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A Spanish Reader for Beginners

M. A. DeVitis

Collection:

Notable marginalia:

• Inside the front cover, a previous owner has written their name in cursive: Ilsa S. Consadi? Conradi?

• The title page has something I've never seen before: punched out of hte paper in the center are the words: "Compliments of Allyn & Bacon, No. 558". This may well be the distributors of the book, who are also listed in print on this cover page. But "558" has actually been crossed out and written under it (in dip pen, it seems) is 349. Not sure why that was necessary, it's there. My assumption is that this was a free copy distributed to someone?

• In between the table of contents, there's a (now very old and brown) pressed flower.

• On pg. 6, there is a small sectino of what might have been a magazine or book jacket. There's a portino of a green lawn illustration on one side, and the other is an avertisement for a book called Endring Poems for Daily Needs.

• I also noted that on page 56, tomado en la batalla de Lepanto is underlined.

• I have no way to be sure, but it looks to me that quite a few pages inbetween the notes and the vocabular sections were torn out. I can't imagine what they could've been, or how many pages there were.

Librarian's note:

I have an unexplainable fascination with pre-internet language acquisition, as can be gleaned from my book collection. Some books are on languages I have little to no interest in learning; but Spanish is one of the major exceptions. The books I collect in Spanish, for Spanish learners, I like to test out first-hand.

This book was interesting for a few reasons:

1. It's old.

   I like old books, but particularly books on language-learning, since they feel surprisingly modern in their approach to language acquisition: namely, you need to read naturalistic Spanish in order to learn Spanish. Lesson as old as time.

   For that reason, almost the entirety of the book is in Spanish. It's dated Spanish, with errors, but recognizably Spanish nonetheless.

2. Not only is it old, it's from 1915.

   Old books are made more interesting by their historical context. What historical world event was happening in 1915...? (Stop and think about this for a second.) That's right, WWI.

   Nowadays, we take it for granted that people want to learn languages, because we live in a globalized age. People learn languages for business, for family and friends, for pleasure, for travel. But before the age of globalization, there seemed to be two incentives for learning a language: religion and business. This book falls into the latter, and it's specifically in relation to the Great War.

   A review of the book by M. Romera-Navarro in The Modern Language Journal in 1918 sheds some light on this period:

   The present great war raging beyond the seas has already caused a great number of readjustments in human affairs: not the least among these is the extraordinary stimulus given to the study of Spanish....The sudden breaking off of all commercial intercourse between Germany and South America made the United States the fitting country to take the place of the former.

   Unrelated, but this reviewer spells "although" as "altho," which I'd never seen before, as in, Some grammatical explanations are stated in terms meant for beginners who may have forgotten their Eniglish grammar. This is unquestionably a justifiable attitude, altho a recent study of French, or Latin, or of both is generally presupposed in college classes (also, lol).

   If you anything about the U.S. relationship to the Spanish-speaking Americas, a shiver of dread may have crept up your spine from that review. While the attitude taken by the reviewer and author of the book seem benign, the geopolitical currents supporting this economic development were (and continued to be) forceful with violent consequences, as the U.S. tried to shape Latin American governments to benefit U.S. politics and economies by any means necessary.

   For further evidence of this book's place in that history, just read my first bullet point in the additional notes

   Of course, many people using this book just wanted to travel. But that context helps explain the books contents because...

3. It summarizes the history and literature of the Spanish-speaking Americas up to 1915.

   On the one hand, it's nice to get a sense of the nuances between how each of these countries developed, and what they looked like 100 years ago (quite literally, as there are photographs for each country included), even if the writing is incredibly dry.

   On the other hand, these surveys are incredibly biased, with historical figures and governments sometimes characterized in ways that contrast with our outlook today. I constantly had to cross-check with wikipedia and adding newer sources to my "to read" list. (The sources he mentions seem to be fellow Americans.)

   To be fair, the characterizations sometimes surprised me for the better. There was no sugar-coating, for example, the conquistadors treatment of indigenous groups. But these instances were the exception.

It is worth noting that the first section is a dialogue that explains the culture and history of Spain, which is described in very reverent terms.

It is also worth noting that "Mexico" is spelled "Méjico" in this book, which was an alternate spelling for the country for many years. However, the "x" seems to have been widely used in Mexico itself long before this book was printed. I can give the writers the benefit of the doubt, since I don't know enough about the history of this, but I get the sense (partly from what I mention in the above paragraph) that the writers willingly chose to use the spelling given by Spain and not the spelling the country itself uses, which doesn't sit right with me.

Other notes and quotes:

1. The Spanish Reader aims to do four things: to furnish interesting, practical material for first year reading; to give the student a knowledge of the life and customs of Spain; to teach the geography, history, and literature of Spain and of Spanish America; and to equip the pupil with the linguistic accoutrements needed for an invasion of the South American business world.(emphasis my own) What more needs to be said?

2. Later, he elaborates: The salesman who knows the history and literature of his 'territory' will far outstrip his competitor whose talk must be limited to his wares.

3. And because everyone needs to be exoticized: The stories treat of the fascinating life and customs of the Spanish people,—unknown to many who follow only the more frequented paths of European travel.

4. The respect of the South Americans for literature is shown by the fact that ninety-five per cent of their public men are writers. I'm not even fully sure what that means, but it sounds very impressive. But also, source??

5. He says the first part of this book is all in present tense. Lies! Siempre he creído que España era un país muy cálido, appears on the first page!

6. You can tell this was written for Americans because they compare the size and population of countries against American states. As in, the size of Spain is described as being that of Utah and Arizona, and the population being bigger than New York and Pennsylvania. Evidently Americans just knew these things back then.

7. The portion of the book dedicated to Spain is the only one that relays information through dialogue, with an American cousin (Juan) visiting a Spanish cousin (Carlos), who berates his American cousin Juan for thinking Spain is árido y estéril, and asks if he didn't study geography. That's right Juan, you're dumb as fuck.

8. Spain is applauded for having a car on their trains that is women-only.

9. American Juan is at first horrified by bullfighting, which is probably reflective of most Americans at the time. But his cousin, of course, has to justify it as a sense of honor and tries to convince him that killing bulls as a spectator sport is good actually (Juan is left undeterred and finds it cruel).

10. On pg. 48, he uses the phrase zapatero, a tus zapatos, which is translated in the notes as meaning when the person speaking strays from the subject. However, the internet tells me this is expression is used when the person is speaking about something they know nothing about.

11. Pg. 50 describes all the carriages that are in Madrid (because it's 1915).

12. Spanish cousin Carlos claims El Escorial in Madrid has a "grill look" because it was the instrument of torture used against Saint Lorenzo? (Oh, actually, this indeed appears to be a popular belief, but is, in fact, untrue.)

13. A parade of fallen monarchs is described on pages 59-61, each one somehow causing "the most agitated time in Spain's history."

14. Spain's king at the time, Alfonso XIII, is praised along with his beautiful wife and 5 children. He says no other monarch children are so loved and played with in all of Europe. (Source??)

15. There is little to note about the literature sections throughout this book, which are repetative, dry, and boring, except that everyone he ever lists seems to write the best.

16. The book takes a pro-Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz stance, for some reason, who was overthrown in 1911. In contrast, they describe Jose Santos Zelaya, the president of Nicaragua from 1893-1909 as el monstruo, even though I can't find anything particularly monstrous about him, other than that he opposed the U.S. and wanted national sovereignty. But I also just don't know much about these people in genreal.

17. Hilariously, they also disparage all the "tyrants" who want just want to enrich themselves at the expense of the Spanish-speaking people.

18. Keeping in line with the economic incentives of the book, each Central and South American country overview includes the products each produces and people demographics. Often, the beautiful scenery and resources are lauded, but are contrasted with very biased, unfflattering descriptions of the people, particularly native peoples. (I won't even repeat them.) Essentially, it's trying to paint these countries as having a lot of economic opportunity that is being squandered by the people who live there.

19. In one country (I forgot to make a note of which), he talks about the women there being very virtuous, have no interest in public affairs, and all they want to do is be good wives and mothers (source??)

20. There's a poor defense of the conquistador caste system and slavory on page 126.

21. In the part on Peru, there's a lot of admiration of the Inca Empire, and he even mentions how they used knots as a kind of dictation.

22. He's quite glowing about Argentina and their cowboy culture. At the time, Argentina had the highest population of any Spanish-speaking country (which today, is Mexico).

23. The final section of the book are snippits and exerpts of famous poetry and music, but by this point, I was done with this book.

24. There are a lot of photographs in this book, which are honestly the best part (even if the captioning is also dated). I'm including some below: