TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	January 15, 2019
Event	TEDxSoMa
Duration (min:sec)	14:44
Video Type	TEDx Talk
Words per minute	166.47 slow
Readability (FK)	60.01 easy
Speaker	Julián Delgado Lopera


1	00:03	My passion for the poetics of everyday language began at 5 pm on Saturdays, at my abuela's dining room, at a table full of loud, unstoppable women.
2	00:19	My five aunts plus my mom’s five aunts, all smoking, some in their bras, some in their “rulos,” all complaining about the ineptitude of their husbands or the rising prices at the grocery store.
3	00:35	Some used grand gestures, pointing with their mouths.
4	00:40	Others made up words.
5	00:42	Some yelled, some cried.
6	00:46	They were all narrating a similar experience, but each one of them put her own twist to her story.
7	00:53	Each one used a different word choice, a different rhythm.
8	00:57	My mom complained in silence, shaking her head and sighing.
9	01:04	My Tía T used energized curse words, "That hijo de su madre," she would say.
10	01:11	"That good-for-nothing son of a bitch."
11	01:14	(Laughter)
12	01:16	My great aunt shut her eyes, drank coffee and pointed at God.
13	01:23	"Diosito!
14	01:25	What is wrong with this man?"
15	01:30	Each one putting a different tune, a different music to her story.
16	01:35	As a kid, I sat among them in awe, marveled at how elastic, how expansive, how infinite language felt at the dining table, how fun.
17	01:46	If my aunts didn't know a word, they would just make it up, laugh about it, and stick it to their husbands' nicknames.
18	01:52	(Laughter)
19	01:53	The word would then be tossed around and eventually become part of our intimate, familiar vocabulary.
20	02:02	My family is originally from the coast of Colombia, which is a region known for its magnificent storytellers, its grand words, a region where made-up words are the norm, where music and rhythm are essential to speaking.
21	02:15	I inherited the creative tongue from my aunts.
22	02:19	In Colombia, I was a loud, energized sucker.
23	02:21	I wouldn’t shut up, I made up words, too.
24	02:24	But the moment I moved to the States and landed in Miami, all that energy and love for language disappeared.
25	02:32	It was here that I had my first encounter with language hierarchy.
26	02:38	I was 15 years old and we were reading "Romeo and Juliet" in English class.
27	02:42	I begged and prayed that I wouldn't be called to read Juliet's part because it was long and I didn't know what most of the words meant.
28	02:50	But of course I was called to read Juliet's part.
29	02:53	My heart sank.
30	02:56	When I said I didn't want to, the teacher responded I will lose participation point if I didn't.
31	03:01	OK, I had to read it.
32	03:05	I tried to push my tongue in impossible ways, tried to echo the sound that I have been listening around me.
33	03:13	But I butchered all the words.
34	03:16	Everyone around me laughed and the teacher just stood there silently.
35	03:23	I remember clenching that desk, wanting to disappear, wishing to be made small, invisible.
36	03:31	I went home that day and told my mom I wasn't going back to school.
37	03:34	The laughter and ridicule in school created deep fear and anxiety inside me.
38	03:40	I spoke differently and this clearly was wrong.
39	03:44	It saddened me that I couldn’t access that part of myself that was so excited about language because my way of speaking, with an accent or inventing words or pronouncing words as I heard them, was deemed wrong.
40	03:56	I said "sans giving" instead of Thanksgiving.
41	04:00	I mix both languages: "I have to 'plancha' it."
42	04:04	"Give me the 'trapo.'"
43	04:05	"Mom wants her 'chanclas.'" "'Oye ye estas' ready?"
44	04:08	(Laughter)
45	04:11	I remember staying up late to practice pronouncing words so the kids at school wouldn't make fun of me.
46	04:17	I hated myself for not fitting in, not realizing that there was a hierarchy much bigger than me at play here.
47	04:23	I felt I was the one who was wrong.
48	04:27	And it wasn't only me who was being corrected and laughed at.
49	04:30	I saw teachers correct some of my peers, usually anyone who wasn't white, shaming immigrant kids for saying "quota" instead of "quarter," “la pena bota” instead of “peanut butter,” “con flae” instead of “cornflakes.”
50	04:47	(Laughter)
51	04:48	It seemed all of us were crossing an invisible language boundary.
52	04:53	A boundary policed by the teacher and maintained by the students' laughter.
53	04:58	Now let's take a step back and see what's really happening here.
54	05:03	We tend to think of language, in this case English, as a closed circle, where all of us English speakers exist.
55	05:09	A closed circle where correct English is elevated at the center.
56	05:14	When someone says something in another language, we know it is outside of that circle.
57	05:20	When someone speaks English with an accent or without proper grammar, we know it is inside the circle, but not correct, not at the center.
58	05:30	So we push both the language and the people who speak it to the margins.
59	05:35	We really don't consider how looking at language as a closed circle with a solid center excludes so many people, so many ways of speaking and making sense of the world.
60	05:46	How this in turn creates a hierarchy of language.
61	05:51	I learned about how this hierarchy isolates people the hard way, by watching the condescension of cashiers at the grocery store every time my mom wouldn't pronounce things right.
62	06:01	By watching my mother shrink at every joke at her mispronunciation until she stopped trying to speak English altogether and would just sit quietly in shame.
63	06:11	My mother, who back in Colombia will call the manager, the owner if needed, when her coupons wouldn't scan because “This rice is two for one, señorita, it says it right here.
64	06:21	Llámame el manager.”
65	06:23	(Laughter)
66	06:25	I can still see her, hand on hips, negating with her head, articulating like homegirl got a degree in bargaining studies.
67	06:33	(Laughter)
68	06:34	My mom, the discounts queen, would not leave until she felt justice was served between coupons and rice.
69	06:43	Proudly bragged to her sisters about it later over coffee.
70	06:48	I walked alongside her with a warm grounding feeling.
71	06:53	My mom could take anyone.
72	06:57	When we moved to the States, her sense of being a valued human being deserving of respect was destroyed by ridicule and condescension.
73	07:07	As I slowly became aware of this hierarchy, I realized that my mom, my sister, my friends and me, we were all close to the bottom.
74	07:13	We were on the margins of this circle and therefore of society.
75	07:17	We couldn't reach the center because of our ethnic and cultural background.
76	07:22	We sat in shame because our way of speaking wasn't as "refined."
77	07:27	I realize also that this hierarchy permeates all spaces and it's a gatekeeper when it comes to accessing resources and opportunities.
78	07:35	I wasn't hired on several jobs because I couldn’t speak “correct English,” the managers letting me know, "We're just a little worried the customers won't understand you."
79	07:44	My writing also hasn't been published in many places because it mixes both languages and this is seen as less than, not pure.
80	07:52	My writing has been ridiculed in many academic workshops where several times white writers have made fun of my use of Spanglish out loud, rereading the text for all to hear, questioning its legitimacy as real literature.
81	08:06	My abilities as a student, a worker, my value as a human being, has been questioned over and over again.
82	08:15	And yet.
83	08:17	There's beauty and connection in these marginal spaces.
84	08:22	For people in the margins, language creates cohesion between us.
85	08:26	That "different" way of speaking is a secret door only some of us have access to.
86	08:31	A door to an underworld of language freedom.
87	08:36	This world begins for me not in Miami, but in the former "Esta Noche" gay Latino bar here, in San Francisco.
88	08:44	(Cheers and applause)
89	08:49	Ten years ago, I moved to San Francisco in search of my freak tribe and found the “queenas” tucked in a dingy bar on 16th Street, ironing their wigs and filling up their bras.
90	09:02	Queena -- it’s a blend between “queen” and “reina,” Spanish for queen.
91	09:07	Queena.
92	09:08	(Laughter)
93	09:10	It was at "Esta Noche" that I learned about the long history of LGBT people creating new words to reflect our own histories, our own realities.
94	09:20	It was here that my passion for language bloomed again.
95	09:26	The story begins with the words.
96	09:29	"Fierce," "perra," "sissy marica," "come here, butch papi."
97	09:36	Here, Spanglish blends with queer slang as drag queens take the center stage to the roar of the crowd.
98	09:45	Here, there's unapologetic invention and creativity.
99	09:50	It is not only a mix of two languages, but a constructing, a shaping of new words to reflect our own bodies, our own gender, the ways that we come together.
100	10:01	Here, you don't have to be a man or a woman.
101	10:04	You don't have to be gay or straight.
102	10:07	Here, the categories for gender are infinite, as are the words to describe body parts, sexual orientation, feelings.
103	10:17	Here, language lets her hair down, "se suelta las trenzas."
104	10:24	Gloria Trevi plays in the background as the next drag queen gets introduced as a non-binary femme daddy mermaid of the revolution.
105	10:33	(Laughter)
106	10:35	We all snap our fingers, "Get it! Mami!"
107	10:40	I stand next to someone with hot pink hair and a T-shirt that reads "Gender queer cyborg."
108	10:46	(Laughter) Boys in crop tops yell, "Yes, perras."
109	10:51	They sashay up and down, twirling on the dance floor.
110	10:55	"Serve," someone says, “Bring it,” someone responds, “¡Esa!” we all roar.
111	11:03	We wear glitter on our bodies and glitter on our language.
112	11:07	We feel seen.
113	11:09	Our realities take up space and therefore we experience a sense of belonging.
114	11:14	We feel less alone, connected.
115	11:17	We add a sense of magic and possibility to the world.
116	11:21	We make it less boring and more inviting.
117	11:25	Now think of the ways that you speak, the words that you use.
118	11:31	Think of how you have borrowed words from your parents, your friends.
119	11:35	This is how you know you belong to those circles, right?
120	11:38	By echoing back that language.
121	11:41	The place where you grow up shows up in your accent, how you punctuate, how you use your vowels.
122	11:47	This is your very own language wardrobe.
123	11:52	Each one of us has a different wardrobe depending on our background, our ethnicity, our access to education, our immigration status, the places that we come from.
124	12:02	Now consider how some of the most glittery, the most creative language wardrobes are erased, stigmatized or only seen as spectacles.
125	12:12	But what if, alongside the language wardrobes we see and hear every day, we also allowed for the freaky, the weird, the ones that we don't understand.
126	12:24	Wouldn't our world be that much more interesting?
127	12:27	Wouldn't our notion of what it means to be human expand?
128	12:32	What would happen if these different ways of using language, of mixing English with other languages, of making up words, were not considered less than, but instead, manifestations of creative brilliance?
129	12:45	People are, after all, inventing, creating, mixing.
130	12:51	What would happen if, for instance, we didn’t see English and Spanish as mutually exclusive, as two separate languages, but as open circles touching each other?
131	13:01	Imagine legislation written in Spanglish or traffic signs written in queer slang.
132	13:07	"Men at Werk."
133	13:09	(Laughter) Imagine textbooks where children also learn words such as “gender queer” and “queena,” where they learn how to write, “Ahí te guacho mami.”
134	13:28	That playfulness will seep into our own lives, lighten our worlds.
135	13:33	Maybe we would treat each other better.
136	13:36	Our daily interactions will be kinder, less uncomfortable and fearful around those who speak differently.
137	13:43	Less isolating and damaging for those of us on the margins.
138	13:49	I want to invite us to suspend the idea of a "correct" way of speaking, a "correct" way of using language.
139	13:57	And let's allow for those rhythms, those incorrect words at the margins to rise up.
140	14:03	Let's listen.
141	14:05	Recognize the glitter in each other's way of speaking.
142	14:08	Activate that kid at the dining table who is in awe and curious about language and its world.
143	14:16	That child listening to her tías drop their "Ay, my goodness," as they drop their “Ajá, baby, come pa acá.”
144	14:26	Their endless possibility to bring surprise and magic through language.
145	14:31	Let's dance "pegadito" with language.
146	14:35	Let's tune into the ways that each one of us speaks.
147	14:39	The many different ways that each one of us make sense of the world.
148	14:43	Thank you.
149	14:45	(Applause and cheers)

Julián Delgado Lopera: The poetry of everyday language