Let’s set the scene: It’s day one at site. You arrive at school, wearing your business casual button-up and nice shoes. You shake hands with your rector, wave at the curious, giggling students. You exchange pleasantries with your counterpart. Then, you accompany them to your first class. The teacher invites you to the front of the class, where you excitedly introduce yourself, using the simple vocabulary, short sentences, and slow speech you’ve practiced.
“Good morning. My name is Maddy. I am from the United States. Nice to meet you.”
Next, awkward silence. Forty eighth graders stare at you. A second passes. Two. Then, A brave chistoso raises their hand.
“No entendation teacher!”
The entire class bursts into laughter. You gape at them for a moment, confused. That is neither an English nor Spanish word you recognize. You turn to your counterpart, and their exasperated expression tells you they’ve heard this joke many, many times.
By now, we volunteers are familiar with that comment. We’ve no doubt heard a hundred variations, such as “pailation,” “ayudation,” and so on. The creativity of these kids truly knows no limits. These words are understood, yet hold no lexical meaning in English. So what in tarnation is going on?
We’ve undoubtedly deduced the origin: The Spanish verb “entender” means “to understand.” By adding the English suffix “-tion,” students create their own - supposedly – English word. In linguistics, this phenomenon is called interlanguage. Interlanguage is the sort of limbo state in between the native language (for our students, Spanish) and the target language (English). It is characterized by a unique blend of both languages – their sounds, vocabulary, and grammar – in which the learner applies features from their native language or overgeneralizes rules from the target language. Think of the viral “no sabo kid” trend. The speaker, aware of the general rule in Spanish for the first person singular “yo” form, drops the -ar, -er, or -ir ending, and adds the suffix -o, and assumes “I know” should be “sabo.” But a native speaker knows this verb is an exception—that “sabo” doesn’t exist. Instead it is replaced by “sé.” This is interlanguage.
A similar process occurs with our Spanish-speaking students, who take the verb “entender” and create our counterparts’ living nightmare: “entendation.” As discussed, one characteristic of interlanguage is the overgeneralization of patterns used in the target language. One such pattern students have been exposed to, usually unintentionally by their teachers, is the idea that some Spanish words can become English words by adding the morpheme “-tion” (pronounced “-shan”). A morpheme is a sequence of sounds that carries meaning in a language. In this case, “-tion” is a morpheme that changes a verb into a noun, such as in “possess” becoming “possession” or “introduce” becoming “introduction.” However, we know that no kid at the colegio is being taught the intricacies of the English morpheme “-tion,” at least not before they have mastered the infamous “to be.” Yet, students notice that this “-tion” pops up all over the place. They notice that sometimes the pattern works, like in “decoración” to “decoration.” In an attempt to follow this pattern, students inadvertently make mistakes, creating the all-too-familiar nonwords and phrases like “entendation” and “tengo sedation” (from “tengo sed,” meaning “I am thirsty”). Due to their humorous effect, these phrases have become cemented in the students’ classroom dialect.
But why are they adding “-tion” to everything? “Entendation” is certainly not an isolated event. Our students have conjured countless other “-tion” non-words—another notorious example is “ayudation” (“ayuda” + “-tion”), used to ask for help. In fact, whenever a student asks how to say something, some class payaso almost always jumps in with a “-tion” word, from “cocination” (“cocina” + “-tion,” meaning kitchen), to the more hilarious “pailation” (a derivative of the slang term “paila,” similar in meaning to the English idiom “you’re up the creek”). It’s not like the suffix “-tion” is really that common in English. So why are they always sticking a “-tion” onto the end of words instead of any other suffix? There are loads of other suffixes to choose from. Many of which are much more common and taught earlier than “-tion.” For example, “-er” for jobs like “waiter” or “teacher” is taught in beginner language classes, as is “-ing” to form the present progressive, like “studying” or “eating.” The suffix “-tion,” on the other hand, boasts few common words. Thefreedictionary.com lists 17,299 words that end in “-er” and 17,110 that end in “-ing,” compared to 6,536 words that end in “-tion.” That’s less than half of either of the aforementioned suffixes. Yet, “-tion” is the one students, without fail, have chosen over and over. Why?
To answer this question, I looked at Colombian ESL textbooks. A glance at the first few chapters shows an abundance of “-tion” words. These words show up constantly in ESL resources, far more than in the average native speaker's conversation. For example, in the textbook English, Please! words like “conversation,” “communication,” “nationality,” and “introduction” are consistently featured. While not overwhelming, they appear often throughout the book. Teachers also use a number of these words in their directions. For examples, “Answer the questions,” “Match the occupations to the description,” and “Choose the correct option,” and so on. Although many of these words are uncommon in everyday English conversations, the ESL classroom is rife with them. This creates an abnormally high input frequency of the morpheme “-tion” for students. Past studies have demonstrated how the frequency of certain language features (words, grammar structures, “-tion”) can influence second language acquisition (The nerds among us can check out Peter Robinson and Nick C. Ellis’s “Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition”). The consistent reinforcement of this morpheme in both written and spoken forms within the English classroom may contribute to the popularity of its usage among Colombian students learning English.
Additionally, the sound [sh] stands out to Spanish speakers as different. Unless you're from Argentina where the letters “ll” and “y” are pronounced as [sh], the sound [sh] hardly exists in Spanish, save for those moments when you’re fending off un perro bravo with the classic “shht!” (on the coast maybe you’re more used to “uche!” but for us interior folks we know a “shht!” gets the job done). For our Colombian students, this makes the sound [sh] what linguist Vincent Boswijk calls in his article “What is Salience,” salient, meaning it catches the eye (or in this case, the ear) and attracts attention. Spanish speakers notice this sound more so than others, and quickly associate it with English. This likely explains why students more readily latch onto the morpheme “-tion” rather than other more common English morphemes, like the aformentioned “-er” and “-ing,” which are less salient in Spanish. To them, using the sound [sh] makes their speech sound instantly more English-like. By adding the notorious “-tion” to their words, students can give their words some of that exciting English flavor.
Now, we’ve all seen the cringy English paraphernalia—restaurant signs that advertise “coffe” or the señora rocking the shirt that just says “sexy.” We’ve seen firsthand the social reputation of English, and how it is seen as trendy, and cool, or as some might say, “sexy.” Therefore, students might use the English morpheme “-tion” [-shan] to portray themselves as different, funny, and cool by association. By adding it to any Spanish word, a student can create instant class chaos and five straight minutes of laughter.
Which leads us to the real reason kids are obsessed with “no entendation”: it’s hilarious. Students aren’t doing it because they think it’s correct. After all, the teacher has told them a million times to say “I don’t understand,” not “no entendation.” And yet, they keep doing it. Although interlanguage and salience may explain the origin of our counterparts’ embarrassment, the honest truth is that it has been cemented in the students’ dialect not out of a love for linguistic intricacies, but because no colegio kid can resist the urge to mildly irritate their teachers.
I enjoyed this article immensely! When our son Colin was 2, living in Bolivia, he would do something similar, adding ando to every English word, ie: estoy playando.