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Ss Ss The notions of modernization filtering into Cuba from the United States carried with them a small universe of neologisms, whose function was both practical and symbolic: they gave names to experiences for which the old lexicon of colonial Cuba seemed to lack words.1 Overnight, in urban areas, barberías became “barber shops,” bodegas turned into “groceries,” and many merchants put up notices announcing, “English Spoken Here.”2 At the appointed time or season, high society (or the “smart set”) celebrated “teas” and “garden parties” and spent its summer holidays idling at yacht clubs. The social columns of fashionable magazines and periodicals were often laced with sentences in English, at the expense of French, which had previously been considered the chic language par excellence. While young men enthusiastically enjoyed the activity of different “sports”; “emancipated” women and young ladies, now known as “new women,” took up employment “outside the house” as “typists” in offices or “nurses” in hospitals. The political issues of the day were expounded on at “meetings” held on street corners or in “interviews” (conducted by “reporters”) published in the press. The alcaldes of pueblos were now given the title “mayor” and—to quote a popular play—went about “these worlds, previously of God, now of the Interventionist,” not on horseback as had been the custom but, in tune with the new times, on bicycles.3 The use of words and phrases in English began to extend beyond middle- or upper-class circles. In this respect, baseball jargon functioned as a precursor. Alluding to the remarkable popularity which baseball had already attained in three Attempts at Linguistic Colonization and the Struggle to Preserve Spanish Anglicized Words and Expressions and Their Tropes 66 Attempts at Linguistic Colonization Cuba during colonial times, a reporter for El Fígaro noted: “‘base-ball’ it seems has been the precursor to the intervention; we were so familiar, for so many years, with ‘bats,’ ‘pitchers,’ and ‘balls’ that when uttered by the government, the English terms ‘deputy collector,’ ‘chief of police’ really don’t sound very discordant to our ears.”4 As the year 1898 got underway, even a devoted partisan of independence like Máximo Gómez became interested in learning English. In a letter to José L. Rodríguez, editor of a book titled El inglés sin maestros (English without Instructors), Gómez commented on the need for a “simple and practical formula,” accessible to everyone, for studying the language.5 Approximately a year later, inexpensive language texts, such as El inglés al alcance de todos (English for Everyone) or El inglés sin maestros en veinte lecciones (English without Instructors in Twenty Lessons), were on sale everywhere.6 The practice of dropping elementary English-language words and phrases into ordinary speech was not restricted to teachers and students or to office workers and people in the business world. Indeed, a reporter for the New York Times commented that in Havana even the shoeblacks in the streets began to solicit customers in choppy English, while the beggars, determined to extract some benefit from the U.S. presence, learned to implore, in broken English, “Please give me a cent.”7 The language of the newly arrived Anglo-Americans soon became familiar to the average Cuban through the proliferation of signs and notices as well as the advertisements which appeared for a seemingly endless supply of consumer products imported from the “North.” In the wake of a gathering stream of thousands of North American tourists, soldiers, businessmen, merchants , journalists, workers, and fortune seekers, Havana filled up with signs and advertisements written in English. “On Obispo Street,” writer and journalist Enrique Hernández Millares attested, “even before the Spanish troops had been evacuated, one would read ‘Shirt Store,’ ‘American Shoes,’ as if the merchants had calculated ahead of time that the change would be drastic and definitive, and that English was going to be spoken from the very first day after the flags were changed at El Morro.”8 Some advertisements were bilingual, directed equally at Cuban and Anglo audiences; others used an odd mixture of words and phrases from both languages . A good example of this type of “hybrid” advertisement appeared in the Havana daily El Reconcentrado. In June 1899 the paper carried a notice by Crusellas’ Store announcing the opening of a salón de descanso (lounge) for “ladies” in its establishment, “where all flavors of ‘ice cream’ would be sold by pretty young ladies.”9 [18.119.126...

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