14:52

She may have bagged the nomination, but Hillary Clinton could benefit from nimbler Latino outreach as she prepares to take on Donald Trump.

So says Phillip Carter, a linguistics professor at Florida International University who has written a chapter on both candidates in a forthcoming book. In battling Bernie Sanders for up to 50 million Spanish speakers in the US, Clinton started well, then blundered, Carter says in an analysis for the Guardian.

Hillary Clinton speaks to supporters on a last day of Caifornia campaigning. Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

“Hillary’s campaign started on a high note with Spanish - when she released her campaign announcement video on YouTube in April 2015, which depicted a diverse group of Americans discussing their hopes for the future, the voices of two Latino brothers describing a business venture in Spanish, ran beautifully and seamlessly throughout the video, interspersed with the stories of English speakers telling similar stories,” Carter said. “The inclusion of this story was a powerful yet subtle nod to the undeniably important role of Spanish in contemporary American life and seemed to hit all the right notes.”

“Since then, the campaign has faltered in its use of Spanish,” he continued. “In December, the Clinton campaign wrote a post on Clinton’s website entitled ‘7 Things Hillary Clinton Has in Common with Your Abuela,’ the Spanish word for ‘grandmother’. The post was written in English, with Spanish words like ‘respeto’ (‘respect’) peppered in, along with images of US Latinos, including pop singer Marc Anthony. The post was ridiculed on social media, where the hashtag #NotMyAbuela quickly gained traction on Twitter.”

“This June, during a campaign stop in California, Clinton pulled out the tried and true ‘Sí se puede,’ (‘Yes we can!’), a chant traceable to the United Farmworkers Rights movement of the 1970s, and since made famous by Anglo politicians looking to add a taste of authenticity to their campaigns. The trouble with Hillary’s usage, which has been uttered by Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and countless others, is that she bungled the pronunciation (‘Si se pueda, rather than Si se puede) in such a way that changed the meaning from ‘yes we can!’ to something more like ‘if one could.’ ”

“Of course, Hillary Clinton is not a Spanish speaker. At all,” Carter cautioned. “So the mispronunciation could perhaps be forgiven, but it happened to play right into what seems to be Hillary’s biggest problem with the electorate, both Latinos and non-Latinos alike: believability. While her Republican rival Donald Trump is praised by some for being a straight shooter - even when the language is broadly offensive - Hillary is seen as doing the opposite, shape-shifting to appeal to the diverse groups of people comprising America’s diverse electorate. Whether this depiction is fair or not, her use of Spanish on the campaign trail has played into this perception.”

“Ignoring Spanish, as Donald Trump has done, is not the same thing as ignoring Latinos, since most voting Latinos also speak English. But if a candidate does choose to speak Spanish on the campaign trail, getting it right is key, not only in terms of pronunciation, but also, especially, in tone.”