Spanglish

For the James L. Brooks motion picture, see Spanglish (film).

Spanglish refers to the blend (at different degrees) of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The term Spanglish was first brought into literature by the Puerto Rican Salvador Tió. Despite its widespread use among the Hispanic population, Spanglish is not an actual language. Linguists commonly refer to a phenomenon like Spanglish as a pidgin, which is a language based on a simplified syntax and grammar that acts as an intermediary between people who don't have a common language. Spanglish is very common in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as the United States Army and the early colonial administration tried to impose the English language on island residents. Between 1902 and 1948, the main language of instruction in public schools (used for all subjects except Spanish language courses) was English. Consequently, many American English words are now found in the Puerto Rican vocabulary. Spanglish may also be known by a regional name. Spanglish does not have one unified dialect and therefore lacks uniformity; Spanglish spoken in New York, Miami, Texas, and California can be different. Although not always uniform, Spanglish is actually so popular in many Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, especially in the Miami Hispanic community, that some knowledge of Spanglish is required to understand those in the area (Ardila 2005: 61).

Many Puerto Ricans living on the island of St. Croix speak in informal situations a unique Spanglish-like combination of Puerto Rican Spanish and the local Crucian dialect, which is naturally very different from the Spanglish spoken elsewhere. The same assumption goes for the large Puerto Rican population in the state of New York and Boston.

Spanglish is not a pidgin language. It is totally informal; there are no set hard-and-fast rules. From a linguistic point of view, Spanglish can be labeled many things. It can actually be a pidgin, because many of the English borrowings are due to the desire to have a common meaning for various words among all native Spanish speakers that may have varying definitions of the same word. Spanglish can be considered a Creole or dialect of Spanish as well, as it has become the native language of some second-generation Hispanic children who are often exposed to Spanglish at home and when using this dialect, mostly understood by monolingual Spanish speakers. Spanglish may also be considered a Spanish-English interlanguage as it represents the linguistic border between Mexico and the United States (Ardila 2005:66).”

There are two phenomena of Spanglish, borrowing and code-switching. English borrowed words will usually be adapted to Spanish phonology. Code-Switching and Code-Mixing on the other hand is commonly used by bilinguals. Code-switching means that a person will begin a sentence in one language and at a certain point this one will begin speaking in another language (Ardila 2005:70). This switch will occur at the beginning of a sentence or a new topic. In code-mixture this change in language will occur at any given time with no regard to the beginning of a sentence or topic. Code-switching normally happens when someone is speaking Spanish as opposed to English, because it is supposed that native Spanish speakers understand more English than native English speakers do Spanish; therefore, this code-switching that results in Spanglish seems acceptable to native Spanish speakers (Ardila 2005:71).

There are two types of code-switching: intersentential and intrasentential. The first refers to code-switching between sentences and the second refers to code-switching within sentences. Intersentential code-switching normally happens when speaking and intrasentential when writing. Many researchers believe that intrasentential code-switching is more elaborate and involves a bilingual individual who is proficient in both languages, as switching within sentences requires a high level of efficiency to avoid violating grammatical rules of either language (Montes-Alcalá 2000:219).

• Intersentential code-switching: She wanted to experiment. Quería ver qué había allá afuera del palacio (Montes-Alcalá 2000:219)

• Intrasentential code-switching: El lobo went to the old lady’s house and la echó (Montes-Alcalá 2000:219).

There are some important syntactic constraints on code-switching.

• The equivalence constraint claims that code-switching is allowed where the grammars of Spanish and English coincide (Belazi, Rubin, and Toribio 1994:224) citing (Poplack 1981).
• Equivalence Constraint Example: “The student brought the homework para la profesora.” is grammatical, because both languages place the prepositional phrase in the same place,after the object, in the sentence (Belazi, Rubin, and Toribio 1994:224) citing (Poplack 1981).
• The object clitic (pronoun or determiner) constraint relates to the equivalence constraint, as it deals with coinciding grammars, and claims that the clitic must be in the same language as the verb and in the position required by the language of that verb (Woolford 1983: 527).
• Object Clitic Constraint Example: “Yo lo bought.” and “I it bought.” are both ungrammatical (Woolford 1983: 527).
• The noun phrase constraint claims that no switching occurs between a noun and a modifying adjective that follows this noun (Woolford 1983:527) citing (Gingràs 1974).
• Noun Phrase Constraint Example: “El hombre old está enojado.” is ungrammatical whereas switching between the determiner and the rest of the noun phrase that follows or between an adjective and a noun that follows form grammatical sentences, such as “El old man está enojado.” (Woolford 1983:527) citing (Gingràs 1974).
• The free morpheme (something that can stand alone as a word) constraint claims that a switch may not occur between a bound morpheme (something that appears only as a part of words that cannot function independently) and a lexical form (something that represents actual word forms) unless the lexical form has been integrated into the language of the bound morpheme. (Sankoff and Poplack 1981:5).
• Free Morpheme Constraint Example: This constraint prohibits combining the Spanish bound morpheme “-eando” with the lexical form “run” in English to try to form “runeando” which would mean to run (Sankoff and Poplack 1981:5).

There is no clear demarcation between Spanglish and simple "bad" Spanish or English:

• "Chequear" for "to check" is standard throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and Latin America, although the Real Academia of Spain records the word as being of English extraction, and indeed it is not widely used in Spain, "comprobar" or "verificar" being more common instead. This suggests that it is North America's higher exposure to English that has created and promoted the new verb.
• "Parquear" for "to park" is clear deliberate Spanglish of relatively recent development
• "Actualmente" for "actually" rather than "at present" is closer to erroneous use of a false friend, and ambiguous as it has a clear, but different, meaning in true Spanish.

Researchers differentiate between those who mostly speak Spanish (who are labeled limited English proficient), and those that can switch codes freely, who are considered bilingual.

Linguistic Relativity

According to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, "espanglish" is defined as an expression used by the Hispanic population in the United Sates in which lexical mixing of Spanish and English is used.

In Mexico and the southwestern U.S., Spanglish speakers are called Pochos (said of Mexicans that adopt customs or manners of the people of the United States of America, according to the dictionary of the Spanish language of the Real Academia Española). English-influenced Spanish is called mocho, "mutilated", "amputated".

The use of Spanglish has evolved over time. It has emerged as a way of conceptualizing one's thoughts whether it be in speech or on paper.

Distribution

In the late 1940s, the Puerto Rican linguist Salvador Tió coined the terms Spanglish, and the less commonly used inglañol for English spoken with some Spanish terms.

It is common in Panama, where the 96-year (1903–1999) U.S. control of the Panama Canal influenced much of local society, especially among the former residents of the Panama Canal Zone, the Zonians. Some version of Spanglish, whether by that name or another, is likely to be used wherever speakers of both languages mix.

H.G.Wells, in his 1933 future history "The Shape of Things to Come", predicted that in the Twenty-First Century English and Spanish would "become interchangeable languages".

Examples

Spanish street ad in Madrid humorously showing baidefeis instead of the Spanish gratis (free).
Baidefeis derives from the English "by the face"; Spanish: por la cara, "free".

Spanish and English have mixed quite a bit. For example, a fluent bilingual speaker addressing another, like bilingual speaker might engage in code switching with the sentence: I'm sorry I cannot attend next week's meeting porque tengo una obligación de negocios en Boston, pero espero que I'll be back for the meeting the week after. Changing some words to English, for example, "Te veo ahorita, me voy de shopping para el mall": "See you later, I'm going shopping in the mall". Spanglish is mostly spoken this way.

Spanglish phrases often use shorter words from both languages as in: "Me voy a wake up". (Rather than: "Me voy a levantar" or "I am going to wake up.") A common code switch in Puerto Rican Spanglish is using the English word "so" (therefore): "Tengo clase, so me voy" ("I have a class, so I'm leaving"), rather than the Spanish "porque" with different order ("me voy porque tengo clase").

Word borrowings from English to Spanish are more common, using false cognates in their English senses, or calquing idiomatic English expressions. Some examples:

• The non-standard word afianza is used in Spanglish in preference to the standard Spanish seguro ("insurance policy").
• The word carpeta is "folder" in standard Spanish. In some Spanglishes it means "carpet" instead of Spanish 'alfombra'.
• The word clutch (pronounced: "cloch") is Spanglish, Mexican Spanish and Latin American Spanish for the gear-shifting device of an automotive transmission. The standard Spanish word is embrague.
• In Spanglish, yonque denotes "junkyard", not the standard Spanish deshuesadero.
• In Spanglish, word boiler is both "water heater" and "boiler". The standard Spanish words are calentador de agua (water heater) and hervidor or "caldera" (boiler).
• The Spanish verb "atender", "to wait upon" or "to give service to", e.g. wait upon a table of diners; however, second-generation Spanish speakers in the Anglo-sphere use the verb as "to attend", instead of "to assist".
• "Push" and empujar are true cognates. In Spanglish, "puchar" is used to the same effect.
• The expression llamar para atrás is calqued literally from the English "to call back"; cf. standard Spanish devolver la llamada, "to return the call" (Otheguy and Stern 2010:91). This example of calquing an English idiomatic phrase to Spanish is common Puerto Rican usage, even in zones with a lot of Hispanics like Southern Idaho.
• Van (la van) is Spanglish for the American English word Van, instead of the standard Spanish la furgoneta.
• Parquear is used instead of the correct Spanish estacionar, it derives from the English word '[to] park'. However, Standard and Colloquial Spanish uses the verb aparcar, which is accepted in the dictionary but also appears to derive from English.
• The verbs hanguear derives from "to hang out".
• Troca or troque denotes "pickup truck" instead of the standard Spanish camioneta.
• The adjectives serioso | seriosa denote the English serious instead of the proper serio | seria.
• Marketa is a frequently used word derived from the English word market (as in Supermarket) instead of the standard Spanish word mercado.
• Lonche is the Spanglish usage for lunch, as in "hora del lonche" (lunchtime). The correct Spanish term is almuerzo. Lonchera is also used to mean lunch box.
• "Heavy" used unchanged in expressions such as qué heavy, muy heavy, akin to "how awful/terrible".

Other borrowings include: emailear or emiliar, "to email"; nerdo, "nerd"; laptop, "laptop computer"; twittear, to use Twitter; facebookear, to use Facebook and googlear, to use Google.

Calques from Spanish to English also occur. In some cases Spanglish morphs into simple bad English. Some examples of either:

• Some include cowboy and cowgirl, coming, respectively, from the Spanish words "vaquero" and "vaquera"; people that handle cattle.
• An interesting calque is canyon or gorge, in English, from "cañón" (geomorphology), in Spanish.
• The word rodeo has the same meaning in English as it has in the original Spanish.
• Many verbs are given indirect objects they do not have in standard English; notably, "put": "She puts him breakfast on the couch!" or "Put it the juice" (turn on the power), these correspond to the Spanish poner and meter with the indirect object pronouns le and les, indicating the action was done on behalf of someone else.
• One can "get down" from a car, instead of "getting out" of a car; this translates to the Spanish bajarse, "to dismount" or "to descend" from a motor vehicle.
• One "drinks" one's pills, from the phrase tomar medicina. The word tomar more often means drink than take in conversational Spanish, which extensively uses the word agarrar as the equivalent to take.
• U.S. and Latin American Spanglish speakers use the verb fiestar, "to party", which corresponds with fiesta, "a party", these derive from the standard Spanish verb festejar, "to celebrate", while divertirse is "to have fun", "to party" in slang American English.
• British people in Argentina use "camp" for "countryside" (from "campo") and drop many everyday formal and slang Spanish words into English ("I'll take the colectivo" (bus)). Sometimes a Spanish phrase is literally translated, incongruously and as a joke, into English: in the Buenos Aires Herald English-language newspaper "ex-president Néstor Kirchner 'could not with his genius' (to express it in Spanglish)", understood by English-speakers with reasonable knowledge of Spanish to mean "could not go against his nature".
• The expression "touch-and-go" is used by Spanish speakers in the Rio de la Plata area to refer to an occasional encounter with a sexual partner, which literally translates into Spanish as tocar e irse, meaning "no strings attached".

This is a code mixture dialogue from the Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing!, by Giannina Braschi:

Ábrela tú.

¿Por qué yo? Tú tienes las keys. Yo te las entregué. Además, I left mine adentro.

¿Por qué las dejaste adentro?

Porque I knew you had yours.

¿Por qué dependes de mí?

Just open it, and make it fast.

In English:

You open it.

Why me? You've got the keys. I gave them to you. Besides, I left mine inside.

Why did you leave them inside?

Because I knew you had yours.

Why do you always depend on me?

Just open it, and make it fast.

This is a code-switching dialogue:

"Yo no estoy de acuerdo con eso. But,anyhow,I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, pero soy cubano."

In English:

"I disagree with that. But, anyhow, I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, but I am Cuban."

See also

• Caló (Chicano) a Mexican-American argot, similar to Spanglish.
• Chicano English
• Dog Latin
• Languages in the United States
• Llanito (an Andalusian Spanish-based creole unique to Gibraltar)
• Germán Valdés A Mexican comedian known as Tin Tan who made heavy use of Spanglish. He also dressed as a pachuco.
• Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña also makes heavy use of Spanglish.
• Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi wrote the Spanglish comic novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" (1998).
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Dominican Writer Junot Diaz.
• Mexican rock band Molotov, whose members use Spanglish in their lyrics.
• American progressive rock band The Mars Volta, whose song lyrics frequently switch back and forth between English and Spanish.
• Category:Forms of English
• Category:Spanglish songs

References

• On So-Called Spanglish, Ricardo Otheguy and Nancy Stern, International Journal of Bilingualism 2011, 15(1): 85-100.
• Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, Ilán Stavans, ISBN 0-06-008776-5
• Spanglish: The Third Way, A Cañas. Hokuriku University, 2001.
• Spanish/English Codeswitching in a Written Corpus, by Laura Callahan, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004.
• The Dictionary of Chicano Spanish/El Diccionario del Español Chicano: The Most Practical Guide to Chicano Spanish. Roberto A. Galván. 1995. ISBN 0-8442-7967-6.
• Anglicismos hispánicos. Emilio Lorenzo. 1996. Editorial Gredos, ISBN 84-249-1809-6.
• "Yo-Yo Boing!", Giannina Braschi, introduction by Doris Sommer, Harvard University, ISBN 978-0-935480-97-9.
• “Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity,” Isabelle de Courtivron, Palgrave McMillion, 2003.
• "In the Contact Zone: Code-Switching Strategies by Latino/a Writers: Giannina Braschi and Susana Chavez by L Torres. MELUS, JSTOR, 2007.
• Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Sprachkontakt - Spanglish in den USA. Melanie Pelzer, Duisburg: Wissenschaftsverlag und Kulturedition (2006). (in German) ISBN 3-86553-149-0
• BETTI Silvia, 2008, El Spanglish ¿medio eficaz de comunicación? Bologna, Pitagora editrice, ISBN 88-371-1730-2 (in Spanish).Presentación de Dolores Soler-Espiauba (in Spanish).
• "Bilingües, biculturales y posmodernas: Rosario Ferré y Giannina Braschi," Garrigós, Cristina, Insula. Revista de Ciencias y Letras, 2002 JUL-AGO; LVII (667-668).
• "Escritores latinos en los Estados Unidos" (a propósito de la antología de Fuguet y Paz-Soldán, se habla Español), Alfaguara, 2000.
• "Redreaming America: Toward a Bilingual American Culture," (Suny Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture), Debra A. Castillo, 2005.
• Metcalf, Allan A. "The Study of California Chicano English". International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Volume 1974, Issue 2, Pages 53–58.
• Ardila, A. Spanglish : An anglicized Spanish dialect. Hispanic journal of behavioral sciences, 27(1), 60-81.
• http://books.google.com.br/books?id=l84uKr99vk8C&pg=PT235&lpg=PT235&dq=spanglish+belize&source=bl&ots=Hd2sVUxloN&sig=fPZ59KJqr1FR8EPe1TQOvNVKOxU&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ei=1cVbUP7RKoW68AS0ioHIAg&ved=0CGUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=spanglish%20belize&f=false
• Ardila, Alfredo. “Spanglish: An Anglicized Spanish Dialect.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences (2005): 61-71. Web. 16 April 2013.
• Belazi, Hedi M, Edward J. Rubin, and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. “Code Switching and X-Bar Theory: The Functional head Constraint.” Linguistic Inquiry Vol. 25 (1994): 224. Web. 18 April 2013.
• Gingras, Rosario. “Problems in the description of Spanish/English intrasentential code-

switching.” Southwest areal linguistics, ed. Garland D. Bills (1974): 167-174. San Diego, Calif.: University of California Institute for Cultural Pluralism.

• Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia. “Attitudes Towards Oral and Written Codeswitching in Spanish English Bilingual Youths.” Research on Spanish in the United States: Linguistic Issues and Challenges (2000): 219. Web. 17 April 2013.
• Otheguy, Ricardo and Nancy Stern. “On so-called Spanglish.” International Journal of Bilingualism (2010). 91. Web. 20 April 2013.
• Poplack, Shana. “Syntactic structure and social function of codeswitching.” Latino lan-

guage and communicative behavior, ed. Richard P. Duran (1981): 169-184. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex

• Sankoff, David and Shana Poplack. “A Formal Grammar for Code-Switching.” International Journal of Human Communication 14 (1) (1981): 5. Web. 16 April 2013.
• Woolford, Ellen. “Bilingual Code-Switching and Syntactic Theory.” Linguistic Inquiry Vol. 23 (1983): 527. Web. 18 April 2013.

External links

• {http://current.com/groups/on-current-tv/88836867_nuyorican-power.htm} Current TV video "Nuyorican Power" on Spanglish as the Nuyorican language; featuring Daddy Yankee, Giannina Braschi, Rita Moreno, and other Nuyorican icons.
• Spanglish - the Language of Chicanos University of California
• What is Spanglish? Texas State University
• Real Academia Española