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Over 90% of twenty-somethings now pronounce “No” with the Spanish “Ñ” instead of the regular N. What gives?
To find some answers, the Plum and the Prune met a up with Larkin Lindstrom, linguist, polyglot, and recognized ñ expert. At first, he was completely baffled by the GenZ Ño.
“The ñ is a perfectly nice, useful letter in Spanish, but it doesn’t exist in English—and even Spanish speakers don’t use it at the beginning of words. They say ‘No.’ But now we have these twenty-somethings running around saying ‘Ño all the time. I’ll admit it was a real head-scratcher.”
“The Spanish ñ is way more expressive and flexible than our English n. Our n is a real Debbie Downer compared to ñ. Like, you know when someone says, “Oh, she’s so extra.”? Well, that’s what ñ is, it’s n with a little extra. See that little squirt of spicy mustard there on top? That’s the extra.”
Mark tells me how to make the ñ sound myself, “Press your tongue firmly to the roof of the mouth, keep your lips closed, now hum.”
As we hum ñ, I start to see what Mark means by “extra.” There’s a performative aspect to it. I’m actually having fun stretching and twisting my ñ, exploring the way it moves around my mouth. Without even trying, I find myself playfully reciting the GenZ ño.
The ñ expert himself is coaching me. “Explore the textures. Try sliding the tongue in all directions. Let that ñ dance in your mouth!”
I keep the ñ dancing as Mark loops back to the GenZ puzzle. “So we have this spicy fun letter and we have these young twenty-somethings who are just bored to absolute death at work. And capitalism’s cruel ways have forced many of them to move back in with mom and dad. So let’s just say they are more than a little moody.
On top of that, their boss just does not get it. Clueless times ten. The world is crumbling, hope for humanity is fading, and still, he gets all weird when you ask him for one extra personal day. Ugh.
So when their boss asks them to do something, their resistance is slow, quiet, passive-aggressive. It begins with a gentle ñ-drone, conveying at once both “I’m not sure” and “I feel sick,” until the ñ glides down into a deep, full, resonant Ño.
Resistance begins one letter, one sound at a time. To spell Bartleby, start with B.
