Plaid as Hell

P.S. America would be shit without Mexicans!

Dear Thrifty Gabacho: I didn’t realize you Scots were as jingoistic, macho and rambling as us Mexicans—gracias for the clarification and love!

Dear Mexican: Why shouldn’t the United States demand 100 barrels of oil from Mexico for each illegal Mexican as compensation for the cost of their impact on our sovereign country?Christ, Hispanics Endanger Very Rigid Oil Numbers

Dear CHEVRON: Because if Mexico did the same—demand 100 barrels for every time el Norte meddled in Mexican affairs—your Toyota would run on peat moss.

Dear Mexican: I accidentally broke out some Spanglish at an inappropriate time the other day, which elicited strange looks from my gabacho co-workers. It got me thinking: do other immigrant populations mix languages the way Mexicans do? Do Koreans always find themselves accidentally slipping into the native tongues of their parents? How about when Italians were the new wave of immigrants—did their kids grow up speaking their own form of hybrid English? And what about immigrant populations in the rest of the world?No Es Very Bueno

Dear Wab: Yes, ne, sì, sí, Don’t believe the custodians of Cervantes: Spanglish is a beautiful cosa, as is every other pidgin tongue. Such mongrelization is inevitable and is proof that a language is alive, that a culture can not only adapt to new environs but thrive and even enrich the host nation. I don’t know about language patterns amongst immigration populations, save for those who invaded America, and their impact on American English is what makes it so vibrant—on that subject, I defer to H.L. Mencken’s pioneering The American Language or the recent How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads. Buy those gems after buying my recently released paperback—what, ustedes thought I’d go a week without a shameless plug?

Get your Mexican needs at youtube.com/askamexicano, myspace.com/ocwab, and themexican@askamexican.net!