Why my California friends called me Pan Duro in the 1980s


Back in the 1980s, when I lived in California, I had a lot of friends whose first language was Spanish, and used it mostly around the house, but would speak English to me. I had learned a little Spanish in high school, and I would often try to communicate in Spanish, but usually it was a jumble, what is often called "Spanglish". Sorry if that offends you, but were just trying to communicate - I called it my "Budweiser Spanish".

In Phoenix, where I had lived for a few years while going to ASU, there are a lot of people who spoke Spanish, but most of those people spoke English fluently, and were comfortable with it. It's still true nowadays, and when I say "Quiero practicar me español" people will humor me, but it's not really necessary. I learned to politely ask that at Mexican Food restaurants, when I heard the waiter speaking Spanish to friend of mine. Now I'm getting hungry for some tacos!

Where was I? Oh yeah, why my California friends called Pan Duro. And it just has to do with the pronunciation of the letter "a" in English, which is flat in my name. My name is Brad, which has a flat a. My friends who mostly spoke Spanish couldn't hear a flat "a", so when they said "Brad" it came out "Bread". And since bread is pan in Spanish, these people would say, "pan?" and I would say yes. My more clever friends added "duro" to my name (pan duro means hard bread), and I liked that.

So yes, you can call me Pan, or Pan Duro. ¡Quiero mas cerveza, por favor!
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