Is there a connection between language learning and the Wally home run helmet?
After celebrating Ceddanne Rafaela’s walk-off Pesky Pole homer against the Angels, was anyone else impressed by his English-language interview on the field after the game?
I sure was.
Ceddy is from Curaçāo, where it’s common to speak several languages. In fact, he speaks four. His first language is Papiamento, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d opted to speak to Jahmai Webster through a Spanish interpreter, like many ballplayers do, since he speaks Spanish fluently.
For the last decade, MLB teams have been required to hire at least two Spanish interpreters. It makes a lot of sense to do that internally, for instruction, business, and team building, and it’s also common to use interpreters in a public-facing way. Interpreters reached a new level of notoriety last season of course, when Ippei Mizuhara shamelessly scammed Shohei Ohtani. The Sox had their own moment in May when Rafael Devers gave his infamous statement to the press about playing the field, with his interpreter on the front line.
Players generally prefer to speak to the media in their first language, through their interpreter, even those who speak English (though surely at varying levels of fluency). We can see in interviews that Wilyer Abreu, for example, seems to understand English quite well, but prefers to answer in Spanish, then have his words interpreted.
I get it, and no judgment. The stakes are high. It’s a matter of being able to communicate nuance—the hardest part of speaking a language that’s not your first one. And maybe even of priorities: players working hard to get to and perform well at the MLB level may not have the bandwidth for language lessons. Also, I imagine it’s a rare person who would willingly open themselves up—on a public stage, in the age of going viral—to vocab or pronunciation blunders, or take the risk of looking foolish by not understanding a question. I give Ceddanne immense credit for putting himself out there.
It occurred to me too that we Americans are not very generous in receiving others’ attempts to speak English. Unlike Italians, for one example, who are generally highly complimentary and seemingly delighted by people’s attempts to share in their language and culture. So in case no one has told Ceddanne, I will: he speaks beautifully. I was especially impressed with his American accent in places, and abbreviations like ’Preciate it; that tells me he’s still learning.
I can’t help but feel this ties in to Mike Carlucci’s suggestion for Ceddanne’s new nickname: Nuff Cedd.
After Ceddanne’s walk-off homer, I ended my evening with a Duolingo lesson. Duolingo is an app that is best known for teaching a wide array of languages, though they’ve recently added tracks for math, music, and chess. Duolingo has been an integral part of my French learning for a couple of years now.
The company prides itself on its “quirky” style of branding. Some call their brand chaotic or “unhinged”—but in a good way. Their mascot is a bright green owl called Duo.
He’s sometimes the subject of a lesson, or the butt of a light joke. Here’s sassy, muscle-bound Duo in celebration mode.
Duo often appears at moments where a notification is in order, but there’s nothing run-of-the-mill about the form those notifications take, Duo might convey his concern for your progress by having his face melt off. A celebration of a mistake-free streak might entail his brainstem erupting out of the top of his green feathered head, pushing his brain ahead of it. Then, faster than I can say “Oh ! La vache !” another, smaller brain and brainstem pop up out of the bodily wreckage like a pink periscope. Picture Russian dolls, but way weirder.
I provide this context to explain why I periodically check out Duolingo’s merch. It’s totally on-brand, which means there’s nothing so simple as a T-shirt in the Duolingo store. That’s why, when I got pinged after Wednesday’s walk-off about new merch, I had to immediately check it out. Scrolling past summery items which include a World Cruise Pin featuring Duo in a captain’s hat, I found this Duo the Owl Mask. It was presented without further comment.
Random, right? If I weren’t a Red Sox fan, I don’t know what I would’ve thought. (I mean, it’s way too early for Halloween. A little plushie play?) But in Red Sox Nation, we have precedence for this: more than anything, I was startled at the similarity to the Wally home-run celebration helmet.
How’s that for zeitgeist? Could it be that Jarren Duran and Raquel Ferreira, acknowledged co-creators of the helmet, are learning other languages in their free time? Or were inspired, even a little, by Ceddanne or other language learners on the Sox who gamify their learning with Duolingo?
Or, who’s paying attention to Red Sox baseball over at Duolingo? They’re headquartered in Pittsburgh.
We may never know but ça pourrait être. It could be.