, that would happen a lot. And for me, I feel like when people say, oh, they’re not real Latinos because they were born here, whatever, I’m like. I would completely disagree, because I feel like people learn how to be Latinos when they aren’t here, because you’re aware of other nationalities. And I used to say when I was in Venezuela, cuando yo estaba en Venezuela yo no era Latino, yo era venezolano. Y cuando vivia en Colombia tampoco era Latino, era un malparido Venezolano, but you are still not that. That’s what I’m trying to say. You’re not Latino until you are here in the States and you’re aware of like pupusas. I had never had one. And so now you start connecting. With other nationalities, with other people like, that’s what it is. I don’t think there should be any type of shame of not being fluent because at the same time, the way you speak, it just has like, you just spoke like, Dominican Spanish like a while ago, you know that that’s as pure as it gets. And it’s the same the other way around, where people are, I see that a lot now at the shows, a lot of people bring their partners who are, let’s say they have a white husband and he’s learning Spanish and he says a word in Spanish and everyone’s like, yeah, or they’re laughing. It’s like we’re encouraging people to learn. And I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t happen the other way around. And it should, because when people are not speaking English fluently, it’s like hey, that’s a second language. So I think that’s what it is. I think we should give more credit to ourselves. I think we’re killing it.
Xorje Olivares: I think we’re killin it but I want to talk about the places where we do feel comfortable speaking Spanish, speaking English, speaking Spanglish, whatever iteration of language we want. And Angelo, you were just talking about this Gente Funny Showcase. It is an all Spanish language show. So talk about that, your choice to use Spanish in a professional setting.
Angelo Colina: Umm, I started doing standup comedy in Salt Lake City, Utah, that I would speak in English at the time and I would do the shows in English and I still do comedy, I do standup in English every once in a while, but I just realized it wouldn’t be, the things I find funny won’t translate. And it’s not about situations, because that’s not what it is. It’s not language. It’s culture. And so. I’m way more familiar with like Latino culture and I’m like in love with it with all of the different nationalities and I try to learn a lot. It’s really not funny if I go to, I don’t know, the Upper West Side and I am doing a show in English and I make an impression of the Argentinian accent. It doesn’t really translate because we’re not aware of it. Whereas with the, if I do it in Spanish about the Argentinean or the Dominican or I speak about our differences. It automatically translates because we share a lot more of the references. But I do think in general, the audiences, Latino audiences are way funnier than any other audience. Like the Dominicans listening to you they be like “Que tu dices mi loco” and it’s like, they’re just funnier!
[laughter]
Xorje Olivares: Rachel, you are somebody who has had a microphone and I love that you could see the bedazzled microphone. If you’re watching us on YouTube, there’s a beautifully pink bedazzled, the microphone in front of Rachel. But we are in a beautiful position that we do have microphones in front of us. So how do you make the choice on what language comes out when you do record in front of that pink bedazzled microphone?
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: You know, I think in English and I translate to Spanish, but sometimes the slang is so much easier in Español. ¿Tu me entiendes loco? You know? Like right then and there, like for emphasis, the Dominicanisms work really well for me. You know. Tu estas pasado, You know like things like se me sale de la boca
Angelo Colina: Ya tu sabes
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Ya tu sabes lo que lo es loco, KLK! Yeah, so I tend to like to think in English. And let me tell you, I’m the most under pressure in front of family. You know, I feel like I have to say the right vocabulary word. I’m terrible at conjugating verbs and like tenses in Spanish. It’s so hard.
Xorje Olivares: I hate that, it’s really with my family, like the people who shouldn’t judge you, even though they do judge you and bully you and do all the things like before anybody else does. Like, I didn’t think that I would feel so vulnerable around them speaking Spanish, but that’s exactly who I hate speaking Spanish with because of the like, oh, poor guy. We didn’t teach him right. Oh, this is a failure on us because he doesn’t know the language of his grandmother or grandfather or whatever, antepasado is the one who spoke Spanish the most. I’m curious, Rachel, if you’ve noticed that, especially growing up in New York, there’s so many different Latinos that you can experience in New york. Just seeing how distinct your accent was or how special it was in comparison to other Latinos.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Yeah, I get Brooklyn right away. People somehow know that I’m from freaking Brooklyn. I’m like, forget about it. How? I don’t understand. What are you talking about? Yeah, like, hey, can I get some water? And they’re like, you’re from Brooklyn, aren’t you? Yeah. I, I really try my hardest to represent, you know, for the cultura, as you were saying earlier. And it’s beyond just sounding Dominican or Rican or… You know, whatever it is, what comes out of my mouth, I think, is is New York. But I don’t really identify that much with like sounding Dominican. Like I can sound Dominican sometimes true talk. But like I also people tell me like, oh, you must be Puerto Rican. I’m like, no, not at all. You know, or sometimes I get Sicilian. I don’ even get Latino. They’re like, Oh, you’re some kind of Mediterranean or something. Right. No, far from it, like I’m just like a mixed-bred girl with a little bit of everything, un sancocho, if you will. But I will say, when I start like singing my dembow, my toquicha, you mentioned Rochy, Yo me siento como una dominicana pura, loco!
Angelo Colina: No, en español que se te sale, en inglés no, en ingles you could be, you’re very New York en inglés. Pero en español, sancocho. Like, as soon as you do it, una sola palabra dijiste, san-cocho, and I’m like Dominican.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: For reaal? I don’t even hear it!
Xorje Olivares: I love that though!
Angelo Colina: Yeah, you’re very…I cannot tell you how Dominican you are.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Seriously, you guys?
Angelo Colina: Your family is here from Santo Amigo or El Cibao, one of the two.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Okay, I love that! I don’t hear that myself. You know, you never hear what you sound like, right? But like, I don’t think I sound Dominican. I am so proud. Let me get my guira. Hold on.
Angelo Colina: Hahaha!
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Thank you! [percussive sounds]
Xorje Olivares: oh, hey!
Angelo Colina: Emotional support guira, claro.
Xorje Olivares: I do want to take a quick little break. But when we come back, more hyphenación.
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Xorje Olivares: So I wanna share this quick story of when I was 22 years old and I had first moved to New York, my first broadcasting on air job. I was really excited because I was gonna be able to do something that my parents could listen to. And I would be able to say, you know, Jorge Olivares every time I signed off on these broadcasts. But very quickly, I had to have a conversation with my older white supervisor who said I needed to anglicize my name. That if I was going to do anything on air, I had to say Jorge Olivares, which even now coming out of my mouth sounds really weird. And this was a shock to me because I’ve grown up on the Texas-Mexico border. Everybody knows how to say my name. I was surrounded by a bunch of Latinos growing up, so it never felt weird for me to say it how I was taught it. So I… Since then, since I was 22, I have had to be very intentional and deliberate with how I say my name because I need folks to know that I’m from the border, I’m Mexicano. I’m Tejano. I’ve got all this stuff behind me, and so definitely my relationship to my name and to language has shifted over the years. So I want to ask you, Rachel, if you’ve had a similar situation, where your relationship with either language has changed a bit.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Yeah, you know, you actually, like, struck a chord with the name, because I feel less Latina when I say my actual government name without my stage name baked in, where it’s like, Hi, I’m Rachel Strauss. You know, like I don’t know how many I can’t tell you how many job interviews I’ve been on where I show up, I’m like, “Hi, I am Rachel Straus,” and they look at me like, no, you can’t be. You don’t look like a Strauss. Wait, what are you exactly? You know with their eyes I don’t think that’s allowed to be said by like HR and stuff. But like, um, you know, I get that feeling like, Oh, you weren’t expecting a mixed race girl who’s half Latina and whose father’s Jewish. I get it. Um, let me tell you a little bit about me. So then when I do say, “Oh I’m Rachel, la loca Strauss” that pretty much encapsulates who I am to the T. Um, I am this mixed bred that loves both of her cultures. That fully embraces being Dominican and like a descendant of Eastern European Jew, you know, Russian and a whole bunch of other stuff mixed in with the borscht. And like, it’s the name for me. I never really gave it thought until you brought up how you say your name. And I do say La Loca with intent. Because I could easily say Rachel La Loca Strauss, you know? But then I don’t sound like me, okay? It’s Rachel La Loca Strauss.
Xorje Olivares: See, cause the thing is it is, it is what feels unnatural because I’ve never in my life said, my name is Jorge. You’ve never, in your life, have not said La Loca in the accent that you have. Right? Uh, so Angelo, did you like just thinking about accents, names, how you present yourself to the world, have you had to contend with that and, and like deal with some of the, the inner workings of how you feel about how you express yourself?
Angelo Colina: At the beginning of my immigrant career in the US, I had to. Like as soon as I was in Salt Lake City, Utah, yes, I have to pronounce, I would say Angelo. But if I’m here in New York, and I do come listen, like a lot of times, it’s like, it’s my show, I’m doing my show in Spanish, it says en español, it’s just everything. I’m gonna just speak the way I speak because that’s the actual thing people are paying for. They want to see that part of themselves even, not even mine. And so they also introduce themselves pronouncing their name, how they normally wouldn’t do it. That I do see. I know they would normally say, My name is Maria, but when they see me, they go like, ah, mi nombre es Maria, mucho gusto. Like that’s, it’s like, okay, I’m free. I won’t be judged here. And so my focus, but of course, I’m lucky enough to say that because I also live in New York City where everyone’s aware of that and everyone’s like actually curious. I feel like people want to learn. And so when I have the chance to do this outside, in other cities, yes, of course, sometimes I try to…I try to sound like I have been here for longer if I’m, you know, in other places, because you feel it. I’ve been to Kansas City, you know, I’ve been to Louisville, Kentucky, I’ve been to, and it’s, it’s not as welcoming, you know. I don’t know if I would get away saying Angelo El Loco Colina.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: [Laughter]
Angelo Colina: La Loca, that was also Dominican, the way you said, you said La Loca.
[percussive sounds]
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: I feel so Dominican right now! Oh my god!
Angelo Colina: You should!
Xorje Olivares: This is what I love because I’m a Mexican American, Dominican American, somebody from Venezuela who has that very distinct, like we are all from our own distinct backgrounds and yet look at how much we’re having fun with, with language, with culture, with identity. And I feel like the thing that has also helped is I’ve just like me vale madre now when I speak Spanish sometimes, like I’ve had to make certain agreements with myself about like, it’s okay to be embarrassed. It’s okay to kind of walk around with your tail between your legs, just live. So I wonder Angelo, if you’ve had these moments where you had to throw all of that out the window, any preconceived feelings, any hangups?
Angelo Colina: I think part of it was just the people around me. It’s a privilege of living here in New York City, where only the attempt of doing something with enough passion is gonna be applauded. Like people are gonna cheer you up and they’re gonna be supportive. And so I think New York did it for me. Like just people here were like, dale cabrón, dale, métate, okay, dale. Laigala, dice la gente del cibao in Dominican Republic they say laigala. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing 100% if it wasn’t because of the community. Maybe we’re not completely unified. And nobody wants that from the others, because it would be, we would be unstoppable.
Xorje Olivares: So I wanna end by asking, especially as the host of a show called Hyphenacion, which we made up and it’s fun. Rachel, is there a word or a phrase that you love in Spanish that just doesn’t hit in English? That nobody, when you’re trying to do the literal translation, como que no.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Totally and it’s so Dominican and I love to motivate others so I’m always like ponte la pila. Ponte la pila, loco! Ponte la pila.
[laughter]
Xorje Olivares: That’s a good one.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Which I guess a literal translation of that was what to put yourself on a battery?
Xorje Olivares: Put on your batteries. Put in your batteries.
Angelo Colina: Yeah,That’s a we say it a lot too. You know what’s very Dominican? I love, my Dominican friends say it all the time. They would say en Dominicana el único país que dice and then it’s something everyone Like, ponte la pila. We say it, Colombians say it. Everyone knows it.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: It’s like we’re like just trying to like own it
Angelo Colina:I love it. My friend explained me the reason but that’s a longer story. For me it’s uh it’s one that it’s used in Venezuela, Cuba, Dominicana Puerto Rico, Colombia tambien, we say alot, Ya tú sabes. But Dominicans have one now that is “Tu Supiste”, but without the S, Tu supi’te. They say, if you say, now I’m giving you this audience, use it. If a Dominican ever tells you you have to say it, if you said Tu supiste, they’ll be blown away. Because Tu Supiste implies you’ve been knowing for longer. So that’s my favorite one at the moment.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: I used to ‘tu ta pasa’o’
Xorje Olivares: I will add mine. Mine is, uh, there’s a phrase it’s just like nada que ver. And it translates to like nothing to see, but it’s really not that it’s like this, this isn’t so little importance. It’s so dumb. That like…
Angelo Colina: ‘Na que ver. You say na sometimes without the d.
Xorje Olivares: I have had such a fun time with my, they’re all my new friends. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation about the beauty of language, the power of language. How it unites, how it distinguishes us, how, it’s just a beautiful way of identifying yourself. So thank you both for what you do. And thank you so much for, for being a part of this really fruitful, fantastic conversation.
Rachel ‘La Loca’ Strauss: Thank you, this has been so fun. Congrats to you both. Let’s get it. We are hot right now. I’m here to support. La puerta ya está abierta. So come on and have some sancocho, loco.
Angelo Colina: Ya tu sabes, Rachel mi loca. Un abrazo.
Xorje Olivares: I do want to say to our listeners, thank you for joining us on this first season of Hyphenación– if you like what we’ve been creating, please remember to rate and review us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and comment on our YouTube videos. It all helps us out, and helps other people find us. And if you have an idea of a topic you’d like us to cover in the future, send it over to hyp@kqed.org. For more information about our guests you can go to the show notes where you’ll find tickets to see Angelo performing in a city near you and how you can listen to Rachel on Latinos Out Loud. But until next time, mi gente– take care!
Credits: Hyphenación is a KQED Studios Production. It is produced by Ana De Almeida Amaral, Alex Tran, and me, Xorje Olivares. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Mixing and mastering by Christopher Beale. Jen Chien is executive producer and KQED’s director of podcasts. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thank you to Maha Sanad for her audience engagement support and to podcast operations intern Alana Walker. Thanks to podcast operations manager Katie Sprenger, Video Operations manager Vivian Morales, and our chief content officer Holly Kernan. Special thanks to Megan Tan, Martina Castro, and Paulina Velasco for their development support. Okay mi gente, cuídense.
