Caló (Chicano)
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- This article is about the Chicano idiom. For the dialect spoken by Spanish Roma, see Caló (Spanish Romani).
Caló (also spelled "Calo") is an argot or slang of Mexican Spanish initially spoken in the first half of the 20th century in the Southwestern United States that was originally associated with the zoot suit or Pachuco culture and now more commonly with some Chicano youth.
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[edit] Origin
According to Chicano scholar José Antonio Burciaga:
"Caló originally defined the Spanish gypsy dialect. But Chicano Caló is the combination of a few basic influences: Hispanicized English; Anglicized Spanish; and the use of archaic 15th-century Spanish words such as truje for traer (to bring), or haiga, for haya from haber (to have). These words were left in isolated pockets of Northern New Mexico and the Southwest, especially New Mexico, by conquistadores españoles. In this country, Caló is not recognized as a dialect but is derisively called Tex-Mex, or Spanglish, without taking into consideration its unique multicultural, political, societal and linguistic function and formation."
He goes on to describe the speech of his father, a native El Pasoan:
"My father had a vocabulary of Spanish words that to this day are not found in popular Spanish language dictionaries. He was born into a poor, migrant farm working family in a community of people that still used ancient words that some found improper and backwards but are to be found in Miguel Cervantez's [sic] classic Don Quixote. My father commonly used words such as minjurne for mixture, or cachibaches for junk. I would hear them without knowing their definition but I knew exactly what he meant when talking within a specific context. Some words were archaic, others were a combination of English and Spanish. And though he knew "standard" Spanish of "educated" people, he also worked, lived, laughed and cried with words that were more expressive and indigenous to the border than standard Spanish."
Caló words and expressions became cultural symbols of the Chicano Movement during the 1960s and 1970s, when they were used frequently in literature and poetry. Such language was sometimes known as floricanto. Some Caló words are now used regularly in American English, especially in the Southwest, and some words have been absorbed into common Mexican slang. Caló enjoyed mainstream exposure when the character "Cheech", played by Cheech Marin used Caló in the Cheech and Chong movies of the 1970s.
By the 1970s, the term Pachuco was frequently shortened to "'Chucho", and tended to refer more to gang members than to high-fashion Chicanos. Eventually, gang members appropriated "Caló" as their own, and it is only recently that Chicano scholars and cultural activists have reclaimed Caló as a unique cultural expression of the entire Chicano community.
Caló is not to be confused with Spanglish, which is not limited to Mexican Spanish. It is similar to lunfardo in that it has an eclectic and multilingual vocabulary. It is believed to have originated in El Paso, Texas, primarily from Mexican immigrants from the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City.
[edit] Features
Caló, like Spanglish, makes heavy use of Code-switching. Unlike Spanglish, Caló uses rhyming and in some cases, a type of rhyming slang similar in Spanish to Cockney rhyming slang or African American Jive (see Usage).
[edit] Evolution
Caló has evolved in every decade since the 1940-1950s. It underwent much change during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s as Chicanos began to enter U.S. universities and become exposed to counterculture and psychedelia. In the 1970s-1980s gang usage of Caló became even more prevalent. Since the 1980s, there has been a flow of Caló loanwords back into Mexican Spanish.
[edit] Examples
Since Caló is primarily spoken by individuals with varying formal knowledge of Spanish or English, variations occur in words, especially of phonemes pronounced similarly in Spanish: c/s, w/hu/gu, r/d, and b/v. It is common to see the word "Barrio" (Neighborhood) spelled as "Varrio", "Vato" (Dude) spelled as "Bato" or "Güero" (White/Blond person) spelled as "Hüero" or even "Weddo".
[edit] Usage
There are also plays on words, which was traditionally a common feature in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City.
- ¿Que Pasiones? (lit. "What Passions") < ¿Que Pasa? meaning "How Are You?"
- ¿Si ya sabanas, paquetes hilo? (lit. "If you already blankets, packages thread?") < ¿Si ya sabes, pa(ra) que te digo? meaning "If you already know, then why am I telling you?"
Occasionally English is spoken with Spanish syntax. When speaking to a sibling or family member about parents, for example, a Caló speaker will refer to them as "My Mother" (< Mi Mamá) instead of "Mom" or "Our mother". This is a similar phenomenon to the Yinglish phrase "I want you should...".
Rhyming is sometimes used by itself for emphasis. Common phrases such as ¿Me entiendes, Méndez? ("Do you understand?"), Nel, Pastel (lit. "No, Cake"), meaning "No way." Al Rato, Vato ("See you later, dude") or "Of course, my horse.", among others would pepper the Pachuco conversation.
[edit] Caló In popular culture
- American Me
- Aztlan Underground
- Akwid
- Cheech and Chong
- Culture Clash
- Don Tosti
- Edward James Olmos
- George Lopez Show
- Homies
- Kid Frost - Chicano rap artist, song "La Raza" uses Caló
- Lalo Guerrero - pachuco swing musician
- Lowrider Magazine
- Magu
- Robert Rodriguez
- Tin Tan actor from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, popularized pachuco dress and talk.
- Zoot Suit (movie) [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Aguilar Melantzón, Ricardo. Glosario del caló de Cd. Juárez. (translated by Federico Ferro Gay ; edited by María Telles-McGeagh, Patricia A. Sullivan. Las Cruces, N.M.: Joint Border Research Institute, New Mexico State University, c1989.
- Burciaga, José Antonio. Drink Cultura: Chicanismo. Santa Barbara: Joshua Odell Editions, Capra Press, 1993. ISBN 1877741078
- Fuentes, Dagoberto. Barrio language dictionary: first dictionary of Caló [by] Dagoberto Fuentes [and] José A. López. La Puente, California: El Barrio Publications, 1974.
- Galindo, D. Letticia. "Dispelling the Male-Only Myth: Chicanas and Calo." Bilingual Review 16: 1. 1992.
- Galindo, D. Letticia and María Dolores Gonzales, editors. Speaking Chicana : voice, power, and identity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, c1999. ISBN 0816518149 and ISBN 0816518157 (paperback)
- Hallcom, Francine, Ph.D. "An Urban Ethnography of Latino Street Gangs in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties"
- JL Orenstein-Galicia. "Totacho a Todo Dar: communicative functions of Chicano Caló along the US-Mexico border." La Linguistique (Paris. 1965)
- Ortega, Adolfo. Caló Orbis: semiotic aspects of a Chicano language variety New York: P. Lang, c1991. ISBN 0820415421
- Ortega, Adolfo. Caló tapestry. Berkeley: Editorial Justa Publications, 1977. ISBN 0915808218
- Polkinhorn, Harry, Alfredo Velasco, and Malcom Lambert. El Libro De Caló: The Dictionary of Chicano Slang. Mountain View, California: Floricanto Press, 1988. ISBN 0915745194 [2]
- Webb, John Terrance. A lexical study of Caló and non-standard Spanish in the Southwest. (dissertation), 1976.
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Chicano Spanish | Nahuatl language | Spanish language | List of Chicano Caló words and expressions | Chicano English | New Mexican Spanish | Spanish in the United States | Ladino | Spanish profanity | Spanglish |
