Jingle Bell Rock (Spanish version) - Flor de Toloache
I find most versions of Jingle Bell Rock pretty dull. Sure, the tune gets lodged in my head, but the lyrics are so contentless that it ends up sounding way too much like this unhinged parody.
The Flor de Toloache version gets points for (code)-switching up the lyrics, which means you get to hear silly intersentential switching between Spanish and English, like Giddy-up jingle horse, te toca trotar, and learn the extremely delightful verb cascabelear. I don’t think I caught examples of other types of code-switching in the lyrics, but correct me if I’m wrong!
Looking up the types of code switching brought me back to a clip from the 2005 documentary Do you speak American? in which young kids are being taught how to code switch between African American Vernacular English and Standard American English. If the following dialogue sounds cute to you, you should click through:
Teacher (pointing to a jeopardy square with the sentence “My grandpa cook dinner every night”): Which linguistic feature is not in mainstream American English?
The students huddle around their tables, discussing.
Excited student with raised hand: Third person singular!
Teacher: Yes.
Background kids (applauding): Yesss, I told you!
This is cool to me on several levels. The kids aren’t being told that the way they speak at home is wrong; instead the teacher is inviting them to translate between dialects. They’re also learning how to talk about language in a way I was pretty ignorant of until… high school, probably?
Because I spend too much time on the internet, all this reminded me of this tweet:
gaining fluency in a foreign language is so satisfying
day by day, you can viscerally feel yourself becoming less and less of an NPC in that community
I really resonate with this. It’s frustrating to be so unable to express myself when I’m speaking to someone, and I’m so grateful for the patience people have as I muddle through towards being a player character in anything other than English.
Ya tú vas a ver,
- Tessa
PS On a non-linguistic code switching note, Flor de Toloache were featured in a March 2020 episode of NPR Code Switch, because they thought a tale of an all-female mariachi band might be a nice break from pandemic anxiety.