On May 21, The New York Times ran a story by Melissa Clark entitled “A Yak Attack on Beef and Bison.” No, the Times wasn’t covering an assault at the New York Zoo. Instead Ms. Clark’s story told of the recent introduction of hairy, horny, Himalayan bovines onto Western rangelands. Apparently already some 30 yak ranches lend character, beauty, and flavor to the American landscape. Melissa Clark raised a good question in her piece but left it unanswered; what to call the people who work the ranches? Yak-boys and yak-girls? Yakeroos? Yakaleros? Perhaps you, the readers of Growing for Market, are planning to diversify your veg/flower operations to include yaks and this issue resonates with you. Perhaps not. But the correct answer to this naming issue can inform any student of Spanish no matter what you grow.

To any of us growing old and gray-haired at our agricultural pursuits, titles like yak-boy or yak-girl sound silly and immature. Both yakalero and yakaroo, by contrast, sound interesting and romantic. Not only that, both word inventions are appropriately rooted in frontier America’s Spanish-speaking past (and agricultural America’s Spanish-speaking present). From words like rancho to ranch, la riata to lariat, and rodear to rodeo, American popular speech has rounded up dozens of Spanish words from Mexican rancheros and branded them as English. And both yakalero and yakeroo are meaningful in a historical and linguistic context, though only one of them is really a correct substitution for yak-boy or yak-girl. So pull on your boots, saddle your horse and let’s go round up some suffixes.

Spanish is a flexible and suggestive language in part because it is rich with suffixes that can be appended to nouns and adjectives to add dimension, intensity, or moral tone. Take Ms. Clark’s word yakaroo. Yakaroo hints at buckaroo, an archaic western synonym for cowboy. Buckaroo in turn came from the Spanish word vaquero. In Spanish ‘b’ and ‘v’ are voiced almost identically. Vaquero comes from the word vaca, meaning cow, the suffix ‘ero’ being added to transform the word to mean “one who works with cows.” Following the same logic a person who works with flowers is a florero or florera depending on their gender. ‘A’ endings are feminine. A lechero is not a lecher, but a milk man, from leche, for milk. In Watsonville where we raise lots of strawberries or ‘fresas’, freseros and freseras abound.

You can easily add to your growing Spanish vocabulary by employing ero and era suffixes when appropriate but be aware that in some contexts ero endings mean ‘place of’, ‘field of’, or ‘producer of’. Thus alcachofero, from alcachofa, or artichoke, can mean artichoke plant. Atascadero, a nice California town’s name, actually means ‘place one gets stuck’, from the verb atascar meaning, to get bogged down. The suffix ‘ero’ can also mean container of or holder of. ‘Basurero’ is a dump or garbage can, from ‘basura’.

The word ‘yakalero’ is a bit more problematical and to my taste not as suitable as yakeroo to describe modern yak-boys and yak-girls. In Spanish the ‘al’ suffix is often used to mean field of, orchard of, patch of, plantation of, etc. Your radish patch is correctly a ‘rabanal’, from rábano for radish, and your weed patch is a ‘zacatal’, from zacate, for weeds. A yakal could therefore imply a place with a lot of yaks. Call yourself a yakalera and the era ending can be taken to mean you are a grown woman who works with yakals. It’s confusing. ‘Yakera’ seems a cleaner and clearer way to describe yourself.

Be aware, too, that ‘al’ suffixes when applied to adjectives mean ‘like’, or ‘relating to.’ Thus Spanish has ‘mental’, from ‘mente’ for the mind, intelectual from ‘el intelecto’ or intellect, and horizontal from ‘el horizonte’ or horizon. When you want to speak in Spanish about horizontal mental intellectuals, you can. See, you already know more Spanish than you thought.

On my farm we are planting lots of radicchio right now. I guess that makes my farm a ‘radical’ and me a ‘radiquero’. I’m having fun learning Spanish and I hope you are too.

“Vaya al cerezal a traer las cajas.” Go to the cherry orchard and bring the boxes.

Some words for containers:

Los bines-bins
Las cajas-boxes
La canasta-basket
El cajón-big box
El saco-sack
La bolsa-bag
El bote-can
La cubeta-bucket

And for tools:

El azadón-hoe
La pala-shovel
El diablo-handtruck
Las tijeras-clippers, scissors
Las tijeras de podar-pruning shears
El cuchillo-knife