Mix of English, Spanish gains place in U.S. mainstream
"Le robaron la troca con everything. Los tires, los rines," a visiting cousin said.
Translation: "They robbed the truck with everything. The tires, the rims."
"Quieres watermelon?" offered Francisco Duenas, a 26-year-old housing counselor, holding a jug filled with sweet water and watermelon bits.
"Tal vez tiene some of the little tierrita at the bottom."
Translation: "Want watermelon? It might have some of the little dirt at the bottom."
When the Duenas family gathers for weekend barbecues, there are no pauses between jokes and gossip, spoken in English and Spanish. They have been mixing the languages effortlessly, sometimes clumsily, for years.
Spanglish, the fluid vernacular that crosses between English and Spanish, has been a staple in Hispanic life in California since English-speaking settlers arrived in the 19th century. And for much of that time, it has been dismissed and derided by language purists — "neither good, nor bad, but abominable," as Mexican writer Octavio Paz famously put it.
But the criticism has done little to reduce the prevalence of Spanglish, which today is a bigger part of bilingual life than ever.
Now, it's rapidly moving from Hispanic neighborhoods into the mainstream. Spanglish is showing up in television and films, with writers using it to bring authenticity to their scripts and get racy language past network executives. Marketers use it to sell everything from bank accounts to soft drinks. Hallmark now sells Spanglish greeting cards. And McDonald's is rolling out Spanglish TV spots that will air on both Spanish- and English-language networks.
Course work
In academia, once a bastion of anti-Spanglish sentiment, the vernacular is now studied in courses with such names as "Spanish Phonetics" and "Crossing Borders." Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans published a Spanglish dictionary with hundreds of entries — from "gaseteria" (which means "gas station") to "chaqueta" (for "jacket," instead of the Spanish word "saco"). Stavans said new Spanglish words are being created all the time, altering traditional notions of language purity that remained strong only a generation ago.
Growing up, "I was told in school that you shouldn't mix the languages," said Stavans, whose college plans to hold the first Conference of Spanglish in April. "There used to be this approach that if you use a broken tongue, you have a broken tongue. It's not about broken tongues; it's about different tongues, and they are legitimate. I think you're going to see a lot more of that."
The rise of Spanglish says a lot about the demographic shifts in California and other states with large Hispanic populations.
Migration movements traditionally are accompanied by the mixing of the native language with the newly acquired one. Within a generation or two, the Old Country tongue — whether Polish, Chinese or Italian — usually recedes.
But unlike immigrants from Europe and Asia, Hispanics are separated from their cultural homeland not by vast oceans but by the border with Mexico and the 90 miles between Cuba and the Florida Keys.
The Hispanic immigrant population constantly is replenishing itself. Meanwhile, Spanish-language media, such as industry giants Telemundo and Univision, continue to grow, which means the immigrants' original language remains a force.
Today, Spanglish is especially popular among young urban Hispanics who are U.S.-born — people such as Francisco Duenas, who was reared in South Gate, Calif., lives near downtown Los Angeles and works in an office in South Los Angeles. Spanglish, he said, allows him to bridge two cultures: the largely Spanish-speaking world of his parents and the English-language world of work and friends.
"I think this Spanglish, being to go back and forth, it's a way of saying, 'Look, I can do both,' " Duenas said. "And I think here in Los Angeles particularmente, it's not necessary to speak just Spanish or English. No puedes describir la vida aqui (you can't describe life here) without speaking both."
As Spanglish spreads, academics and marketers are finding it's much more complicated than simply forming sentences with both Spanish and English words.
The most basic part of Spanglish is "code-switching," in which someone inserts or substitutes words from one language into another. For instance, Spanglish might sound like "Vamos a la store para comprar milk." Translation: "Let's go to the store to buy milk."
A more complicated form of Spanglish involves making up words — essentially switching languages within a word itself. It can happen when a word or phrase is translated literally, such as "perro caliente" for "hot dog." In other instances, Spanglish is created when an English word is Hispanicized, such as "troca" or "troque" for "truck." Speakers also might add the "-ear" suffix to an English word to make it an improper Spanish verb: "parquear," for "to park," for example.
Major regional differences have emerged. In Miami's Little Havana, a Spanglish word for "traitor" is "Kenedito," a reference to exiles' hard feelings over President Kennedy's failed Bay of Pigs invasion. In New York, Puerto Ricans refer to their home on the Lower East Side as "La Loisaida." In some parts of the Southwest, Spanglish speakers say "Ay te watcho" to bid someone farewell.
Phenomenon or fad?
Just where the sudden popularity of code-switching will end is a matter of debate. Jim Boulet Jr., executive director of English First, a lobbying group opposed to bilingual education and which has railed against Spanglish, thinks the boom is a fleeting trend. He and other critics see Spanglish as a form of slang, not a new language.
"There's always been some form of that," he said. "At one point it was Yiddish, then the black urban slang, and now Spanglish is the new 'in' thing."
Patrick Osio Jr., editor of the public-affairs Web site HispanicVista.com, said Spanglish hinders, rather than helps, Hispanics' upward mobility.
"A dialectical mixture of the two is not going to get you much anywhere," Osio said. "It may allow you to trade a few barbs with your neighbors and friends, but outside of that, you're doomed."
Indeed, some parents fear their children are too barraged with both languages to learn either adequately.
Veronica Padilla, a 30-year-old mother of two, speaks English with her husband, Spanish with her mother and a mix of both with her children. Freely code-switching herself, Padilla said the results in her children's speech, at least culturally speaking, are appalling.
For instance, her children can't name basic Mexican foods properly.
"A las tortillas les dicen 'tacos,' (they call tortillas 'tacos') can you believe it? Tacos!" Padilla said while shopping at Latino Factory, a specialty shop, in Downey, Calif.
She shrugged. "That's just the way we talk."
On the big screen
Spanglish — used famously by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said, "Hasta la vista, baby" in "Terminator 2" — now is showing up in more sustained dialogue in movies such as "Real Women Have Curves" and the "Spy Kids" trilogy.
Director James Brooks is now filming his next romantic comedy, about a Mexican woman who arrives in Los Angeles looking for love and money. The title: "Spanglish." Susana Chavez-Silverman, who teaches Spanglish texts in courses at Pomona College and whose memoir about speaking Spanglish during a stay in Argentina will be published next year, said the spread of Spanglish is more than just a linguistic lark.
"This never would've happened 20 years ago, when the idea of multiculturalism wasn't in, the idea of cultural ambiguity wasn't in," she said. "And now it is, and a certain acceptance of Spanglish is a symptom of that."