Le Francais et l'Espagnol? O la Vache! (Vernacular)

“‘Oh, yes. They’ve never seen a desencajonada.’

… ‘Your friend, is he aficionado, too? …Yes?’ Montoya politely disbelieved. ‘But he’s not aficionado like you.’

…Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights.”

-The Sun Also Rises, p 136

One observation which I made earlier in the novel and forgot to mention before was the use of vernacular throughout the book. When Jake & Co. were in Paris, Hemingway made sure to include several French words and phrases to give authenticity to his writing. Now that the characters are in Spain, Hemingway does the same with Spanish words. Hemingway includes the vernacular for a few reasons. Throughout the novel, the characters actually speak very little English; while in France, they spend the majority of the time speaking French, and while in Spain, those who know Spanish use it almost constantly.

Obviously, if Hemingway had opted to write the dialogue in the actual language which he intended his characters to be speaking, his novel would not have appealed to American readers nearly as much as it did. However, by including bits of the vernacular within his writing, Hemingway reminds the reader of his original intent to write his characters as culturally suave. Yet the vernacular also loans an authenticity to the story, indicating that the author is not simply taking an American tale and placing it in Europe, but is actually writing a Europeanized story.