IS SPANGLISH

a Language?
Mind over grammar It's so wrong, I can't do it Yo hablo Spanglish
Spanglish haiku

Before I get into it here, debo advertir que if you dont agree conmigo, go write your own book. Y asegrate de que its at least un poquito funny, OK? Porque otherwise, estos libros suelen resultar un tantito boring.Trust me, yo s s, because Ive read them all. Otra cosa. Dont try to get away with reducing Spanglish to just un bonche de crazy new bastard words, either. Ya estoy harto de recibir those half- baked glossaries, que siempre mis wellmeaning amigos me estn forwardeando por e-mail. As if thats all there was to it! Sure, ludicrous Spanglish disparates are loads of fun at parties. Pero limiting the idea of Spanglish to a loopy lexicon da la impresin de que its nothing more than a fringe novelty. Lo cual me parece muy equivostaken. Why is it always the same old stupid examples? For instance: El rufo est leakeando. That is the single most cited example of Spanglish ever. As if todos nosotros Spanglish-hablantes spent all our time sitting around under our leaky rufos.
What!s the matter, Bill, got the sniffles? Yeah, es que that damn rufo of mine is always leakeando. When it rains? No, just cuando me pongo a hablar el Spanglish.

Such lame ejemplos are unfortunate. No hacen nada para dar un true appreciation de cmo Spanglish speakers actually se comunican.Yet los fools and los haters are all too quick to sell out the habla as something less than a real idioma. Pero ojal que my humble efforts en estas pginas will help rem- edy that situation.

The Million-Dollar Pregunta

So lets stop beating around the arbusto. Is Spanglish a language? Yes, por supuesto. Spanglish is one of the most innovative languages of our time, second only quizs to Klingon. And it requires much less maquillaje. Why wouldnt you consider it a language? Because its made up of other languages? Pero, si no hay ningn idioma natural que se haya creado desde scratch. Resultan siempre from intimate contact entre otros idiomas.Theres no such thing as immaculate vocabulary. Coinage is messy and carnal. Y de hecho most words nacen out of wedlock. What else are you going to call it? Wait, please dont say code switch-ing. Ese trmino flojo makes me cringe. Cmo qu code ni qu code? First of all, cuando escucho la palabra code, I think of top-secret military messages, not Spanglish. Suena medio silly, like lingo from a bad submarine movie.

Commander, we!ve intercepted a highly encrypted transmission from the enemy, but we were able to de-scramble it with an English-Spanish dictionary. Good code-switching, Lieutenant. Gracias, sir. Excuse me? I mean, thank you. De nada.

As a descriptive term, code-switching, como se dice . . . sucks. No se trata de codes, sino de idiomas and everything they embody: culture, heritage, emo- tional frequencies, ways of thinking and feeling. El swichteo is actually between co-dependent realities. As que code-switching is obviously code for: Estos chingados acadmicos have no idea de lo que estn talking about. Dont you dare call it a dialect, either. I mean, a dialect of what? English (gringo-lect)? Or Spanish (vida-loca-lect)? Se puede hablar igual de fluently tanto por hablantes que son English domi- nant como los que son Spanish dominant. Research by the Porque Because Consulting Group suggests that as the habla becomes more standardized, a travs de Dora the Explorer and other pioneers, tales distinciones will become blurred, tarde o temprano, to the point of irrelevance.

Slanglish?
What about slang? Dissing the habla as un puro slang is really el colmo del descaro. Say it to my face y se va a formar un tremendo revol! Slang is a set of informal words and phrases, perteneciente a un subculture, incorporated into an existing language. Spanglish es un fenmeno mucho ms abarcador. In fact, the word Spanglish can also be used as a slang term for the slang incorporated into the Spanish language. Me estn following? Si no, come back cuando you can focus. Porque este libro no se llama Spanglish for Tontos,OK? Certainly Spanglish is a great generator of slang, and slang appeal creates un tremendo exchange between its two input languages.The thing is que una traduccin literal into another language, by definition, deslangifies the slangueo. Nothing gets lost in translation like foreign slang, por lo tanto es normal adop- tarlo as is. Entonces maybe lo modificamos just un chipito so that it matches its new lexical surroundings. Por ejemplo, lately est de moda combinar la palabra chill, que significa to relax en la jerga gringa, together con la misma palabra relax, resultando en el super amer- icanismo de chillax. Bueno, that babys just begging to be Spanglishized into chi- laxear. Es ms, by the time you read this, Ill be done writing and chilaxeando en una playa someplace, escuchando el mar murmuring to me, You deserve un brea- kicito, papi. Have another pia colada and chilaxate . . .

Did I Say That?

So if youve been calling it code-switching, or a dialect, or slang, por favor, cut it out. A pesar de que todava estamos working out los kinks, Spanglish is, de una vez por todas, a language.Although many people who speak this language ni siquiera saben that theyre doing it. Una amiga ma en Bakersfield, California, swears que she doesnt speak Spanglish supuestamente because she never uses palabras like parquear, or trocka, or rufo, even though she can barely get through a sentence without constant switcheo between languages. Qu what? Who me? Djate de bromas because I would never speak Spanglish, she says. La mujer est en total denial. Pero its understandable que ella no quiera face the truth, porque shes a Spanish teacher. Y

obviamente, no ha hecho su homework. But la verdad es que Spanglish works best cuando you have no idea that youre doing it. Because entonces it doesnt sound forced or contrived, t sabes. Siempre its in that unaware flow que el Spanglish logra alcanzar su greatest jus- tification como un idioma all its own, operating as an unconscious modalidad bi- linge in which English and Spanish se estn utilizando precisamente as if they were one and the same outlaw lengua. If you become too self-aware that youre speaking Spanglish, sometimes de repente you cant do it anymore. It can be like flying in a dream. Tan pron- to you realize que ests flying, olvdate!, you fall out of the sky. Y, en definitiva, the most seasoned Spanglishistas hablan on autopilot, switching back and forth sin darse cuenta.

Lexical Attraction
Spanglish happens spontaneously because English and Spanish are so nat- urally attracted to each other. Tienen chemistry. Trying to keep them from combining would be like trying to prevent hydrogen and oxygen from pair- ing up to give us agua. And honestly, me cae muy bien la idea de que my body is 80 percent Spanglish. We are lo que hablamos. Indeed, what we speak formats our reality, mientras a la misma vez providing the means to articulate it.Which begs the ques- tion, quiens somos? Some of the opinions are not very favorable. We Spanglishistas are often depicted somewhat less than charitably as a bunch of degenerate incultos who are at best functionally bi-illiterate and resort to Spanglish solo porque we dont know English or Spanish very well. Bueno, OK, a veces thats a little true. But that doesnt explain my father, un hombre muy educado who worked very hard to keep a non-leaky rufo over our heads. Mi querdsimo papi era un abogado, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School, and he spoke, read, and wrote both Spanish and English perfectly, with native fluency, y a un nivel muy profesional. He had neither a Spanish accent when he spoke in English ni un acento americano cuando hablaba espaol. And he went back forth between the two, como le daba la gana or not.

Spare Some Change?

Not only is Spanglish spoken across the socioeconomic spectrum by individuals of all educational levels, it doesnt even matter de cual pas your people come from. All roads lead to Spanglish. Ni siquiera importa si eres lati- no. Gringos are very much on board with the habla too. By the way, I want to give a shout out to all you gringos reading along here. I hope youre enjoying el booko. Latinosapiens acabaditos de llegar a los Estados Unidos speak it as English- infused Spanish, and subsequent generations tienden haca Spanish-infused English, as the pendulum of relative proficiencies swings naturally. Los gringos join in de acuerdo a lo que aprendieron en la high school or picked up in one of those ms cerveza por favor phrasebooks. Its all el mismo mambo. Were all doing our part, aportando nuestro granito de arena to advance our cause. Keep in mind, this is just the beginning. Tenemos big plans for Spanglish (official language of the United States, world domination, etc.). You should come to the meetings. But suffice it to say that the evolution is well under way. A lo largo de los siglos, languages all change drsticamente. Whatever lan- guage you speak today is really just una etapa pasajera in the evolution of that language.Your grandkids grandkids grandkids nietos wouldnt understand a damn thing you were saying si pudieras hablarles, because the language habra cambiado tanto by then que no se reconocera como tal. Seriously, if you pick up a book written in Old English, pero es decir really old, como like way antes de los Beatles, you wont recognize a word of it, except maybe the. And the word the didnt even mean the back then. Significaba hippopotamus. Pues, y unless you know that, understanding un libro como Beowulf es un nightmare.

Cmo Que Crutch?

Hopefully, by the time the Spanglish of today is regarded as Old Spanglish, algunos de los ms nasty misconceptions about it will have been debunkeados. In the meantime, Id like to take a whack at misconception nmero uno. According to one of the more balanced columns regularly posted on www.idioma-deidiotas.com, titled Podrido de Anglicsmos, Spanglish resulta from carencia de vocabulario and pereza mental. In other words, supuestamente usamos Spanglish as a crutch to save our ass when we dont know a word, because were too perezosos to actually learn how to say something correctly. Maybe a veces. But to assume thats always the case, sera un big mistake. Es ms, many times se da lo inverso. Sometimes we perpetrate the habla because we know more than one way to say something y podemos escoger la manera that best suits our needs or expressive whims en un momento dado! Let me give you a perfect example. See, in Spanglish you would have a choice between saying, el alma de un frijolito que se va al cielo or the shorter English version,fart. You have to admit the Spanish option es un poco ms tasteful. So the accusation that Spanglish is only resorted to by an underclass of people with limited vocabularies es puro pedo. Each language tiene sus advantages. Spanglish allows us to mix and match them. All things being equal, we instinctually choose to say something in whatever language comunica the exact nuance intended.Theres no such thing as truly equivalent translations between languages, only approximations. Not only that, algunos conceptos exist only in one language. Por ejemplo, I always remember my father warning my mother not to do anything crazy. But he would say it in Spanish. No vayas a cometer una locura, he would say, using the closest Spanish idiom. This, however, changes the meaning, as it would translate back into English as, Dont go and commit a craziness. See, in Spanish you dont just do something crazy. You commit a craziness. Like a murder. Were very serious about our locuras. And were always warning each other not to commit one. Although, in my mothers case, such warnings casi siempre backfired. Pero anyway, its not just about the words, sino tamben el hecho de que hay diferentes aspectos conceptuales at work in each language universe.You cant con- ceive of committing a locura in English, because the exact concept does not exist in that language. Dont even commit the locura of trying it. You may get caught and end up in jail for premeditated locura. And, como quien dice, if you cant do the time, no vayas a cometer la locura.

Y Qu, So What?
For me, the locura would be not switching back and forth. Sera como un mental straight jacket. By the way, I have no idea how to say straight jacket in Spanish, so that time, I admit, estuve compensating. Y qu so what? Thats another thing. As Spanglish expands and standardizes, it generates its own idiomatic phrases like,Y qu so what.Which is technically redun- dant.You would never say, Y qu y qu? or So what so what? But some- how in Spanglish this is not only perfectly valid, its become sort of a stan- dard idiomatic expression, at least in New York, where my particular tribu of Spanglish speakers is from. In case youre wondering, yes: seguro que hay regionalismos. But despite variations, Spanglish everywhere operates the same way. La troka, el sub- way, same difference. Llegars to where youre going. My girlfriend is Mexican and she has no trouble understanding my Puerto Rican grandmothers Spanglish. Or vice versa. El nico glitch es que mi abuelita is losing her hearing and wont admit it, lo cual creates problems. Just yesterday my girlfriend made the mistake of mentioning the term hearing aid to her. Now that, por supesto, she heard and flipped out.Yo no me voy a poner ningn hearing aid, she said, indignantly, in classic senior Spanglish. Pueden decir que yo soy orgullosa, me dont care. I swear when I heard her say it, por poco me muero de la risa.

Obviously mi abuelita understood hearing aid in English. Shes probably never even heard the term in Spanish, which is prtesis de odo amplifcador. I had to googlear it myself just now. Im sure none of her doctors and nurses and home attendants, ni siquiera los que hablan espaol, ever say it in Spanish. Why? Pues, its easier not to.And everybody knows what youre talking about if you say it in English. In this country, hasta los chinos call it a hearing aid as a function of practicality. Plus, switching out of Spanish to say hearing aid also gave my grand- mothers first sentence a little extra fucata! of protest at the end. The switch por si mismo stresses her point. Preferira estar sorda than walk around with a plastic pendejada in her ear. In her second sentence, she repeats the same pattern: Spanish followed by an emphatic burst of English. And the me dont care is delivered con un poquito de gracia in her endearingly imperfect ingls. She knows its cute. She may not have even been aware that she was switching languages, but she was trying to be funny, y as le sali.

Mucho Fun = Mucho Funny

Spanglish speakers intuitively revel in the playfulness of it. Se goza un montn! Have you ever watched sea otters frolicking in the sea en el Discovery Channel? Dont they look like theyre having a blast? Thats how much fun Spanglish speakers are having when enjoying el chistoso juego de palabras that the habla makes possible. Other languages can convey humor, but the habla has got mucho funny already packed into it. Por lo tanto, Spanglish always breaks the ice. Its ideal for social occasions or even job interviews. One time I was applying para un part-time at Cuchifrito Corp.The owner asked me why I wanted the job. I said,Porquebecause,and was hired on the spot. Part of the playfulness and humor of the language is facilitated by the freedom of it.Twice the vocabulary and half the grammar,as Im fond of pointing out, is a signature virtue of the habla, emancipating nosotros los Spanglishistas from official dos and donts. Ah, pero its not so fcil. Below the surface, operando a un nivel desapercibido, theres a whole substrata of laws dic- tando el mix para que cuadre perfectamente every time. An unfailing Spanglish ear allows us to integrate English and Spanish flu- idly and organically. A pesar de que todava no haya una gramtica oficialmente reconocida for the habla yet, si existe una especie de inner logic to it, innately pos- sessed by native Spanglish speakers y algunos gringo savants. Anticipation of something Spanglish al punto de zafarse de tu boca sets off an involuntary syntactical scramble to make it all fit together: (a) The grammars de ambos idiomas have to be reconciled. (b) Se tiene que efectuar un cross check de palabras prestadas against alternate language contexts para asegurar viability. (c) Hay que elegir el Spanish-to-English ratio ms apropiado. (d) Juxtapositional compatability en cada switcheo tiene que verificarse. (e) El mejor word order se tiene que negociar. (f) Lexical stems de un idioma have to be tricked out con los sufijos, los prefijos y las conjugaciones of another, to supply todas las palabritas brand new. (g) Cada expresin tiene que someterse a un pre-screening riguroso, to filter for authenticity over gratuitous affectation, pero siempre con un waiver for clever exaggerations en son de broma. more ###