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Sotomayor: No Spanish Adjectives?

On the National Journal?s new Ninth Justice blog yesterday Stuart Taylor passed on Brooklyn College history professor K.C. Johnson?s generally favorable comments on Sonia Sonomayor?s Princeton senior thesis, though Johnson did note a few discordant trendy leftist notes from the 1970s (such as her insistence on calling the U.S.Congress the ?North American Congress? or the ?mainland Congress?).

Perhaps more troubling, however, is something from a 1996 speech that Taylor quotes without comment:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor said in a 1996 speech at Princeton University?s Third World Center (now called the Carl A. Fields Center) that when she arrived at Princeton in 1972 as her high school?s valedictorian, ?I found out that my Latina background had created difficulties in my writing that I needed to overcome. For example, in Spanish we do not have adjectives. A noun is described with a preposition.... My writing was stilted and overly complicated, my grammar and vocabulary skills weak.?

To catch up with her prep school classmates, Sotomayor recalled, ?I spent one summer vacation reading children?s classics that I had missed in my prior education -- books like Alice In Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice. My parents spoke Spanish; they didn?t know about these books. I spent two other summers teaching myself anew to write.?

She taught herself well, graduating summa cum laude and winning the prestigious Pyne Prize in her senior year. The prize was for academic excellence and -- Judge Sotomayor said in the 1996 speech ? ?because of my work with Accion Puertorriquena, the Third World Center and other activities in which I participated, like the university?s Discipline Committee.?

Excuse me, but after all that self-taught grammar, etc., could 1976 Princeton summa Sonia Sonomayor really still believe, in 1996, that ?in Spanish we do not have adjectives. A noun is described with a preposition??

From a brief lesson on Spanish adjectives:

In Spanish, most adjectives change form, depending upon whether the word they modify is masculine or feminine. Notice the difference between ?the tall boy? and ?the tall girl.?

el chico alto
la chica alta

Adjectives also change form depending upon whether the word they modify is singular or plural. Notice the difference between ?the tall boy? and ?the tall boys? ; ?the tall girl? and ?the tall girls.?

el chico alto
los chicos altos
la chica alta
las chicas altas

Many common adjectives end in -o. These adjectives have four forms. The following words all mean ?tall?:

alto
alta
altos
altas

The correct form of the adjective depends upon the noun it modifies. Is the noun masculine or feminine? Singular or plural?

libro rojo
red book

pluma roja
red pen

libros rojos
red books

plumas rojas
red pens

As it happens, there is a perfectly appropriate Spanish adjective to describe this ?wise Latina?s? 1996 assertion that ?in Spanish we do not have adjectives?: loco.

Full post as published by Discriminations on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).