Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Photo: Christian Times Republican debates are reliably passionate, and candidates can be counted on to dispense heated words with one another. And sometimes, those heated words aren’t particularly mature – if you need any convincing of this, just look at Trump’s defense of his, um, hands at the last debate. But for language nerds like us, one moment that stood out in the Republican shenanigans happened a couple of weeks ago, and oddly enough, in Spanish.
The drama began about mid—way through a weekend debate, the 10th of the party's seemingly endless procession of debates that, thankfully, seem to be narrowing down. After a good hour or so of bickering, Republican senator Ted Cruz decided to, well, continue bickering – though this time about a favorite issue of his that nonetheless had yet to come up in this particular debate: immigration. Cruz accused his rival Marco Rubio, a fellow second generation Cuban-American (though Cruz would perhaps best be described as Cuban-Canadian-American) of being just a bit too lenient on immigrants. He pointed out that Rubio had gone on Telemundo a few weeks earlier and gave an interview in which he called for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States. And to top it off, Rubio gave the interview not in English but in the very un-American language of (gasp!) Spanish. Rubio, despite his penchant for canned responses which earned him the nickname “Marco Roboto”, had a quick response for Cruz: “I don't know how [Cruz] knows what I said on Univision because he doesn't speak Spanish.” Cruz upped the ante, opting to actually respond in Spanish: “I’ll answer you in Spanish right now if you want!” It was perhaps one of the strangest moments of a particularly shouty night for the GOP field. And it also pokes holes in one of my pet theories: that a greater knowledge of languages leads to greater tolerance. After all, the GOP field is actually pretty strong in the language skills department. Both Rubio and Cruz speak Spanish – at least well enough to insult each other en Español. And Jeb Bush, still hanging in the race, speaks fluent Spanish thanks to his Mexican wife. Meanwhile, none of the remaining Democratic candidates speak any other language. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the sizeable Latino population of the US is genuinely convinced by the surface-level nods to their culture. Cruz, Rubio, and Bush may all speak Spanish, but they won’t win over Latinos if they have the wrong message. No matter what language it’s in. |
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