A Donut by Another Name....

Let me state straight out that despite what the title of this blogpost might make you anticipate, it is not about churros. It is, in fact, about donuts or, to be more exact, the language of donuts. So, yes, it is more a post about linguistics, sociolinguistics I suppose, than about the food itself.

Well, as the title does correctly imply, the object of all this is the donut - the raised sugar donut to be exact. Not one of those creepy, melt-in-your-mouth, hyper-glazed, instant-diabetes-inducing blobs of fried dough that Krispy Kreme has made famous, but rather the traditional old fashion type that you used to encounter everywhere in the US and still do in Mexico.

I was not particularly interested in donuts when I first got to Mexico, but I saw them in just about every panaderia I stopped in on, but one day, while buying other breads at a bakery near the old AirBnB, I suddenly felt in the mood for a donut, and thus plopped one onto my tray, bought it and took it home. I discovered that these Mexican donuts were pretty good, and so I bought two or three more before moving myself and Rulla to the room at the school, where we'd stay for close to two months. 

The bakery by the AirBnB was a bit far, however, from the new apartment, so I started going to another bakery closer by. That bakery was very popular and apparently a bit famous locally - they even had a photo on the wall of former president Vicente Fox (a Guanajuato State native) visiting the shop. That shop too had the raised sugar donuts, but they were not at all the same. The dough was dry and heavy and the whole thing tasted a bit sour somehow. That all said, I didn't buy anymore donuts at that shop.

Now, on the way home from the panaderia there as a small stall on the corner where two girls sold Mexican bread too. I always wondered where their bread came from since there was obviously no bake ovens in a street stall. Well, one day after going to the panaderia to buy some bolillos (bread rolls) and finding they were out, I decided to try the ones that the girls were selling on the corner. 

"Cunato por los bolillos?" 

"Dos pesos," the girl replied. 

Dos pesos? Wow that is cheap, I thought. Then I noticed that they also had raised sugar donuts and so I figured I might as well try one of theirs to see if they were any better than those in the nearby panaderia. 

"Y cuanto por las beñetas?"

"Cinco." 

As I will shortly explain, that tiny verbal exchange is the heart of this story. 

Anyway, I bought two bolillos and one donut and took them home. I tried out the donut immediately,  since I was really kind of hungry, and I was pleasantly surprised because it was better, not only than the one I had from the local bakery, but also better than the one at the bakery near the AirBnB, which I had considered quite good.

I took a photo to post online, but before posting it, I wanted to check what the correct spelling of  beñeta was. I mean nothing more embarrassing than having someone correct your foreign language spelling online. Strangely, I could not find the word online, and Google Translate just gave rosquilla as the translation of donut (and of doughnut), so that was not helping.  Anyway, no problem, I would just ask my teachers the following morning.

So I walk into class first thing in the morning, and I ask my teacher, "How do you spell beñeta?"

She looked at me with a bit of a blank stare and asked, "Que es una beñeta?" 

"You know," I explained, "a donut." 

"Ah," she responded, finally understanding, "dona." 

"Dona? That's it? Not beñeta," I asked almost incredulously.  And the answer to that was that was straight, blunt and to the point: there was, is, and most likely never will be such a word as beñeta. Yikes!!  "Stop trying to make fetch happen."

Well, this left me quite confused. If there was no word as beñeta, where on earth did I get it from? Was I just being creative in my use of Spanish by converting the word beignet into Spanish by adding the -eta? Seems unlikely since I'd never used the word beignet even once in my life. In fact, I had never even heard the world until I saw the movie Morning Glory a couple years back. And then if there is no such word, why did the donut stand girl give me the donut when I asked for a beñeta. Did I unknowingly point at the donut with my hands or eyes or even my inner intention to be? The girl, I remember did not flinch for even a second when I asked, which made me assume I was using the right word. So what was that all about, I could not help but wonder. 

And so I decided it was time for a bit of science action! So the next day I went back to the corner bread stand, and being very careful not to point with my body or hands, I said "dos beñetas, por favor," and the girl responded immediately with "de chocolate o de azúcar?" Seems that day they had both sugar coated and chocolate glazed. At any rate, she had responded to my use of beñeta without any visual clues. Now, it could well be that on the previous day's visit I had indicated either through gesture or gaze what I was referring to when I said the word beñeta, and so today she just know what I meant by the word and was just being accommodating to her customer who used a very odd word for donuts. Or maybe not. Seemed a bit more science was in order.

So I thought I'd wait a couple days, and then go to the stand in the late morning when the older sister (at least I think she was the older one) was running the stand since I had never even spoken to her before. When the day came, I walked up to the stand, being very careful to look away from the donuts when asking, and said "Dos beñetas de azúcar, por favor." The older sister without so much as a flinch of the eye, went straight to the donuts, and put them in a bag, and said, "Diez pesos."

Wow. That was odd. Now unless the two sister, with nothing much to talk about in their lives, spent the past few days talking about the weird foreigner who calls donuts beñetas, there was no explanation for this sister correctly responding to my use of this mystery word. What language negotiation was at play in these conversations, I couldn't help but wonder. But, I didn't want to wonder anymore. I sort of enjoyed the mystery of the situation and the notion that we had a secret language or code that no one else was using. It felt sort of special and exclusive. I just accepted it for what it was, even if I had no idea what it was. Sometimes, after all, it is good not to know.