Words Migrate

Some Spanish words, like flautas and burritos, are absorbed into English because they describe something culturally unique. Other examples of assimilated words include dances such as cumbia, salsa, and ranchera.

Our focus, however, is on the large group of cognates that have established dual residency and migrated into English and Spanish. Migrate itself is one of these words; its Spanish counterpart is migrar. In this section, you will read an excerpt from the poem “movimiento” by Texas poet Ire'ne Lara Silva. This exercise will help increase your awareness of cognates. Although you may not recognize all of the Spanish or English words, the cognates, which exist in both languages, will provide clues about the poem’s meaning.

For an English translation of the poem, click here.

movement
              my life written with words buried in all
those roads   carved with hands   feet  sweat blood
the roads   we   have   claimed   as   ours   because of the
hours days   months   years      of our    lives    spent
traveling     and re-traveling   our lives    in the
highways the gravel      the pitch      the dotted yellow
lines   movement                                 greeting dawn on
the road my six year old hands on my lap  watching my
face blown   by the   wind   into   a   bird all beak my
cheekbones and wings my hair like feathers and my
mother’s dark hands my mother’s dark eyes shaping
the curving roads  movement                 of feet  and
swinging hands and  bent  backs   in the  fields
kerchiefed  heads  and long sleeved shirts  in  the  heat
to keep the dusts out  crossing  and recrossing the land
walking and working driving in our little caravan
crossing Tejas and sometimes spilling over   onions
carrots   watermelon cantaloupe sorghum corn rice   and
sorghum again   then sugar beets and cottonseed then
back to onion in the Valley  we  traveled those roads again
and again   until   the roads learned our names   and
waited for our return   the land does not change even
if the sunlight seems to have changed   when the
names  changed  when  the  people  changed       when
everything changed   movement

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Click on the words to listen to pronunciation of the Spanish cognates in the poem. Then you’ll answer some questions.

To answer the questions about the vocabulary words in “movimiento,” you will need to use context clues. You may want to review the lesson on context clues before you start. Read the following questions. Using your notes, write your responses. When you are finished, check your understanding below.

1. Which of the cognates is spelled almost exactly the same in English and in Spanish?
2. How does the mixture of Spanish, cognates, and English help support  the meaning of the poem?
3. The English/Spanish cognate melancholic/melancólica can be used to describe this account of migrant workers. What does melancholic mean?

Check Your Understanding

1. caravana, Tejas
2. The cognates help provide clues about the meaning of the words we don’t know. The Spanish words add context and authenticity to the theme of the poem. The English words help us know that the speaker is talking about migrant workers in the U.S. who live in two worlds where both languages are spoken. Together, the English and Spanish words provide a cultural context that adds mood and meaning to the poem.
3. heartsick, mournful, sad

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