Spanglish

Spanglish refers to the code-switching of English and Spanish, 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. For example, the Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of Spanglish. Sometimes the creole spoken in Spanish holiday resorts which are exposed to both Spanish and English is called Spanglish. The similar code switching used in Gibraltar is called Llanito. Spanglish may also be known by a regional name, e.g. "Tex-Mex" in Texas, (cf. "Tex-Mex cuisine").

Spanglish is not a pidgin language. It is totally informal; there are no hard-and-fast rules.

There is no clear demarcation between Spanglish and simple bad Spanish or English. "Parquear" for "to park" is clear deliberate Spanglish; "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.

Distribution

These phenomena are produced by close border contact and large bilingual communities along the United States-Mexico border and California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico, The City of New York, and Chicago. 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.

In Mexico, the term pochismo applies to Spanglish words and expressions. In the late 1940s, the Puerto Rican linguist Salvador Tió coined the terms Spanglish, and the less commonly used inglañol^[1] for English spoken with some Spanish terms.

Examples

Spanish street ad 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 a great deal. For example, a fluent bilingual speaker addressing another, like bilingual speaker might indulge 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 hacer 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:

1. The word carpeta is "folder" in standard Spanish. In some Spanglishes it means "carpet" instead of Spanish 'alfombra'.
2. The word clutch (pronounced: "cloch") is Spanglish, Mexican Spanish and Latin American Spanishes for the gear-shifting device of an automotive transmission. The standard Spanish word is embrague.
3. In Spanglish, yonque denotes "junkyard", not the standard Spanish desguace.
4. 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).
5. 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".
6. The Spanish verb asistir, in Spanglish denotes "to assist" rather than true Spanish "to attend".
7. Suceso, "event", is used to denote "success", leading to expressions such as fue todo un suceso, "it was a complete success" (although this can be ambiguous; interpreted in Spanish this means "it was a big event", which means about the same anyway).
8. "Push" and empujar are true cognates. In Spanglish, "puchar" is used to the same effect.
9. The expression llamar para atrás is calqued literally from the English "to call back"; cf. standard Spanish devolver la llamada, "to return the call". 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.
10. Van (la van) is Spanglish for the American English word Van, instead of the standard Spanish la furgoneta.
11. Parquear is used instead of the correct Spanish estacionar, it derives from the English word '[to] park'
12. The verbs hanguear derives from "to hang out".
13. Spanish verbs conversar and charlar mean "to chat"; however, an on-line conversation by IRC or IM is Spanglish chatear (Spanish "to drink a glass of wine", uncommon).^[2]
14. Troca denotes "pickup truck" instead of the standard Spanish camioneta.
15. The adjectives serioso | seriosa denote the English serious instead of the proper serio | seria.
16. Actualmente, meaning in Spanish "currently," is frequently misused to replace English actually and in fact. The proper Spanish term for actually is de hecho.
17. Marketa is a frequently used word derived from the English word market (as in Supermarket) instead of the standard Spanish word mercado.
18. Lonche is the Spanglish usage for lunch, as in "hora de lonche" (lunchtime). The correct Spanish term is almuerzo.

Other borrowings include emailear or emiliar, "to email", nerdo, "nerd", and laptop, "laptop computer".

Calques from Spanish to English also occur; these are northern New Mexico examples. In some cases Spanglish morphs into simple bad English:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. In Mexico and the southwestern U.S., Spanglish speakers are called pochos (rotten). English-influenced broken Spanish is called mocho, "mutilated", "amputated". 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.
4. 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)"^[3], understood by English-speakers with reasonable knowledge of Spanish to mean "could not go against his nature".

This is a code switching 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.

See also

• Caló (Chicano) a Mexican-American argot, similar to Spanglish.
• Chicano English
• Dog Latin
• Inglés de escalerilla (Spanish Mediterranean coast)
• 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).
• 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
• Chatroom where you can see people chatting in espanglish.

References

• 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 9780935480979.
• “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

External links

• Spanglish - the Language of Chicanos University of California
• What is Spanglish? Texas State University
• Real Academia Española