.
Spanglish refers to the
blendIn linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.-Linguistics:...
(at different degrees) of
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, 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
HispanicHispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
population of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the
BritishThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
population in
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
use varieties of Spanglish. Sometimes the
creoleA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
spoken in Spanish holiday resorts which are exposed to both Spanish and English is called Spanglish. The similar code switching used in
GibraltarGibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
is called
LlanitoLlanito or Yanito is an Andalusian Spanish based creole spoken in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. It consists of an eclectic mix of Andalusian Spanish and British English, marked by a great deal of code switching and loanwords from many other Mediterranean languages.Gibraltarians also...
.
Spanglish may also be known by a regional name. Spanglish is not a unified dialect and therefore lacks uniformity; Spanglish spoken in New York, Miami, Texas, and California can be different. In Texas and California a large Mexican population can be found and within that population are Chicanos or second-generation Mexican-Americans. Some of the Spanglish words used by Chicanos could be incomprehensible to Hispanics from Florida.
Spanglish is
not a
pidginA pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
language. It is totally informal; there are no hard-and-fast rules. There are thought two phenomena of Spanglish, which are 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. 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.
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 friendFalse friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning....
, and ambiguous as it has a clear, but different, meaning in true Spanish. However, implications present themselves. Spanglish does not mean half and half words - it means half and half sentences or overall speaking ability, but researchers differentiate: those who mostly speak Spanish are labeled limited English proficient, and those that can
switch codesIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
freely are considered bilingual. Some parents of native Spanish speaking children may wish their children to be taught in pure Spanish. Some say
bilingual educationBilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model.-Bilingual education program models:...
is preferable, but others say the best way is
total immersion-Companies:*Total Immersion , Augmented reality software solutions with D'Fusion*Total Immersion, Total Immersion Swimming...
. The longer students remain in a bilingual program, the greater their chances are of staying there.
Distribution
These phenomena are produced by close border contact and large bilingual communities on the northern side along the United States-Mexico border and
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
,
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
, Washington,
TexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
,
ArizonaArizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
,
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
,
FloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
,
New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
,
Puerto RicoPuerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, Atlanta, The City of New York, and
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. It is also important to mention that the bilingual communities on the southern side along the Mexican-American border prefer to use only Spanish while in
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, where the term
pochoPocho is a term used by native-born Mexicans to describe Chicanos who are perceived to have forgotten or rejected their Mexican heritage to some degree. Typically, pochos speak English and lack fluency in Spanish...
is applied to people who use Spanglish words and expressions. Spanglish is also used in
GibraltarGibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
.
It is common in
PanamaPanama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, where the 96-year (1903–1999) U.S. control of the
Panama CanalThe Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...
influenced much of local society, especially among the former residents of the Panama Canal Zone, the
ZonianA Zonian is a person associated with the Panama Canal Zone, a political entity which existed between 1903 and the absorption of the Canal Zone into the Republic of Panama between 1980 and 2000....
s. Some version of Spanglish, whether by that name or another, is likely to be used wherever speakers of both languages mix.
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.
H.G.Wells, in his 1933
future historyA future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction...
"The Shape of Things to ComeThe Shape of Things to Come is a work of science fiction by H. G. Wells, published in 1933, which speculates on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. The book is dominated by Wells's belief in a world state as the solution to mankind's problems....
", predicted that in the Twenty-First Century English and Spanish would "become interchangeable languages" .
Examples
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
have mixed quite a bit. For example, a fluent bilingual speaker addressing another, like bilingual speaker might engage in
code switchingIn linguistics, code-switching is the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals—people who speak more than one language—sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other...
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 cognateFalse cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be, or are sometimes considered, cognates, when in fact they are not....
s in their English senses, or
calquingIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
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 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".
- The Spanish verb asistir, in Spanglish denotes "to assist" rather than true Spanish "to attend".
- Suceso, "event", is wrongly 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 sometimes means about the same anyway).
- "Push" and empujar are true cognates
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
. 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". 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 diccionary but also appears to derive from English.
- The verbs hanguear derives from "to hang out".
- 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).
- 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.
- Actualmente, meaning in Spanish "currently," is frequently misused to replace English actually and in fact. The proper Spanish term for actually is de hecho.
- 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
The lunch box, also referred to as a lunch pail or lunch kit, is used to store food to be taken to work or school. The concept of a food container has existed for a long time, but it wasn't until people began using tobacco tins to haul meals in the early 20th century, followed by the use of...
.
- "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
TwitterTwitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
;
facebookear, to use
FacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and
googlear, to use
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
.
Calques from Spanish to English also occur. In some cases Spanglish morphs into simple bad English:
- An interesting calque is canyon
A canyon or gorge is a deep ravine between cliffs often carved from the landscape by a river. Rivers have a natural tendency to reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water it will eventually drain into. This forms a canyon. Most canyons were formed by a process of...
or gorge, in English, from "cañón" (geomorphology), in Spanish.
- Also barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque , used chiefly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is a method and apparatus for cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of...
(or Bar-B-Q), coming from barbacoa, in Spanish.
- The word rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
has the same meaning in English as it has in the original Spanish.
- Many verbs are given indirect objects
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
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.
- 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
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
). 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.
- 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
The Buenos Aires Herald is an English language daily newspaper from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their slogan is A World of Information in a few words.-History:...
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".
This is a code mixture dialogue from the Spanglish novel
Yo-Yo Boing!, by
Giannina BraschiGiannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
:
- 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)
Caló is an argot or slang of Mexican Spanish which originated during the first half of the 20th century in the Southwestern United States. It is the product of zoot-suit pachuco culture.-Origin:...
a Mexican-American argotAn Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
, similar to Spanglish.
- Chicano English
Chicano English is a dialect of American English used by Chicanos. One major variation of Chicano English is Tejano English, used mainly in south Texas...
- Dog Latin
Dog Latin, Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, or mock Latin refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by directly translating English words into Latin without conjugation or declension...
- Languages in the United States
English is the de facto national language of the United States, with 82% of the population claiming it as a mother tongue, and some 96% claiming to speak it "well" or "very well." However, no official language exists at the federal level...
- Llanito
Llanito or Yanito is an Andalusian Spanish based creole spoken in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. It consists of an eclectic mix of Andalusian Spanish and British English, marked by a great deal of code switching and loanwords from many other Mediterranean languages.Gibraltarians also...
(an AndalusianThe Andalusian varieties of Spanish are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varieties, and also from Standard Spanish...
Spanish-based creole-Chavacano:Chavacano is a Spanish-based Creole language and the name of the Six Dialects of Spanish evolved words turned into a Creole language spoken in the Philippines...
unique to GibraltarGibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
)
- Germán Valdés
Germán Genaro Cipriano Gomez Valdés Castillo , better known as Tin-Tan, was an actor, singer and comedian who was born in Mexico City but was raised and began his career in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. He often displayed the pachuco dress and employed pachuco slang in many of his movies, some with his...
A MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
comedian known as Tin Tan who made heavy use of Spanglish. He also dressed as a pachucoPachucos are Chicano youths who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothing and spoke their own dialect of Mexican Spanish, called Caló or Pachuco...
.
- Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. He has pioneered multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, performance photography and installation art...
also makes heavy use of Spanglish.
- Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
wrote the Spanglish comic novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" (1998).
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a best-selling novel written by Dominican author Junot Díaz. Although a work of fiction, the novel is set in New Jersey where Díaz was raised and deals explicitly with his ancestral homeland's experience under dictator Rafael Trujillo...
by Dominican Writer Junot DiazJunot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...
.
- Mexican rock band Molotov
Molotov is a four-time Latin Grammy Award-winning Mexican rock band formed in Mexico City on September 23, 1995. Their lyrics feature a mixture of Spanish and English, rapped and sung by all members of the group. Musically, Molotov blends heavy basslines with heavy guitar riffs...
, whose members use Spanglish in their lyrics.
- American progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
band The Mars VoltaThe Mars Volta is a Grammy award winning American progressive rock band from El Paso, Texas. Founded in 2001 by guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the band incorporates various influences including progressive rock, krautrock, jazz fusion, Latin American music, and...
, whose song lyrics frequently switch back and forth between English and Spanish.
:Category:Forms of English
External links