hello everybody

Oso Major

thanks for explaining to me the reason why spanglish is so widespread among u.s. latinos.
I sure learn alot of cool stuff on this message board/website.i have become to be a more educated and enligntend person.
thanks again MM and others!

More funny translation blunders courtesy of
El-Castellano.com
http://www.elcastellano.org/elpais.html

<<delibera groserías>> (deliver grocery, reparte la compra)

<<necesita mujeres estériles>> (need steady women, necesita empleadas fijas).

<<vacunar la carpeta>> (vacuum the carpet, aspirar la alfombra)

I don't have ANY problem with Spanglish at all. Here is why. I will never speak it and I don;t have a problem with hearing it. IT DOES SERVE A PURPOSE for those who speak it with friends and in the family. The problem arises when Spanglish speakers speak to people who use español culto. So, before downing something, look at the usefulness of it when it pertains to those who use it.

Remember that no one is forcing you to speak
Spanglish. Besides, I take it all with a grain of salt.

Shawn

In following the spirit of this thread, I ran across an interesting article by professor Ilán Stavans in the prestigious Cuadernos Cervantes web page titled: Don Quijote de la Mancha , in Spanglish!
However, one may judge spanglish, as a useful adaptation, a prostitution of both languages,or an iniquity, it does serve a need. Sadly, it is not proper Spanish or proper English, but for the thousands of migrant workers working in the ferneries here in North Florida, it is a way of aculturating both languages. Most of the Spanglish speakers have had no formal training in either language and probably never will, however they must communicate in an environment where both their native Spanish and English coexist, and that is Profesor Ilán Stavans point.

I sense a feeling of snobbery by some when discussing this subject. I can appreciate that people that speak any language would like to be accurate and fluent in it especially native speakers.

There are several points we must consider when discussing Spanglish or any other "language-ish".

First, those that speak Spanglish are mostly of Hispanic/Latino heritage that were not born in a Spanish speaking country or they immigrated when very young and not schooled in Spanish.

Also, people that speak poorly usually have a limited education; for whatever reason. People that are poor or in the lower class of society generally don't speak their native language as correctly as those in middle and upper class groups. Of course this is a generalization as we've all spoken with people with limited education that speak quite eloquently. It doesn't matter what country you're from, Spain, England, the US; you're going to have people that speak poorly, and double that if you're attempting to speak a foreign language.

I have close friends that are third generation Italian. The sons don't speak Italian except for a few words. The parents speak immigrant Italian fused with English..."Italish". It sounds similar to Spanglish. In school we had a lot of Asian kids whose parents were from Hong Kong or Taiwan. What they spoke they called Chinese-American, not true Cantonese or Mandarin to the consternation of their parents.

Spanglish is not simply alternating English and Spanish words in your converstation. That's only part of it. You may not know the Spanish word you're trying to use so you substitute the English equivilant. Mostly it's modifying English words to sound Spanish. Previous examples I've given are: Nickle=Nikle,
Dime=Daime, Push=Puchar, Lunch=Lonche. Here's an example of how a conversation in Spanglish may sound: "Hey Steve, quieres lonchar (almuerzar)conmigo at McDonald's? No, that's OK, acabo de comer una dona, (doughnut)." Now, is this proper Spanish? No, it is not and the main point of this example is that the people that speak Spanglish KNOW that it is not proper Spanish! I do get a bit irritated when people try to better themselves by snubbing or criticizing others for using Spanglish by saying it's uneducated or uncultured. That may be true but what is the intention of your criticizm? To put down a group of people and elevate yourself? Or is it simply a statement regarding linguistical correctness? If you don't use Spanglish you should be greatful that you can speak fluent Spanish, but for those that do it is part of their upbringing and yes a part of their culture here in the US.

In my experience, those who use Spanglish and are 2nd generation "Spanish" speakers do NOT know they are using incorrect Spanish and will fight any attempt on the part of educators to help them regain/improve their language. If we are talking about migrants who have no chance of getting an education, that's one thing. Non-English speakers who pick up vital vocabulary to communicate are doing what people have done for centuries and I give them a lot of credit. The kids who HAVE the opportunity to learn their language correctly and refuse...those are the ones I have a negative attitude towards. They don't speak Spanish well, don't speak Engish well, don't give a flying fat burger that they don't, and those of us in education have our feet pressed up against the coals BECAUSE they don't.

La Maestra, I have a question for you: If I understand correctly, Spanglish is when an English word is adaped with Spanish word endings.
Such as "rufo" for roof, or parqueo for parking.

However, what is it called when you listen to a conversation where there is a mix of both English and Spanish, as though the person speaking cannot make up his/her mind what language he wished to speak:
I want to go to la casa early today because Mamá hizo un bizcocho for Junior's birthday party!
Is this spanglish?

OsoMayor,

Your point of view is well represented by Professor Ilán Stavans who will soon be publishing a book titled: Spanglish : The Making of a New American Language. He also has written a dictionary of Spanglish, as well.

Boy did I pull a nerve! The point I was trying to make was that this is how these people speak. I personally would get in someone's face (Im not directing this comment towards anyone here, so please do not take offense to it) if they were overly critical of my Spanish. Yes, I know it's not perfect, but hey, I wasn't born in Mexico either. Im not crazy about Spanglish but I am making progress, though it's not a priority in my life.

You La Maestra are an educator and I would expect a person in your field to be more critical. As you should be. In my early twenties I was a musician and studied music theory and fundamentals and I am quite critical of the music and so-called musicians today, so I can empathize.

Booklady, if memory serves it is called code switching. Language theory on this is that the speakers have a well developed sense of language because they can correctly use a legitimate word and the correct part of speech. This is not what I mean by Spanglish. It is more of what Oso was using. Lonche, brecas...that sort of thing.

I have had teachers apply for positions teaching Spanish who didn't know that there was any other word for lunch than lonche. I've had some who couldn't spell hermano and thought chica was shica. When they didn't get hired, they complained that we were too particular!

In terms of students, our local paper has been carrying stories about how our students cannot write effectively. Part of the writing process is attention to details like vocabulary and spelling,using proper register, and using the American organizational pattern. Maria Montaño Harmon has identified the Chicano pattern of organization based on the work of Robert Kaplan and has written quite extensively about it. Within the Hispanic communities in the American Southwest, it serves a purpose and binds speakers to each other. The problem is that when this is the only pattern/style of speech that these people use, they have difficulty being successful in school and in obtaining some kinds of work. Just as we would not expect someone to write a college entrance essay in which they talked about "dissin' my homies", we do not expect or accept papers in Spanish that use non-standard language. Unfortunately, there has not been any interest on the part of the communities where this is spoken to learn standard Spanish, and most definitely no interest in learning standard English. The attitude is that since they communicate well within their ethnic group, they are doing fine and don't need to know anything else.

Teachers are the ones who catch holy hell because there aren't enough Hispanics graduating from high school and going on to college, but if the students are not willing to learn, there's not much we can do. Arguments like "I didn't grow up with it" don't cut it with me. Neither did I. (By the way, that is another issue that probably should be discussed offline...if you happen to be anglo, don't even try to teach Spanish to Hispanics!)

There are a lot of dialects and forms of language, and they all serve a purpose. I appreciate and value them. I admire people like Jesse Jackson who are able to move freely from register to register, understanding how to function in each. And believe me, if I talked to people like an English teacher would in my daily life, I'd be talking to myself a lot! But NOT knowing how to write or speak correctly BY CHOICE enfuriates me.

I'm stepping down off my soapbox now!

Brava, La Maestra! You are aptly named. There is a wonderful article by Roberto González-Echeverría, professor of Hispanic Literature and Language at Yale University
titled Hablar spanglish es devaluar el español it is written in Spanish. He agrees with your point of view that spanglish erodes the beauty of the Spanish langugage. Thank you for the code-switching! The other day I was speaking to another faculty member, who also happens to be Cuban, and we always speak in Spanish and found ourselves discussing distance learning issues, and in particular the problems students have because of their lack of computer literacy skills. In this discussion, which began in Spanish, we found ourselves using English to describe computer terminology like e-mail, upload, etc, because we did not know its Spanish equivalent.

I need to get a bi-lingual computer science dictionary for these new words!