Tamales (San Antonio, Anton, Liverpool: home, to buy, high school)

[Septgirl75]

Hi,
I am wanting to buy some tamales. Can anyone recommend someone that makes them home made so I can buy from them.
You can send me an e-mail privately if you would rather not post their personal info.
Thank you so much!

[Merovee]

My mother-in-law made the best ones, way better than can be gotten at the molina, more filling for one, and would sell them but sadly this is the first year she is not going to make any. So I am also in the market.

[elnina]

Delicious Tamales and Ruben's Tamales have the best reviews.

[blizzrd]

Don't mean to offend anyone but in my personal experience...Delicious Tamales are horrible. All sorts of "junk" in the filling besides meat. I'm talking fat and grissle.....nasty. For my money...the absolute BEST ones are Rubens and Tellez but you better get there early and be prepared to wait in line.

[elnina]

I don't eat tamales, so the opinion is solely based on customers reviews.
Delicious Tamales were awarded First Place, 2009 Reader's Choice Awards by
San Antonio-Express-News.
Ruben's Tamales have very high ratings too...

[blizzrd]

Yeah I've read that before and have heard that from a lot of people and I just don't get it. Ruben's and Tellez are far better. You know something interesting I saw on a cooking show once (I think it was Rick Bayless) the name "tamale" is incorrect. A single one is a tamal, with the plural being tamales. You basically add the "es" to the word. Somewhere along the line, when talking about a single one, people have dropped just the "s" and called it a tamale (tam-al-ee) which, apparently, is wrong.

[L210]

Interesting fact. I don't know if the word was Americanized or it's just said incorrectly because a lot of people here speak improper Spanish.

[Merovee]

Correct that in proper Spanish it is tamal in the singular.

Tamale is the proper word in English for a single one so no one is wrong for saying it that way. The original Nahuatl word for one is tamalli which appears close enough to the English.

In the local vernacular spoken here (Tex-Mex) many simply call just one a tamale with a Spanish pronunciation: thah-maul-eh.

Oh, and the local vernacular is a distinct dialect, it is not improper Spanish lol though many do falsely believe that.

[L210]

No, I'm pretty sure it's improper. I remember in high school doing a group assignment with a boy whose parents were from Mexico. He was fluent in Spanish because his parents didn't speak any English. He tried to be smart with me when I was correcting him by saying, "I speak Spanish. I don't need to learn it. Just let me do the assignment." Anyway, we failed that assignment because of his ignorance and arrogance. The least successful students in the class were those who spoke Spanish at home because they had hard habits to break. We were learning Latin American Spanish which is different from what is spoken in Spain. I know there are different dialects, but even American English has the same grammar rules and sentence structure as British English. Most Americans and British people speak improper English, so I'm sure Spanish has been thoroughly butchered here.

[Merovee]

That is like thinking that Yiddish is bad German. It is not but it is a dialect of German. Or that Louisiana French Creole is bad French. It is a creole language.

Portuñol on the other hand is not a creole language but code-switching between Portuguese and Spanish along the Brazilian border with other South American countries. They are not speaking bad Spanish or Portuguese but Portuñol. That is how they communicate with each other.

Spoiler

Languages have to be born somehow and they can also die. Languages are living things that do evolve. Spanish (Castillian) is mainly a mix of Latin and Arabic. I am sure someone long ago said it was just improper Latin but in reality it was Vulgar Latin mixed with Arabic, and other languages, that became Castillian. Spain itself has several languages spoken today which are proper languages of their own, from Catalan to Galician.

The example you have given proves only that the student in question believe the dialect he spoke was Mexican Spanish or Castillian, it is not, it is Tex-Mex, it is not even Spanglish which is code-switching. He failed because he did not speak the kind of Spanish taught in class but spoke the regional dialect known as Tex-Mex and thought they were the same.

Tex-Mex is not a language, it is a dialect of Spanish. Spanglish is code-switching between English and Spanish. Natives do both here, use the proper dialect and also code-switch. It is not bad Spanish or English but the way certain people communicate with each other. We usually only speak to other natives this way and know when to speak just Spanish (for recent Mexican immigrants) or just English (to other Americans). But these are ways of talking that are proper for this area, that make it home for us, that are passed down from generation to generation, and anyone considering it bad anything is just wrong and that is understandable since not everyone is well read in the matter.

There still remains varying opinion on the matter.

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/1...-or-a-language

note however that tamale exists in Spanish dialect

tamale - Wiktionary

Tamale is proper in certain Spanish dialects, the one spoken here for one. People can visit or move from Spain, Argentina, or even Mexico but the Spanish they speak, the dialect of Spanish they speak that is, is not the same dialect spoken here. A dialect is always correct for its region. What is taught in Spanish class is Mexican Spanish or Castillian but not the regional dialect. That is not unheard of. There are many regional dialects of English, tons, and what they learn in school and speak at home are not the same. Just look up Scouse (English dialect spoken in Liverpool) or Geordie if you want to hear how different it sounds from British English.