Comments on: English plus Spanish Equals Spanglish

By: Instant Immersion Spanish

Instant Immersion Spanish — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 02:14:32 +0000

I don’t feel favorably about Spanglish, and I know of bilingual latin americans who don’t look favorably upon it either. Spanglish will always be around to some small degree, but I don’t think we have to worry about it ever being significant…

By: Hanifa K. Cook

Hanifa K. Cook — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:28:16 +0000

Hi, how are you? Hola.

I have been learning spanis but it is not at all easy to start speaking spanglish. That is because we are third language speakers. In order to speak spanglish, I suppose you need to allow it to happen that a foreign language to mix with a mother tongue. Naturally mother tongue is the most comfortable language to communicate with. And there are always times when you just can;t find the English equivalent to a word you know best described in your mother tongue.

By: Daniel Lynch

Daniel Lynch — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:45:16 +0000

This may be quite subjective but as far as Spanglish I’m very particular as to execution. Speaking Spanish for a complete sentence and then switching to English for a complete sentence sounds fine to me in bilingual environments.

I neither have any problem with people who have a less than full grasp of the two languages filling in words from the L1 to increase fluidity and not waste time searching for esoteric words and phrases, like in “Necesito que tu llenes los expense reports”.

What I don’t like, is people who switch between English and Spanish across phrases within one sentence. “Yo voy a pay my bills porque I don’t want que me saquen del apartment.” I’m sure it’s not causative but on a correlative level it is almost undereducated people bad attitudes choosing this third variety of Spanglish.

Perhaps I’m wrong here?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:55:01 +0000

The linguist Ricardo Otheguy, with the City University of New York Graduate Center, has done some fascinating work on Spanish-English bilinguals and language contact in New York. The example you give above (with “shopping”) is a case of code switching, but there are also apparent syntactic and phonological effects of these two languages in contact. (Relative dropping or use of pronouns, the pronoun “ellos” used like non-specific “they” in English, etc.) Check out some of his articles:

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Linguistics/people/ricardo/index.html

By: admin

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:57:11 +0000

Hi Tulum, thank you for your comment.
I think it is harder for people living outside the environment where Spanglish is spoken to accept it. And they think that it is damaging both languages and erasing the cultural background or identity of that language. But the truth is that people adapt to their surroundings and circumstances and as you say, people want to belong and be accepted by its society.

By: Tulum

Tulum — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:05:45 +0000

Language is part of a culture and as you say Spanglish is breaking barriers but also allowing people to identify with a social group, unfortunately many mexican immigrants in the United States loses their sense of belonging. They are nether Mexican, nor are Americans. To find the middle ground they have to find people similar to themselves.