Spanish accent

[Paul Frank]

Federico Escobar:

> Whatever one thinks about the rise of Spanish in the States, I certainly am
> not going to be celebrating the massive spread of Univision programming.
>
> F.

Is it worse than Fox? That's not a rhetorical question, because I've
never watched Univision and I don't have access to American TV (other
than CNN, which I can't stomach).

I am surprised by how many of my advanced-degree-toting friends in the
U.S. pay for Chinese-language preschool or private lessons or for
Chinese-speaking babysitters for their children and don't want them to
take Spanish. Ninety-nine percent of those kids are not going to learn
Chinese. The parents don't seem to be aware of the vast cultural
riches of the Spanish-speaking oikoumene. Speaking of which, I was
very glad to see that Vargas Llosa won the Nobel. I've been reading,
and loving, his books for thirty years. But they're still not
available in translation for the Kindle (a good indicator of what
Americans are reading these days). Nor are those of Alfredo Bryce
Echenique, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Ángel
Asturias, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Ernesto Sábato, José Donoso, or
a number of other writers of the stature of Bellow, Updike, and
Pynchon.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
Espace de l'Europe 16
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

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