2026-01-25, 04:52 PM - Word count:
Tlacaelel Tepoztli's career had taken him from Mexico to Jamaica to Madagascar to Montreal. Anyone in the world of soccer, or anyone who aspired to an international career in any field learned some English. The English one learns in a Mexican public school only puts so much of a stamp on one's way of speaking the language. An academy year in Port Royal served to make Tlacaelel's English about two-thirds Jamaican, which charmed English-language interviewers in his media availability ever since. His French used Montreal vocabulary and anglicisms with an accent from Antananarivo accent, so he similarly charmed French-language sports journalists. Though moderately engaging, he was a fairly serious communicator, just as he was a serious player. He relished providing the unexpected in postgame interviews just as he relished providing it on the field.
And now he was headed to Germany, to line up for Schwarzwald Fußballverein. He'd worked to bring his abilities at Shadow Striker up to the same level as his abilities at wingback, and to make his left foot every bit as strong as his right. But those were only on-pitch skills. Now he had to learn German.
Any good media team will teach athletes to communicate efficiently in familiar clichés. But Tlacaelel found his best years of language learning had already been spent on Spanish, English and French in addition to his native Nahuatl.
German grammar was too different, too structured. So he returned to the high poetry of his first language, leaning into the difrasismo of Nahuatl, combining two contrasting words together to produce a meaning different than either could mean alone.
The best known was in xochitl, in cuicatl - "the flower, the song", meaning poetry, or dance, or performance or culture. Noma nocxi - "the hand, the foot" - meant body. Tlacaelel picked up nouns more quickly than the insanity of German grammar, and his ear sometimes understood nuances his own spoken German could not reproduce.
So, asked to explain what his role might be on this new team, his mind simply turned what German words he knew into difrasismo: "die Nacht, der Blitz" - the gathered journalists didn't have a sense of what the night, the lightning implied as far as positions and formations went on the pitch, but it did give them some measure of Tlacaelel's intended play style.
And now he was headed to Germany, to line up for Schwarzwald Fußballverein. He'd worked to bring his abilities at Shadow Striker up to the same level as his abilities at wingback, and to make his left foot every bit as strong as his right. But those were only on-pitch skills. Now he had to learn German.
Any good media team will teach athletes to communicate efficiently in familiar clichés. But Tlacaelel found his best years of language learning had already been spent on Spanish, English and French in addition to his native Nahuatl.
German grammar was too different, too structured. So he returned to the high poetry of his first language, leaning into the difrasismo of Nahuatl, combining two contrasting words together to produce a meaning different than either could mean alone.
The best known was in xochitl, in cuicatl - "the flower, the song", meaning poetry, or dance, or performance or culture. Noma nocxi - "the hand, the foot" - meant body. Tlacaelel picked up nouns more quickly than the insanity of German grammar, and his ear sometimes understood nuances his own spoken German could not reproduce.
So, asked to explain what his role might be on this new team, his mind simply turned what German words he knew into difrasismo: "die Nacht, der Blitz" - the gathered journalists didn't have a sense of what the night, the lightning implied as far as positions and formations went on the pitch, but it did give them some measure of Tlacaelel's intended play style.
