Julian Castro may or may not be able to speak Spanish, I couldn't judge. He sure can do the Spanish-sounding tongue'n'palate work when pronouncing Spanish names, though. Listen to him give the full treatment to his daughter's name, Carina Victoria.

I don't know how it is in the rest of the country, but local TV news presenters here in New York - few-to-none of whom, I'd venture to speculate, could articulate an entire sentence in Spanish - make a fetish of inserting these Hispanic phonemes into their speech.

There's a certain way they like to say the word "Latino," for example, that always makes my toes curl: something like "Lah-THYEEN-oh."

Far as I, and Radio Derb, are concerned, that's a "Latin" and an "o": "LA-tin-oh."

And where's the equity here? Why aren't our newsreaders making similar gestures towards authenticity in respect of other languages? Korean, for example, which has a very interesting phonology. There are lots of Koreans in New York.

Is true professionalism dead?