NY Times' Healy claimed Clinton's use of "pueda" didn't make sense -- but she got only the tense wrong
SUMMARY: In a blog post, New York Times reporter Patrick Healy wrote that as Spanish-speaking voters chanted "Si se puede" at a rally in California, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "bellowed into her microphone, 'Si se pueda is right!' " Healy added, "Several colleagues who speak better Spanish than I do say that 'pueda' (as opposed to 'puede') has meaning in other contexts, but it does not really make sense in this one." In fact, Clinton used the correct verb but the wrong tense.
In a January 22 blog post titled "No Habla Español," New York Times reporter Patrick Healy wrote that as Spanish-speaking voters chanted "Si se puede" at a January 22 rally in California, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) "bellowed into her microphone, 'Si se pueda is right!' " Healy added, "Several colleagues who speak better Spanish than I do say that 'pueda' (as opposed to 'puede') has meaning in other contexts, but it does not really make sense in this one." In fact, Clinton used the correct verb but the wrong tense. The Spanish word "pueda" is the first- and third-person conjugation in the present subjunctive tense of the verb "poder," which means "to be able to; may." "Puede," meanwhile, is the third-person conjugation in the present indicative tense of the same verb.
Further, in writing about Clinton's purported gaffe, Healy himself made a grammatical error. Healy wrote that "Clinton repeatedly heard the crowd chant 'Si se puede.' " In fact, the crowd chanted "Sí, se puede," meaning, "Yes, we can," (or, literally, "Yes, it can be done"). By using "Si" (without an accent above the "I") -- as Healy did -- the meaning of the phrase is altered. In Spanish, the word "si" means "if" and is most commonly used in conditional phrases -- without the accent over the "i," the phrase would mean "if it can be done." "Sí" (with an accent above the "I"), on the other hand, means "yes." Hence, "Yes, we can."
From Healy's January 22 post on the Times political blog The Caucus:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton does not usually speak in Spanish as she makes overtures to Hispanic voters, and now we have evidence of why.
Speaking Tuesday afternoon before a predominantly Hispanic audience of more than 2,000 people here, where she accepted the endorsement of Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers union, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly heard the crowd chant "Si se puede" -- a signature political phrase at Hispanic rallies that translates to "Yes, It Can Be Done!"
Politicians usually join in, but Mrs. Clinton refrained from doing so on one, two, and then three occasions; she simply nodded and smiled and said nothing.
Finally, as the crowd began shouting the phrase again, Mrs. Clinton bellowed into her microphone, "Si se pueda is right!"
Several colleagues who speak better Spanish than I do say that "pueda" (as opposed to "puede") has meaning in other contexts, but it does not really make sense in this one. In any event, the crowd was chanting "si se puede." The audience made no noticeable fuss over Mrs. Clinton's use of "pueda," although they stopped chanting sooner afterward.
By contrast, in the January 15 Times article to which Healy linked the words "Si se puede," reporters Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer spelled the phrase correctly:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has eaten beef tacos in East Los Angeles and sat on the living room couch of a working-class family in a largely Hispanic neighborhood here for 30 televised minutes. At a rally of the culinary workers' union in the shadows of the Strip here one night, Senator Barack Obama pumped his fist and chanted with the crowd, "¡Sí, se puede; sí, se puede; sí, se puede!" or, "Yes, we can!"
Uhhhhhh did you really write "She isn't Spanish?"
How else is anyone going to learn any language unless they try to read, write and speak it as often as possible?
Using that kind of logic, no one will ever learn to speak any language.
Hell, GW Bush has been practicing ... and butchering ... ENGLISH long before his presidential candidacy, and continues to this DAY.
At least Hillary is reaching out and being illiterate in a SECOND language.
Hell, GW bush speaks damn good Spanish.
But really, it is slightly embarrassing that the NY times fellow would write about this and make that minute error, but it is HIGHLY embarrassing that MMFA would report it as "misinformation". Some MMFA operative must have really been looking close to spot that "i" in Si, i bet they felt real good about themselves for having discovered such misinformation.
uhm....What??
I think you missed the point. And the headline.
I agree Tommy this is "nit-picking" but maybe if Clinton & all the other candidates, be they Democrat or Republican, would stop pandering to special interest groups by attempting to engage them in a language they are not themselves proficient in, these mistakes wouldn't happen.
I don't find a candidate addressing an Hispanic group in Spanish anything other than political BS.
"Knowing and speaking to your audience is not political BS in my mind."
It is if you don't speak the language. I mean, gosh... she can't even tell past tense from present tense or an intransitive verb from a conjutive verb. What kind of president will she be?
"She is not spanish and she sould stop trying to speak the language if she can not speak it correctly."
I am not English, so I should stop trying to speak the language if I cannot speak it correctly. I'm prone to using double negatives and danging modifiers. I have no business whatsoever speaking English.
I hope GW takes your advise - if he can't speak English without making sense - he should just shut up. I mean, talk about someone butchering a language?
Yeah - Maybe someone will dig up a GW quote from one of the numerous times we’ve heard him attempt to respond to an audience in Spanish? I don’t understand a word of it, but I can only imagine the way some of his attempts came across to those who do!
Wow Sue. That's... wow. No you couldn't be more wrong! More Americans NEED to make an effort to learn about other languaes and try to speak them. I've been to many non-english speaking contries and I've found that native speakers are generally very forgiving ouf or linguistic mistakes, and instead are very aprreciative that we are making an EFFORT.
I find it truly sad how few americans speak a second lenguage as compared the rest of the world, almost ALL of whom speak their native tongue as well as english. (And I've meant countless people who can speak a third (or more) language! And we wonder why we're lagging behind academically.
Furthermore, I happen to speak spanish, and the fact is that her "mistake" was simply not that big a deal. It wasn't all that wrong. Everyone there knew what she meant, and that's really the pont: communication. The messege got through. (Come on - nobody in Belrin actually thought JFK was saying "I am a jelly doniught" - they knew what he MEANT.) And THAT is the very point of language - getting your point accross.
Don't be such a typical, unworldly American!
I see both sides of this argument. My parent’s families were immigrants from 2 different countries in Eastern Europe. Both Hungarian and Slovak were spoken in my house as a kid – yet I learned neither language and always wished I had. However, how important would this really have been to me in the real world as an adult – other than for my own ethnic pride?
To compare the hundreds of other smaller nations who are taught English as a second language, is not the same as insisting things be the other way around. The percentages just don’t fit the logic.
I see and understand why hundreds, if not thousands, of different languages have evolved throughout time in the world – but just as race becomes less and less an issue as the world gets “smaller”, so should the barrier of language. I see nothing wrong with Sue’s “unworldly American” views – the sooner we all speak the same language, the sooner we will all be able to understand each other, literally speaking anyhow – and that is a good first step.
Because English happens to be the most common language of the free world, it is only logical that a worldwide effort be made to teach it as a step toward universal comradery in this jet-set age. If we all spoke French here in America, and the majority of the rest of the world spoke English, I would feel the same way. We just happen to luck out on this one.
I can see the argument that this is arrogant of me (us), but it’s not a very good one when percentages are on our side.
It is practical to learn english, sure. But learning another language is valuable in it's own right. It is an academic achievement worth celebrating. It teaches you a lot about a culture by learning about their language. (The Japanese word for "foreigner" literally means "not japanese"; there is no word for "compromise" in Arabic - although the closest word they have means "colaborate.") Plus you learn a lot more about YOUR OWN language. As badly as so many Americans speak english (myself included at times) and how few of us speak anything else, it is the height of arrogance for ANY of us to criticise another's ability (or inability) to speak english, or mock thier attempt to speak in another tongue.
Bottome line: Hill got it right (and I don't say that very often!) and Sue got it worng. (OK- THAT I do say pretty often!)
Yeah, I get the meaning of a mis-conjugated verb, even if it's done in the person's first language.
So let's get this right. Clinton has no business speaking spanish, but it's OK for Romney, Huckabee and Guliani to put out campaign ads in spanish. Got it.
La Presidente aspirante cons Los Angelenos con la promisima poor favors.
;-)
Nice try AA ... but you get an F... :)
I presume you're trying to slam Hillary for pandering to Hispanics ... so you're looking for someting like this:
"La aspirante presidencial Hillary Clinton trajo su campagna a Los Angeles hoy, diciendo lo que ella pensaba su audiencia queria oir."
Dave,
I figure if Juillarinita can try and speak Espanol, so can I. I took Spanish 35 years ago and barely passed then so no doubt my false Spanish es muy terriblisioso. :-)
If you get a chance, I'd be interested in your translation.
Wait, I'm going to try--
La Presidente aspirante cons Los Angelenos con la promisima poor favors.
The effeminate/transexual GW Bush is sucking LOs Angeles conservatives with the same prom that [it switches to English at this point] those in the lower tax brackets prefer.
Is that close, AnotherAmerican? :)
Let's not forget, Kennedy proudly proclaimed "I am a jelly doughnut", and nobody seemed to care.
I'd say Healy probably could have skipped this one. This wasn't part of a planned speech, she was just trying to repeat what she was hearing. Obviously people knew what she meant, so it's not a question of it "making sense" at all.
Can't help to be reminded of this:A politician is giving a speech to a group of Native American farmers. He says that he cares deeply about the plight of their people. They yell out "Kalanga!", raising their fists in the air. Encouraged, he tells them he has a record of voting for their cause. They yell "Kalanga" again. He tells them that if elected to higher office he'll continue to fight for them. "Kalanga! Kalanga! Kalanga!" After the speech one of the farmers takes the politician on a tour around the farm. As they go through a cow pasture, the farmer tells him "Don't step in the kalanga..."
(blatantly stolen from the late, great Jeff MacNelly)
Most Spanish speaking folks are too proud of the language and its usage, and don't like to hear it spoken incorrectly or with heavy accent. I know, because I'm one. When a non-native uses Spanish incorrectly, I do not respond in Spanish. I respond in English, as a hint that I will not speak Spanish with them.
However, in the case of Hillary's mistake, I would say most Spanish speaking folks, would have understood that she was merely mispronouncing "puede" and will have understood her to mean the correct tense, and would have simply ignored it as a mistake, and will not have had any misunderstanding about what she meant... to me, she clearly meant "puede" but because of the sound of the "e" in English, (at the end) it can very easily sound like an "a" to English Speaking folks, where we would simply realize she was using the English sound of "e" thus, mispronouncing, and NOT saying "pueda."
I'm not particularly fond of Hillary's campaign and her lobby association, which to me, means business as usual; however, as a Spanish speaking person, I give her the benefit of the doubt on this point and wont fault her.
As for Bush's Spanish... I'd be embarrassed to talk to him in Spanish... no matter how good other English speaking folks think his Spanish is. I am offended by his Spanish... and the arrogance with which he speaks it, that it demeans me to listen to him, and the condescendence he oozes when he speaks it. But he does that in English as well, so I'm sure I'm quite biased...