Both Asakiyume and I work with Spanish-speaking students who are learning English, but she has gone above and beyond in her efforts. She learned Spanish on Duolingo and began listening to Spanish songs in order to connect better with high school students.
I know that Tina, who’s in one of the classes where I volunteer, is getting impatient with me for not doing the same after four years, but if I decide to learn a language, it’s going to be Swedish. So I can understand what Erik is saying to my grandchildren.
Barry Svrluga reports at the Washington Post about a baseball player who was more like Asakiyume in this regard.
“Brian Dozier had 4,900 major league plate appearances, and only 482 of them came with the Washington Nationals. When he retired from baseball last month, he did so as a Minnesota Twin, the team that drafted him, developed him, brought him to the big leagues and made him an all-star.
“And yet in Washington … Dozier is best remembered as the shirtless dude from Mississippi, … crooning reggaeton lyrics in … Spanish? …
‘I think we, as Americans, need to take it upon ourselves to say, “Hey, these guys are going to be playing for a championship just like us, and you need real camaraderie to make that happen, and in order to have that, we need to take it upon ourselves to learn Spanish,” ‘ Dozier said. …
“[Baseball is] a team sport, and in some ways — ways as undeniable as they are difficult to pin down — team dynamics matter deeply. Baseball players spend ungodly amounts of time with one another, from early in the afternoon until late at night, on buses and planes, in hotels and restaurants (at least when there’s not, um, a pandemic), for eight months of the year. They come from backgrounds both affluent and poor. They are Black and White, American and Asian and Latino.
“That last part, it’s important. According to data released by Major League Baseball, nearly one in four players on 2020 Opening Day rosters or injured lists came from a Spanish-speaking country. That would affect any company trying to get its employees to work together, so it has to affect baseball teams.
“ ‘There’s so many times where things have gotten lost in translation,’ Dozier said. ‘Just small stuff, on the field, off the field, in the dugout, in the clubhouse. And all you need — it could be one word. An expression. It could be anything.’ …
“Long ago, when he was in the minor leagues, … he decided to learn Spanish.
“ ‘There were so many great guys that I became friends with, but I really couldn’t break that real true friendship barrier,’ Dozier said by phone last week, ‘because you couldn’t really communicate in the way that you need to communicate in to have that real bond.’
“Dozier had no experience with Spanish, but he took up Rosetta Stone, the language immersion software, and began teaching himself after ballgames and on bus rides. He learned the basics, but there were issues.
” ‘Rosetta Stone kind of taught you the proper way to speak Spanish,’ Dozier said, ‘but not the slang you use in the clubhouse.’
“During one of his offseasons in the minors, he played winter ball in Venezuela. Around that same time, he met Eduardo Escobar, who was new to the Twins organization. They didn’t know they would play seven years together. Still, they made a decision: make each other better.
” ‘I taught him English,’ Dozier said. ‘He taught me a lot of Spanish, just how to communicate day in and day out and stuff like that. I took it upon myself to start reading books on planes and bus rides just to kind of teach myself more. And then obviously the best way to learn it is being around it every day and actually using it.’
“A funny thing then happened for Dozier: He became friends — close friends — with many of his Latin teammates. Go figure. Escobar, now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, missed the beginning of a team meeting last week to call into Dozier’s retirement ceremony. ‘I call him one of my best friends to this day,’ Dozier said.
“[Major League Baseball] has come miles and miles in fostering a more welcoming culture for its Latin players. Most clubs offer some sort of Spanish instruction, and MLB has mandated that each team designate an interpreter so players who aren’t comfortable speaking English can conduct interviews and therefore convey their thoughts and personalities to largely English-speaking fan bases.
“But Dozier’s approach is the right one. Why not meet teammates where they are, making them comfortable rather than demanding they conform — or at least allow them time to develop? …
“Dozier took the time. And now, even though he was in Washington for just one season, his imprint remains here. Not because of much that he did with his bat or glove. But because when the Nationals celebrated their postseason victories, there was Dozier — bare-chested, in the center of a group of Latin players — crooning the song ‘Calma’ by Puerto Rican star Pedro Capó, which became the Nats’ anthem.”
More here.
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