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Speaking of Latinos…

frau sally benz

In DR there’s this thing we do that I always find hard to explain to people who don’t do it because their reaction is basically “huhwha?” When you’re saying hi to somebody close to you who is older than you and/or is in some position of power/respect, you ask for their blessing. Like, that’s how you say hello. In Spanish it’s called pedir la bendicion, literally ask for the blessing. It goes something like this:

Me: Hi, please give me my blessing.
Them: Hi, this is me blessing you.

The words are hard to translate out of context, so it’s not quite that awkward, but it’s still kinda… weird.

Anywho, obviously when I was growing up, I thought this was standard, except then I realized nobody else did it except my Latino friends, but most of them were Dominican. Now I’m curious to know, who the heck actually does this?! I know Dominicans do and so do most Puerto Ricans I know, does anybody else? As in, 1) other Latinos and 2) other cultures in general.

I guess the power dynamics of this have always been strange to me. My parents were pretty lax about it, so we’ve never really done it with them, but if any other relative or close friend of my parents’ was there and we didn’t do this, we’d get in serious trouble. It’s basically the equivalent of spitting in their face, apparently. But it’s just odd because most of these people I hardly ever see, and I’m not even a religious person so why on earth am I asking you for a blessing, just to be in your presence?

I also find (and this is completely anecdotal and maybe only applies to my family) that men hardly ever do it with each other. Men will ask the women in the family, and women ask the men, and women ask the women, but very rarely have I seen men ask men. Sure, boys still ask it of their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, etc. but it seems like the older guys get then the less blessing they need from men… or… something…

27 thoughts on Speaking of Latinos…

  4. Yes, Eugenia, I can do that for you. What my peeps and I say is:

    Me: Bendicion (or, more commonly, ‘cion) Mami/Papi/{insert person here}
    Them: Dios te la bendiga (ETA: or Dios bendiga)

    So, really, we don’t even say hello now that I think of it lol. We just ask for the blessing and then move on.

  6. Hey I am also Dominican and I used to do this… mostly to my uncle/aunts and grandparents… but I don’t do it anymore. I guess when I moved here that died out for me.

  7. This is interesting. I know other cultures have linguistic distinctions between being when you address someone with differing levels of…respect? Distance? (It always varied depending on who I asked.) But when I spent time in Russia (10 years ago so relevance today may vary) I was not supposed to address anyone with certain pronouns until we went thru this extensive verbal blessing kind of ritual. And much of it was based on age and gender. Always address elders and opposite gender with “respectful/distanced” pronouns, but with people girls younger or same aged and same…social situation (if they were married or had children they got the other title) then you used an informal set of pronouns. Not the same but another interesting example with similarities.

  8. Portugese do it too? Interesting… I wasn’t expecting that one.

    Also, this Russian ritual of which you speak sounds vaguely familiar. I believe my best friend growing up (who’s Russian) tried explaining it to me once. Does anybody know if that’s still practiced?

  9. So, I’m not Latina, but I lived in (central) Mexico for a bit. If this is done there, it’s not very common. No one I knew did this.

    Everyone I’ve known who has done this was Dominican or Puerto Rican.

    Did want to kick in another “sounds weird outside its context” greeting, though.

    In Paraguay, where I’ve also lived, people use the word “guapo/guapa” to mean hard-working instead of good-looking, as in standard Spanish. And they great each other in Guarani by saying:

    Ndeguapa!

    Hee, cheguapa. Ndeguapa avei.

    Which means … You’re hard-working!

    Yes, I am hard-working. You’re hard-working too.

    I used to think I was being made fun of if someone walked up to my house and found me reading in my hammock and told me I was hard-working, but it’s really just an expression.

  10. Puerto Ricans do this all the time. Though for us it mostly sounds like “dicion” when you ask for the blessing. The person asking the blessing is always the younger person, and it’s mostly done with family members but sometimes with family friends or elderly acquaintances. And if you’re “supposed” to ask a blessing from someone and you don’t, the person gets horribly offended. My mother and grandmothers would yell at me when I was little if I didn’t ask for bendicion.

    It wasn’t until my late teens/early 20s that I actually gave it any thought or analysis. It was just something you do, ya know? That’s how it is, so that’s how it’s done. But then I started thinking about it and when I realized I don’t actually believe in god or in blessings, I stopped asking for the bendicion when I greet relatives. Heh, that didn’t go over well. I was yelled at for years, made to feel like an insolent child for not “respecting” them by asking for the blessing. No fun.

    Now I’m nearing 30, and they’ve accepted that I’ll never ask for a bendicion from them again, but oh they still give me the blessing. When I call my parents, it usually goes “Hola mami”, “Hola Emily, dios te bendiga, como estas?”. The blessing now comes automatically, even though I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it.

  11. I speak a little Swahili and that language has a similar blessing for a social superior/someone older than you. I don’t think it’s as common as it used to be, and I’ve heard that people don’t use it very much in Kenya, but when I was in Tanzania I would greet my teachers, host parents and pretty much anyone my parents’ age or older with it, and small children would greet me the same way.

  12. Now I’m curious to know, who the heck actually does this?! I know Dominicans do and so do most Puerto Ricans I know, does anybody else? As in, 1) other Latinos and 2) other cultures in general.

    Kinda. In Sicilian, we’re expected to bless our elders/other persons of respect first. Assabenedica! (S’abbinirica, ‘Ssa banadica, etc. There are several spellings and pronunciations, depending on the region/city in Sicily.)

  13. Among the more religious of my fellow northern Mexicans “que Dios te bendiga”, or very often “que Diosito te bendiga” is how you say good-bye, especially if that person won’t see you until, say, next week or next month.

  14. I’ve spent some time in northern Mexico, and lived in Spain and I’ve never heard of this bendición greeting before.

    (nahui just mentioned this) I’m friends with quite a few Mexican families here (in the midwestern US) and they will frequently use “que dios te bendiga” when saying goodbye. But this seems to be more in the same sense as some English speaking people would say “god bless you” when you leave, and definitely does not include a ritual of asking for the bendición.

    @Sara – it seems like this kind of respectful/distanced pronoun system is at work in many languages. Both French and Spanish also have formal and informal pronouns which seem to operate a lot like what you described in Russian. You use the formal/respectful form of address with people older than you, bosses, etc. and you use the informal with people your own age or younger and other acquaintances who have given you permission to do so. At least in Spanish, who/when you use which pronouns can very greatly by country/region.

  16. This reminds me of something I saw as a visitor to a friend’s family – he is Filipino. From a quick google search of “mano” (which I remember as being the entirety of the verbal interaction, but I may be wrong) it looks as though “pagmamano” is the full term, and it seems to be both a sign of respect for elders and also possibly a way of asking for a blessing. Is there anyone more familiar with this who could speak to it?

  17. @Lisa: I asked my mom about this, since she has more experience with the pervasively catholic Mexican customs of yore, and spent some time in really remote, obscure, isolated rural areas of the country. And apparently there was a time when people did ask for a blessing when leaving the house. She said it was mostly children asking for/mothers giving blessings (her example was children leaving for school). Male authorities or other family members did not do this. And the name she gives this ritual is exactly frau sally’s, “pedir la bendición”.
    Maybe the same religious/familial custom evolved into a general good-bye in Mexico (and other places, maybe, who knows) and into a respectful greeting in DR and PR…

  18. Sounds like a leftover from various Sub-Saharan cultures to me. I have a class on Afro-Hispanic linguistics and a ton of African language families had intense phrase/tense systems to mark any hierarchical combo you could think of. The DR is exactly the place I’d guess something like that would’ve survived.
    I don’t think US Blacks have anything as specific as what you’re talking about. Just that you never, ever call an adult by their first name– something that I noticed is a bit more lax with my white friends. Now I’m all curious to see if any older US creoles used similar phrases. Maybe Gullah? Black Seminole?
    Agh! Quit posting interesting things! My curiosity is too easily piqued! lol

  19. I wasn’t aware that there was a similar tradition in parts of Africa, but it certainly makes sense for some Latinos to have inherited that, in a way. The possible Catholic connection is also interesting though.

  20. i’m a venezolana, and we def do it. depends on the family though, some are way lax about it or don’t incorporate it at all, and it’s definitely not insulting if you don’t ask for la bendicion, at least not in my fam. to this day i still ask my abuela for la bendicion, regardless of how ridiculous it seems to me when i actually think about it.

  21. In Hispanic cultures in the Southwest (mostly Mexican-American), we do the same thing. I have been blessed by grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and a cousin who is a priest. Usually, they bless before leaving on a trip or going away for an extended period of time. You can ask for the blessing or some will offer it.

    And then of course, there is the tradition of blessing homes, pets, etc. It probably comes from Catholicism and a mix of indigenous beliefs about the land being sacred.

  22. In Spain we don´t ask for the blessing, but we say Adiós, when we part. It comes from “a la buena de Dios”, so instead of saying googbye we say a kind of “stay with good.”
    An Ojalá, the spanish word for I wish, comes fron “Oh Allah”, the arabic God.

    OT, For me it’s very funny to look for the spanish meaning of words all over Hispanic countries, especially when we are talking about profanity, in Spain I can say “Cógeme”, and it only means “take me”, but if you say “Cógeme” to a mexican he will understand something totally different.
    Or in Spain “Concha”, it’s the short name for Concepción, and it is very common, but in Argentina it is different and so on.

  23. to chime in from a totally different background: in the mainly catholic southern german-speaking countys/countries like Bavaria or Austria you greet each other with “Grüß Gott” (and the younger one/hierarchic lower one is definitely expected to say it first).
    It literally translates as “greet god”; and although linguists are unsure if the “god” wasn’t maybe meant as “gut (=good)” in ancient times (and therefore it’s just a variant of “good greetings”), catholic priests will state that it means “may you be greeted/blessed by god”.
    Maybe a catholic obsession with blessings?

  25. I am Puerto Rican and every time I call my mother, when I say goodbye I have to say Bye, bendicion. Cause we say bye and adios interchangeably in Puerto Rico. It is customary in almost every family I know, irrespective of social class. My father in law will not forgive my kids if they forget to say bendicion when they see him or speak to him. To the ones that say it is a ridiculous tradition, I think it is not. It shows how families in our culture relate to each other. I always thought is out of love and not hierarchy. My husband still says bendicion to his father and male relatives older than him. They also still kiss in the cheek just like women do. So, I have kept that tradition with my children here in the US and I encourage everyone to do the same, just like kissing when you say hi. It is part of our culture.

  26. In India, I saw something similar with older adult family members — called “pranam” or something similar. I do not speak Hindi, and only spent a few months there, so I am by no means qualified to say with any certainty what the tradition actually is. However, when I was out at the market with my elderly host parents, and we ran into their younger relatives, those relatives would bend low to the ground and touch the feet of the older couple as a way of showing respect. It’s not quite asking for a blessing… but somewhat of a similar tradition.

  27. I’m Bolivian who has lived in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Honduras and in none of those places did I see or hear anybody “pedir la bendicion”. I’ve definitely heard “Dios te bendiga” when saying goodbye, usually for a trip or if you know you won’t see each other for a long time, but it’s usually only been grandparents and people their age. On the other, hand, nearly nobody in my family is very religious and that might have affected my experience.

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