Mixed Race Studies

You may not know it — but if you speak Spanish, you speak some Arabic too

PRI’s The World
Public Radio International
2015-10-15

Joy Diaz, Reporter

Rihab Massif, originally from Lebanon, was my daughter’s preschool teacher in Austin. As a little girl, Camila, my daughter, spoke mostly in Spanish. And Massif remembers a day when Camila was frustrated because she couldn’t remember a word in English.

“She was telling me about her camis,” Massif says.

Camisa is the word in Spanish for “shirt,” and Massif understood it perfectly because camis means the same thing in Arabic.

“And I was like ‘Oh! There are some words related to Arabic,’” she says.

To see just how many, Massif and I did an exercise. I’d say a word in Spanish, and she’d say it back in Arabic.

“Aceite?”

“We say ceit,” Massif says.

“Guitarra?”

“We say guitar.”

Now that I am aware, it seems like I hear Arabic words everywhere…

…Linguist Victor Solis Parejo from the University of Barcelona in Spain says part of the language Spanish speakers use comes from a legacy of the Moorish influence. “Moors” was the name used to refer to the Arabic-speaking group from North Africa that invaded what would become Spain back in the eighth century. Their influence lasted about 700 years and is still visible today.

“Especially if you travel [in the] south of Spain­. For example in Merida, in the city where I was born, we have the Alcazaba Arabe, an Arabic fortification,” Parejo says. “So, you can see that in the cities nowadays, but you can also see that Islamic presence, that Arabic presence in the language.”…

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Looking for Co-presenters for 2014 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (Chicago, November)

2013-12-26

Kim Potowski, Associate Professor of Linguistics
University of Illinois, Chicago

I would like to submit a panel for the 2014 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference about language and the ways in which language (dialects, code-switching, etc.) reflects and enacts the identities of mixed “race” and mixed “ethnicity” individuals and groups.

By “mixed ethnicity” I mean to include, for example, intra-Latino individuals (e.g. “MexiRicans”), intra-Asian individuals (e.g. “Chinese-Korean”), and other such combinations. Again, the focus of the panel is the ways in which such individuals use and are marked by their linguistic repertoires. Many MexiRicans, for example, speak a variety of Spanish that shows traits from both Mexican and Puerto Rican dialects.

Ideally all presentations will incorporate some mixed race theory, but we can discuss this.

If you know anyone who might like to be considered for this panel, please contact me, Kim Potowski at kimpotow@uic.edu. I would need to receive abstract proposals and author information (name, institution, areas of scholarly interest) by January 2, 2014.

Thanks!

The role of Japanese as a heritage language in constructing ethnic identity among Hapa Japanese Canadian children

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Volume 30, Issue 1 (February 2009)
pages 1-18
DOI: 10.1080/01434630802307874

Hiroko Noro, Professor of Pacific and Asian Studies
University of Victoria, Canada

Today, Japanese Canadians are marrying outside of their ethnic community at an unprecedented rate, resulting in the creation of a newly identifiable group of ‘Japanese Canadians’ borne from these interracial unions. Members of this emergent group are increasingly being referred to both by social scientists and self-referentially as Hapa. This term, originally a Hawaiian term, is now a common and empowering tool of self-identification for people of mixed ethnic heritage. Recent sociological research argues that, while the notion of a shared Hapa identity exists, it is less rooted in individual members’ physical appearance or cultural identification and more rooted in their experiences, parental upbringing, and the locality/environment in which they grew up.

Read or purchase the article here.