LoMásTv viewer Donnie (dryanespanol) wrote and asked:

In "Fiesta en Miami," - Antonio pronounces the "h" when he says "hace." I have always been told this is a cardinal sin. Please explain.

That's a good question! Does the Canary Islander Antonio Polegre really pronounce the "h" in "hace"? Well, we took a listen and it SEEMS like he does! What is going on? 

One of the first things we notice is that, in caption 21, when Antonio says hice mis amigos ("I made my friends"), we do NOT hear any "h" sound in hice. So why would Antonio pronounce hice correctly but not hace? We also notice that he didn't pronounce the final s in mis nor in amigos -- a common enough practice in many regions, and, oddly enough, perhaps a telling clue.

Antonio uses hace four times in the video (twice in caption 27 and twice in caption 29), each time as part the two word combination nos hace; and each time it really does sound like he is pronouncing the "h" in hace.

We did a little research to see if perhaps "Canarian" Spanish makes an exception to the "never pronounce the 'h'" rule. We don't find such an exception, but we do find another characteristic of Canarian Spanish echoed in a number of places, such as wikipedia:

/s/ debuccalization. As is the case with many varieties of Spanish, /s/ debuccalized to [h] in coda position.

Obviously not written for the layman! A little more research tells us that "debuccalization" is a linguistics term that describes a sound being "reduced" to an "h sound" (e.g. the "h" in "high"), and that the "coda" position is the final position in a syllable, after the vowel. 

So, if Antonio is "debuccalizing" the final "s" in nos, which produces an "h sound," then perhaps what we are hearing is not the "h" in hace but rather the "debuccalized /s/" (i.e. "h sound") at the end of "nos"! Could it be?

Let's look at caption 29:

y al final yo considero que todo nos une, todo nos hace... todo nos hace ser humanos 
and, in the end, I consider that everything unites us, everything makes us... everything makes us human 
caption 29 - Fiesta en Miami - Antonio

It's not as strong, but we think we can also MAYBE hear an "h sound" in nos une, almost coming out as 'no [h]une," and if that's true it supports the debuccalization theory. 

Further, he does not pronounce the "h" in humanos (just as he doesn't the one in hice)-- so clearly it's not the case that he is in the habit of pronouncing every "h" that starts a Spanish word.

A Dominican friend of ours tells us that not only does Antonio's pronunciation of "nos hace" sound perfectly natural to him, but that he can think of many similar "debuccalization" examples in Dominican speech. In fact, he thought that Antonio's Spanish sounds more like that of the Caribbean than (what he considers) that of Spain. This makes sense, because linguists tells us that early Canarian settlers in the region had a great amount of influence in what we know now as "Caribbean Spanish." 

No wonder Antonio feels right at home in Miami!

Spanish speakers in many regions are known for (in one way or another) reducing, softening, or "aspirating" their s's (or, as many frustrated learners would say, "dropping them" entirely). In fact, one of our resident experts, a guru of Spanish (though his students in Mexico City call him "professor"), told us that Antonio "is aspirating the s in nos, which could sound as if he were pronouncing the h in hace to someone who is not a native Spanish speaker." 

We came across a "Voices en Español" podcast which discusses the "aspirated s," as well as some other Spanish consonant sounds that are a challenge to English speakers. Have a listen!
http://spanish-podcast.com/2008/04/04/spanish-consonants

Did you see the beautiful deck of playing cards drawn by Antonio Vargas, depicting the conquistadors as well as the three big historical tribes of Mexico (Maya, Olmec, and Aztec)? He explains to us that, although very scholarly, the Mayans were no slouches on the battlefield:

Y también se ponían sus buenos catorrazos, pero eran un pueblo de mucho conocimiento...
And they also gave good blows, but they were a people of much knowledge...
Caption 29, Antonio Vargas: Artista - Ilustración - Part 2

Have a look at one of our previous lessons,  —azo: a painful suffix, and you will learn that the suffix "-azo" gives the meaning "a blow/hit from." For example un palazo is a hit with a stick (palo) or a shovel (pala), and a tortazo is what you receive when you get in the way of a moving torta (cake)!

So what about these catorrazos that Antonio refers to, and that we translated simply as "blows"? Sources tell us that the root word is cate, a rather obscure Spanish word synonymous with golpe, and which itself means "hit" or "blow,"—which would give us a "blow" by way of a "hit" (or a hit by way of a blow). Obviously a bit redundant!

Catorrazo is very colloquial, and is primarily heard in Mexico. In actuality, bilingual dictionaries define it as simply a "punch," a "blow," or even "a hit with a stick or billy club."

Here's an interesting tidbit: Since the word for "fist" is puño, we might be tempted to also try puñazo for "punch." However, the word you are most likely to hear (and what you will find in the dictionary) is slightly different, "puñetazo." However, puñazo is also seen occasionally, and, in Latin America, the word puño itself doubles for "punch" as well.

Le encanta el poder y le atrapa la noche
She loves power and the night ensnares her
Caption 6, Chayanne—Lola

The Spanish verb encantar literally means "to enchant" or "to delight greatly," so when Chayanne sings "le encanta el poder," he means to say that "power enchants her" or "power delights her." In English we would simply say "she loves power." If this looks a lot like the way we use gustar (to please) when we want to say someone "likes" something, that's because encantar belongs to a family of verbs known as "verbs like gustar." These verbs always take an indirect object pronoun, usually to refer to the person who in the English version would be the subject, and in this example the "le" is the indirect object pronoun (her), referring to "Lola."

Atrapar/"to trap; to ensnare" is NOT a "verb like gustar," but Chayanne, in the interest of lyrical flow, seems to be doing his best to set it up like one. First, notice he is putting the subject la noche/"the night," after the verb atrapa/"ensnares" (a bit unusual, but not incorrect). Secondly, he is referring to Lola using the indirect object pronoun "le," but in this case it is really acting as a direct object pronoun. You can tell because it answers the question "what?" about the verb ("The night ensnares 'what?' It ensnares her") rather than the question "to whom?" or "for whom?" which would call for an indirect object pronoun.

Note that, unlike indirect object pronouns, the direct object pronouns in Spanish DO have gender distinctions, "lo" for him and "la" for her. Chayanne could have expressed the same sentiment by putting the subject before the verb and using the proper direct object pronoun, making it clearer for most Spanish learners:

La noche la atrapa.
The night ensnares her.

Strictly speaking, "le" is not to be used as a direct object at all, but Chayanne, like a great many of his fellow Spanish speakers, IS using "le" as a direct object. The phenomenon of using the indirect object pronoun "le" (or its plural "les") where you technically should have used a direct object pronoun is known as "leísmo," and its use varies by region. It is common enough that it is not always heard as "wrong" by a great many Spanish speakers, and there are even a few cases where "le" is seen, even by the strictest grammar mavens, as an acceptable alternate to the "proper" direct object pronouns.

These "acceptable" cases of leísmo usually involve the substitution of "le" for the masculine direct object "lo," but Chayanne is substituting "le" for the feminine direct object "la"—which, while not entirely unknown in colloquial Spanish, is usually not considered "acceptable" by those with learned opinions on such matters (such as the RAE).

Further reading:
http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa081301a.htm
http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltGUIBusDPD?lema=leísmo

Carambola: more than tricky pool


We already know Chayanne from Provócame, where he portrays a shy stable hand who also sings the show's sanguine theme song. Now we encounter his wilder side, singing about Lola, a jet-set party-loving socialite who might even be a bit dangerous:

Como disfrutas la carambola, Lola.
How you enjoy deceit, Lola.
Caption 15, Chayanne—Lola

But how does carambola translate as "deceit?"

The usage evolves from a billiards shot (known in English as a cannon), whereby the cue ball ricochets off its target and hits a third ball, seemingly by chance, in a way that's beneficial to the player. The word comes from a pocket-less type of billiards known in English as carom billiards, and in Spanish as billar de carambolas (or just carambolas) where these types of rebounding shots are standard and can be amazing to watch.

So when someone (like Chayanne's Lola) plays her hand to achieve some benefit and makes it look like an accident, she is doing una carambola. A skillful billiards player bounces off one ball to hit another, and a skillful conman sets a trap that does not directly point back to him.

Estoy seguro que los políticos están haciendo carambola.
I'm sure that the politicians are doing something illicit.

However, not all uses of the term have negative overtones. Because the carambola shot appears to be fortuitous by happenstance, de carambola can also simply refer to chance, good luck, or "dumb luck."

Vine a recoger unos papeles y me encontré con Camilo de carambola.
I came to pick up some papers and I found Camilo by chance.

Pateó al arco, el balón golpeó en un defensor y entró de carambola.
He kicked toward the goal; the ball hit a defender and went in by luck.