April 11, 2008
I was amused by Leticia Salais’ piece on “Saying ‘Adiós’ to Spanglish” in Newsweek (December 17, 2007), in part because it reflects how little so many people know about language and its centrality in human intercourse and development. I was also saddened by the article because it tells us much about dysphoria (alienation) and its effects on self identity.
Leticia Salais caterwauls about the loss of the Spanish language her children have suffered. It turns out, however, that it’s not their loss of the Spanish language she bemoans but her own loss of a Spanish she never learned because the koine of the Southwest (especially El Paso where she grew up) was Spanglish, that mixture of Spanish and English so prevalent in the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. She explains how she did everything she could to escape the poverty and the color of her skin, having grown up in the poorest neighborhoods of El Paso, Texas.
Poverty is everywhere, and economic circumstances can change that. But the color of one’s skin is another story. Dysphorically, however, her escape was from her identity as a “Mexican.” In the U.S.– Mexico borderlands, it doesn’t matter which side of the border you’re from. If you’re a Mexican, you’re a Mexican. Never mind that Mexican Americans are mexicans with a lower case “m” and Americans with a capital “A.” This situation has prevailed for more than 160 years.
Hegemonically subject to the apodictic values of American society since 1848, far too many Mexican Americans have sought escape from the prison of the skin. Being mexican in the Southwest has been like being african (lower case “a”) in the South. Salais’ escape was to “run around with kids from the westside of town who came from more affluent families.”
Though she spoke Spanish “well enough” she “pretended not to understand Spanish and would not speak a word of it.” In school she refused to speak Spanish even with her Chicano friends. While they joined Chicano clubs, all she wanted was to be in the English literacy club. At home, the only person she would speak Spanish with was her mother who knew no English.
She married and moved to Tucson, Ariz. where she was in heaven with her Anglo neighbors. When she got pregnant with her first son, she decided that English would be his first language and, if she could help it, his only language. But she saw the error of her decision–she realized the profitability of being bilingual “in a land of opportunity” that needed interpreters in so many of the professions and occupations. But her epiphany went beyond the realization of profitability. It took a turn towards the Spanish of propriety–good Spanish, the enunciation of words rolling correctly off one’s tongue. None of that Spanglish.
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Spanglish is actually code-switching from English to Spanish or vice-versa in utterances or sentences that may be syntactically English or Spanish, what linguists call “intra-sentential alternation.” For example: “Bueno bye” when saying “goodbye” or “Hasta later” for “Until later.” Hyperbolically, the permutations are infinite. Spanglish works both ways–bi-directionally; and has a code for its intra- sententialism. In other words, code-switching occurs logically in its sentences. This means that Spanglish has developed a grammar of its own.
Along any boundary between two nations speaking different languages more code-switching occurs than one is aware of, not to mention the phenomenon of borrowed words. Most languages are studded with scads of borrowed words. Early on, English speakers in the Hispanic Southwest made English words out of such Spanish words as “calabozo” turning it into “calaboose.” Or “juzgado” into “hoosegow.” Or “mesteño” into “mustang” Or “la riata” into “lariat” incorporating the Spanish article “la” into the noun and prefacing it with the English article “the” so that, in effect, the utterance is “the the rope.”
Along the contiguous border between Mexico and the United States, English and Spanish fertilize each other. Languages in contact zones are like consenting adults creating words full of pregnant meaning enriched like DNA by the power of their constituents. Both American and Mexican elitists decry the presence and use of Spanglish along the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, calling it bad English and bad Spanish–substandard and ungrammatical.
But Spanglish does not emerge just from the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. It emerges where there are communities of Spanish-speaking Hispanics in the United States from any Spanish-speaking country. Cubans in Miami speak Spanglish. Puerto Ricans in New York and Chicago speak Spanglish. Dominicans in DC speak Spanglish. Latinos everywhere in the United States speak Spanglish to varying degrees.
The linguistic phenomenon of Spanglish is part of the efficient continuity of language, that is, in their evolution, all languages tend toward more efficient articulations and expressions. This is what accounts for abbreviations in English like “What’ll you have?” for “What will you have?” “I’ll” for “I will.” Or the abbreviations in text-messaging. In part, this efficient continuity explains how languages change. How Latin became French and Spanish and Italian and Portuguese and Romanian. Unfortunately, some English language purists pooh-pooh these notions, labeling instead the Spanglish phenomena as bad English and bad Spanish mixed together.
As a native speaker of Spanish and a professor of English for more than five decades, I speak Spanglish–and that’s not a sign of bad English and bad Spanish mixed together. It’s what happens with languages in contact with each other, enriching the discourse of expression. That mixture does not impoverish either language. Linguistically we must come to terms with the phenomenon that is Spanglish before it becomes a cause célèbre.
In Spanglish I can say “voy al show” which means “I’m going to the movies.” Using the word “show” doesn’t mean I don’t know the Spanish word “cine” or “vistas”–it means I have linguistic options of using either the English word “show” or the Spanish words “cine” or “vistas.” This is the same process as using a French word, say, in an English expression, such as “cause célèbre.” This is binary phenomena. A good example of binary phenomena is Ezra Pound who sprinkled his poetry with foreign words and expressions without bothering to explain them to the reader. Language is an amalgamation.
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Even today, as when I was a child in San Antonio, Texas, one hears the judgment of the populi about Chicanos and their language. That vox populi contends that Chicanos don’t speak English and they don’t speak Spanish. The populi explain that what they speak instead is a bastardization of English and Spanish. Some commentators of that phenomenon have gone so far as to suggest that Chicanos are “alingual”–that is, they are without language.
The distinction between Spanglish and Tex-Mex (a corollary manifestation of languages in contact) is that the latter is a process of taking an English word and transforming it ostensibly into a Spanish word. The English word “truck,” for example, is transformed into “troca” just as the English word “muffler” is transformed into the word “mofle”. Both “troca” and “mofle” are not Spanish words per se, but part of the growing Spanglish lexicon which is well understood by “bilingual” residents along the U.S.–Mexico border. Interestingly, words like “troca” and “mofle” have migrated into Mexico and beyond and have become part of the extended lexicon of the borderlands such that in Mexico both words are used with aplomb.
Many if not all Chicanos use Hispanicized English words in their speech, not because they don’t have a lexicon of standard English but because it’s easier to use Hispanicized English words in their utterances. For example, in Spanish “to type” is “escribir a maquina.” With a little bit of “linguistic tweaking” the English language word “type” becomes “taipear,” the Hispanicized version, considerably shorter and more efficient than “escribir a maquina”–to write with a machine.
The same is true of the word “parquear”–for “to park” instead of the Spanish word “estacionar.” Here it’s not the length of the Spanish word that engenders preference for the creolized word “parquear” but popularity of the word “park.” Preference for “parquear” is not because Chicanos don’t know the Spanish word “estacionar.” What is operational in that preference is the density of usage for the word “parquear.” It has become “la moda”– the mode of parlance among Chicanos.
Creation of a “language” springing from two languages in contact is not uniquely a Chicano phenomenon. Creation of “blended nouns and verbs” occur everywhere languages “live” side by side or in proximity to each other. Because of the historical presence of American troops in Korea, Koreans have added the word “hom-reon” for “homerun” to their lexicon in the same way that Mexicans added the word “hon-ron” for “homerun” to their lexicon. For “hotcakes,” Koreans say “hat-kei-i-keu” just as speakers of Spanglish use “keke” for “cake.”
To their lexicon, Chicanos have added words like “wachate” for “watch yourself.” Many Chicanos use the word “ dematriation” as the English version of “desmadre” (riot) as Ricardo Sanchez, the Chicano poet, used the word. In Korea these kinds of hybrid words are called “Konglish” which also reflects words from Japanese.
In English we interject many Spanish words into our speech, words like enchilada, tacos, tamales, and tortillas as well as plaza, patio, and barbeque (from barbacoa). This is not bad English, just the way of the word. Our speech becomes more colorful and indicates just how languages syncretize. As a consequence of the American presence in Japan, the Japanese word for “rifle” has become “rifu.” This is not bad Japanese, just an indication of how English has influenced Japanese.
In my Chaucer classes, I point out that Chaucer spoke more French than English, and we discuss how much French there is in the Canterbury Tales, especially in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” When we speak of Chaucer’s language, we do not call it “Frenglish.” Nor do we call Chaucer’s use of “axe” for “ask” or “na moe” for “no more” bad English. English did not become English until after it was fertilized by 400 years of French. And Spanish did not become Spanish until after it was fertilized by 700 years of Arabic. In like fashion, Latin became French after consorting with the Gallic languages of Gaul; and in Iberia, Latin transmogrified into Spanish after consorting with the Iberian language of Hispania (Roman designation for Spain).
Spanglish is a battle over symbols. The symbolic values of English are changing and will continue to change in the cauldron of linguistic diversity. The English language of today is not the English language of 200 years ago. The speakers of English in 1807 would be hard pressed to understand today’s English just as the speakers of English in the year 2207 will be hard pressed to understand today’s English. [The language of the Untied States is nominally English, but it has evolved sufficiently different from the English of England that it merits calling it “the American language” as H.L. Mencken did.]
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There is no accurate count of the number of Americans of Mexican descent in the United States, but the most consistent figures presently suggest a population of approximately 30 million, two-thirds of the 45 million American Hispanics, most of whom in their bilingual identity speak Spanglish as well as English and Spanish with varying degrees of fluency. Speakers of Spanglish represent a linguistic community.
It’s important to bear in mind that characterizing the speech of that linguistic community as “Spang- lish” is a pejoration reflecting attitudes of linguistic imperialism couched in terms of “good English” and “good Spanish.” It’s this linguistic imperialism that internalizes in Mexican Americans the notion that Spanglish is an inferior language. This internalization promotes dysphoria.
On a recent morning talk-show in El Paso, Texas, where the topic was corruption in the El Paso County government, a Mexican American called in to the show, commenting that the corruption was because the county government had so many Mexicans. Adding that “as everybody knows all Mexicans are corrupt,” to which the host objected strenuously. The point here is how dysphoria alienates Mexican Americans from themselves.
"This is the dysphoria that drove Leticia Salais to reject Spanglish and the culture that spawned it believing that no good could come of being identified as part of that culture, and certainly no good in speaking its language since it is not “proper English” nor “proper Spanish.” Thus, fleeing from one dysphoric situation, Salais has embraced an equally dysphoric solution, going from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.
What is happening in Spanglish is what happened to Spanish as it emerged from Latin and as other languages emerged from Latin also. This phenomenon is not limited to romance languages. Though considered a Germanic language, English is also a product of its Latin roots both as a province of Rome for 500 years and as a captive nation of the French speaking Normans for 4oo years. Chaucer was part of the latter milieu, working at literature in the forge of an emerging language, much the way many Chicano writers have been working at the forge of the emerging languages of Chicano English and Chicano Spanish.
Current views about language, culture, and behavior are still influenced by historical and traditional concepts. In most instances, these concepts insufficiently explain the intricate relationship between language, culture, and behavior. Ergo the public opprobrium towards Spanglish. And also the current public opprobrium in the United States towards Spanish in general and at large, producing the backlash of English Only attitudes. Unfortunately these attitudes tend to reinforce existing stereotypes about Spanish-speaking American Hispanics and to perpetuate a variety of psycho-social propositions about Mexican Americans in particular. Historically, until 1970 one such proposition identified Spanish- speaking Mexican American children in the public schools of the Hispanic Southwest as retarded.
This was the state of Mexican American children in the American educational system as I pointed out in my cover story on “Montezuma’s Children” (The Center Magazine, November/December, 1970). Forty years ago Mexican American children were considered retarded because they could not speak English. Though research since then has established that that psycho-social sentiment was engendered because they were “Mexicans.”
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There is no “proper Spanish” just as there is no “proper English.” There is the Spanish and English of usage and convention. We tend to identity one brand of English as “standard English” and one brand of Spanish as “standard Spanish” in hopes of creating some kind of national cohesion via language. Unfortunately, however, language is not the glue of national unity. Across the globe there is internecine conflict between peoples who speak the same language. Respect for the individual regardless of the language he or she may speak and the way it’s produced (accent) is the key to national unity. African Americans, for example, speak English (American English) yet have remained only marginally part of the national polity.
Leticia Salais has not achieved an epiphany. She is now ensconced in a linguistic ivory tower passing judgment on those who speak Spanglish. She prefers the mellifluous sounds of Peruvian Spanish, as she indicates in her Newsweek piece, rather than the cacophonous sounds of Spanglish, failing to realize that in Peru the Spanish language has undergone a comparable evolution to the Spanish language in Mexico where the indigenous languages in contact with Spanish have influenced each other and produced a Spanish unique to Peru. A Spanish that is not Peninsular Spanish.
While I was an undergraduate at Pitt in Comparative Studies (languages and literatures), many students from Latin America would exclaim that their country had preserved el mero castellano–the pure or true Spanish. The most notorious in this regard were Argentines and Colombians, neither aware of how phonologically different their Spanish was from Peninsular Spanish. In Spain I heard many varieties of Spanish.
At the beginning of my linguistic studies at Pitt I imagined code-switching as a dual track in the brain where at appropriate places a synaptic spark enabled the switch from, say, Spanish to English or English to Spanish, much like switching trains on tracks. This was also when I accepted the proposition that one thought in specific languages. We now consider that “thinking in a language” involves coded electro- chemical impulses that are translated into aural signals at a voicing point. We don’t think in languages but in electro-chemical codes. Consider that when we press the letter key for “R” on a computer keyboard, the letter “R” is not traveling from the keyboard to the computer screen but a coded form of the letter and transformed into print at an appropriate place in the transmission process: the monitor or the page.
I’m reminded here of how many times I’ve heard non-Spanish speakers in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands express a desire to learn Spanish, adding the caveat: not “kitchen Spanish,” explaining that “kitchen Spanish” is the Spanish the maids use. They want to learn Castillian Spanish. Shades of the Mexican-Dixon Line! In the U.S.–Mexico borderlands the maids are almost always Mexican as are the gardeners and those who work at the jobs of last resort.
Linguistic truths give way to invidious fallacies and, before long, Mexican Americans are considered once more as lazy, unambitious, stupid and retarded because they fail to meet the linguistic standards of the English language.
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca is a scholar in residence, Western New Mexico University; Professor Emeritus, Texas State University System–Sul Ross
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Select bibliography of works on language, culture and behavior:
“The Minority on the Border,” The Nation, December 11, 1967.
“The Mexican-Dixon Line,” El Grito, Summer 1968.
“The Green Card Dilemma,” The Texas Observer, 60:5, 1968.
“Perspectives in Language, Culture, and Behavior,” International Language Reporter, 2nd Quarter 1969.
Problems and Strategies in Teaching the Language Arts to Spanish Speaking Mexican American Children in the Southwest (monograph with Carl L. Rosen), U.S. Office of Education (ERIC/CRESS), February 1969.
The Linguistic Imperative in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (monograph), Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics 1970.
“A Mexican American Border Dialect of American English,” Studies in Linguistics, October 1970.
“Montezuma’s Children” (Cover Story), The Center Magazine of the John Maynard Hutchins Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, November/December 1970. Entered into The Congressional Record, 116 No. 189 (November 25, 1970), S 18961–S 18965.
“Language and Reading Problems of Spanish-Speaking Children of the Southwest” (with Carl L. Rosen), Journal of Reading Behavior, 1:1, 1970.
“Schools for Mexican Americans: Between Two Cultures” (Cover Feature), The Saturday Review, April 17, 1971. ERIC Report ED 034647.
“Sociolinguistics and Language Attitudinal Change” in Sociolingistics in the Southwest, Bates Hoffer, editor, San Antonio: Trinity University 1972.
“Preparation in the Art of Teaching English,” Improving College and University Teaching, Spring 1973. ERIC Report EJ 083031.
“English Teaching: Some Humanistic Goals and a Personal Credo” in Goal Making for English Teaching, Henry B. Maloney, editor, Champaign, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1973. ERIC: ED 082193.
Chicanos and Concepts of Language (monograph with Marta Sotomayor), San Jose, Calif.: Marfel Publications, 1974.
“Language, Culture, and Behavior: Implications for Social Work Education” in Chicano Content and Social Work Education, Marta Sotomayor and Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, editors, New York: Council on Social Work Education, 1975.
“The Difference Between a Dialect and a Language,” SAAABE Newsletter (Publication of the San Antonio Area Association for Bilingual Education), Fall 1979.
“A Bilingual Childhood,” The American Scholar, Summer 1981.
Life, Language, and Literature: Ways of the Word (monograph), Tempe: Arizona State University, 1989.
“Myth America: Realities and Velleities of the American Ethos” (Mary Thomas Marshal Lecture, Texas State University–Sul Ross), Journal of Big Bend Studies, January 1994.
“Ebonics is About Language, Not Ethnic Identity,” Hispanic Link News Service, January 27, 1997. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.
“Tyrannus Lex: Common Ground and the English Only Movement,”Hispanic Vista Weekly Digest, February 21, 2005.
“Terms of Identity: What’s in a Name?” Latino Suave, December 2005 / January 2006.
“Lies Like Truth: Discourse Issues in Language,” Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification (online journal), University of Michigan, Volume 1, June 26, 2006. ISSN 1559-3096.