Spanglish in the Media: TV, Radio, Internet, & George Lopez

During an interview with NPR, Stavans asserts that Spanglish’s rapid growth cannot be ignored because of its omnipresence in all corners of American life, even Hallmark cards. Aside from the everyday speech of millions of Americans, Spanglish can be found on the radio, television, billboards, and of course, the Internet. According to Torres, the “mixed code is a result of living in a bilingual and bicultural context” (Torres 333). Thus, it is appropriate that the “context” spreads with the growth of the mixed code language. As with many languages, much of Spanglish’s innovation stems from the youth, whose influence has spread in particular to music and across the Internet.

            Spanglish has found its way into a range of musical genres, even topping “gringo” American charts with reggaeton artists such as Pitbull and Daddy Yankee. Perhaps one of the most well publicized fights over Spanish in the United States occurred in the realm of music; the 2006 recording of “Nuestro Himno,” a Spanish version of the Star-Spangled-Banner stirred up a sea of protest among “English-only” Americans. The translation was not even wholly embraced by the immigrant community; many felt that the song was a misrepresentation of the goals of the Latino population in the U.S. 

 Some examples of Spanglish music:

While I wouldn’t say this appeals to a wide variety of musical tastes, this clip is a Spanglish song called “Me Vuelve Loco (I Like)” by the Broken Hearts that demonstrates quite a bite of code switching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfYsG9szDrA

 A mix of American politics and reggaeton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0dMxqgS1-8&feature=PlayList&p=1EA74FB8737A806F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=16

 

            As a response to the massive growth of the Latino population in the U.S., a number of Spanish-language radio stations have emerged. However, the growing trend in radio today aligns with the growth of mixed code; Spanish radio stations are adopting Spanglish DJs and broadcasters to appeal to their bilingual audiences. In March of 2008, the New York Times reported on a boom in Spanglish radio in Long Island. Rocio Trujillo, a DJ for WBON 98.5 FM, La Nueva Fiesta, is a second-generation Salvadoran-American. As written in the New York Times, “She is encouraged by her boss…to speak ‘Spanglish’ to attract young people like herself who speak English on the street and Spanish at home.”

Spanglish is of course not limited to younger generations. In the next clip, a youtube channel titled “What’s the New What?” explains the growth of Spanglish as the new “ad lingo.” Advertisers have embraced Spanglish and are attempting to harness its duality to attract a new demographic of consumers. Marketing researchers appear to have done their work this time; campaigns have come a far cry from the disastrous Chevy Nova release in Latin America. (Nova, in Spanish, translates to no va or “doesn’t go”). Spanglish advertisements can be found on billboards, radio and television. Advertisers in Long Island have found radio in particular to be the most useful outlet to reach the Latino population. The New York Times quotes Charles Cirelli of Ad Matters Media, “We tried Hispanic newspapers with no success at all…but the radio station, they’re going directly to the audience.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n0hr4ViFAA&feature=related

-Listen for “Wácha” in the first commercial, Spanglish for “watch.” 

 

            Advertisers and musicians are not the only people making a profit off of Spanglish. Mexican-American comedian George Lopez uses Spanglish in his routines, which often poke fun at the aspects of being multicultural in America. Lopez has enjoyed a large amount of success, starring in several films and comedy specials and winning a Grammy in 2004 for Best Comedy Album.

In the beginning of this clip, Lopez jokes about the prevalence of Spanglish among Latinos in the U.S. A caveat: as with much popular comedy, this clip becomes very profane very quickly (in both languages). To avoid obscenity in Spanish, stop at 1:00, in English at 2:20.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z13CVD0idrM

 

Cotroneo, Nicole. "On Local Radio, an Accent on Spanglish." The New York Times 2 Mar. 2008, In the Region sec. The New York Times Online. 2 Mar. 2008. 24 Apr. 2009 .

 Montgomery, David. “An Anthem’s Discordant Notes.” The Washington Post 28 April 2006. The Washington Post Online. 27 April 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/27/AR2006042702505.html

 Spanglish, a New American Language. Morning Edition. NPR.  23 September 2003.

 Torres, Lourdes. “Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?”. Romance Quarterly 52.4 (2005 Fall), pp. 328-334

Written Spanglish

If assertions of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua Castellana are true, Stavans has legitimized Spanglish as a “true” language (Torres 331). His feat? Translating Cervantes’ Don Quijote into Spanglish, the first portion of which was published in 2002. While the RAE and other Spanish language conservatives were summarily appalled (and predictably, did not “grant” Spanglish any improvement in status), Spanglish scholars celebrated the work as a marker of Spanglish as a language, not a dialect. While linguists prefer to work in the realm of spoken language, it is hard to argue that written language does not receive special recognition by the general public. In creating a written work of Spanglish, Stavans reasserts claims that Spanglish has its own grammar and vocabulary and that it is not a corrupt form of Spanish or English.

Escúchalo aquí (Stavans reads from his chapter of Don Quijote en Spanglish, the second link): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1438900

            While Stavans’ efforts should be lauded, his translation is far from the first piece of Spanglish literature. Since the 1960’s, hundreds of Latino authors and poets have utilized Spanglish as a tool to capture their own voices and stories more authentically than would English or Spanish (Morales 69). Among the more famous Spanglish poets are Miguel Algarin, Alurista (or Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia), and Corky Gonzales.

 Un ejemplo of poetry Spanglish, por Ed Morales (100-101):

Only a multiculture pueblo can understand

El adentro y the outside of the dynamic

Culturally, we possess ritmos y sueños que no se

Pueden sacar de our essences

They are reflected in our speech and our manner

No matter what language or banner we choose

Freeing us from being aquí or allá, here, there, everywhere

Mixed race is the place

It feels good to be neither

It’s a relief to deny racial purity

We’re amused as America slowly comes to see

The beauty of negritude and the Native American attitude

We’ve been living it day-to-day since 1492

 

Jimmy Santiago Baca reading his poem “Rita and Julia”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYdLAorJImU

 

            Gloria Anzaldúa and Susana Chávez-Silverman write autobiographical pieces on their Latina identities, a task which must, of course, be completed in Spanglish. In Anzaldúa’s work, Borderlands/La Frontera, she laments the pressures felt to conform to English and writes of her pride for her identity. Susana Chávez-Silverman’s Killer Crónicas is a series of vignettes describing Chávez-Silverman’s life and culture. She writes as though recording thoughts and conversations with herself, fluidly switching from Spanish to English mid-sentence. She often employs phonetic spellings of Spanish words to capture the spoken quality of the language, as opposed to a more stilted “correct” Spanish. From p. xix of the introduction:

“…I began to transcribe an “h” where the “s” is just a breath, down there. Ehto. Quereh? Ehplicar. O Ponía la “sh” o “zh” instead of “y” or “ll,” para transmitir la realidad fonética de los northern suburbs de Buenoas Aires. Sha. Shuvia. Te shamo luego. Ever daddy’s girl, supongo, ehtudiante de la tradición oral. Heredé su crackshot oído también. Ex-estudiante, too, de los lingüista-fonetistas donde hice mi B.A…, I learned their lessons well. I can’t not write it like I hear it.”

Chávez-Silverman is very aware of her “mixed” status, and writes of her origins and former residences, each having played a part in shaping her language. In doing so she captures the multicultural feel of Spanglish; rather than hailing from only one (or even two) formative homes, she pays homage to Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Puerto Rica and Guadalajara. “Y siempre, signs de mi daily Latinidad, mi Chicana, code-switching life, right here in la cuenca de Los Angeles” (xx).

 

            Other Spanglish authors include award-winning Oscar Hijuelos and Junot  Díaz, who offer no translations of the frequent Spanish found in their code-switching novels. Without a good Spanish dictionary (which would have to include thousands of pieces of Dominican and Cuban slang, phonetic transcriptions and a cultural dictionary), a reader could only fully understand their works if he or she was bilingual. This type of inclusion offers special status to Spanglish-speakers, as neither Spanish nor English speakers have full access to the works. This is not to say that the novels (The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, respectively) are not enjoyable to all audiences (and how could they not be, having each won a Pulitzer?) but their recognition of Spanglish audiences is another step towards the recognition of the language as “authentic.”

 

From The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, page 108:

            “Those of you who have stood at the corner of 142^nd and Broadway can guess what it was she spoke: the blunt, irreverent cant of the pueblo that gives all dominicanos cultos nightmares on their 400-thread-count sheets and that La Inca had assumed had perished along with Beli’s first life in Outer Azua, but here it was so alive, it was like it had never left: Oye, parigüayo, y qué pasó con esa esposa tuya? Gordo, no me digas que tú todavía tienes hambre?

            Eventually there came a moment when she’d pause at La Inca’s table: Do you want anything else?”

Though Díaz uses Spanglish throughout the novel, this passage in particular marks the conscious distinction between Spanish and English. Beli clearly feels more at ease talking the “cant of the pueblo” than stiffly, formally in English to her mother, La Inca.

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.

Chávez-Silverman, Susana. Killer Crónicas. University of Wisconon Press, 2002.

Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

Hijuelos, Oscar. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

Morales, Ed. Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America. New York: St Martin's Press, 2002. 

Torres, Lourdes. “Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?”. Romance Quarterly 52.4 (2005 Fall), pp. 328-334

La Morfología

Spanglish demonstrates great influence of its two “mother” tongues in the realm of morphology, so for the sake of brevity I’ll limit this discussion to the morphological characteristics unique to Spanglish. An interesting feature of Spanglish morphology is the ability of its speakers to maintain grammatical “correctness” in both languages at all times. While code switching at the word or even clausal level is fairly simple to employ without losing grammaticality, speakers code-switching on an intra-sentential level are able to alternate among multiple constituents without error (Torres 330). According to Torres, Spanglish speakers follow two major grammatical constraints: the free morpheme constraint and the equivalency constraint.

            The equivalency constraint states what has already been cited, that no switch may occur where it would produce an ungrammatical structure in either language. The free morpheme constraint declares that no switching may occur between bound morphemes (in English, think ‘–ness’ to convert adjectives to nouns – it may not exist alone and retain its meaning). However, other Spanglish researchers have indicated lexical items which appear to do precisely this. For example, Stavans cites the use of “jangear” to mean “to hang out.” ‘–ear’ is a bound morpheme in Spanish which creates a verb; perhaps Torres means to specify that bound morphemes may be applied to new roots but not interchanged freely. He does prescribe to a more conservative school of thought on Spanglish than other researchers, such as Stavans. Torres praises Stavans’ work but notes that his translation of Don Quijote is frequently ungrammatical. 

Torres, Lourdes. "Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traddutore, traditore?". Romance Quarterly 52.4 (2005 Fall), pp. 328-334

Borrowing, Code Switching and Calquing: La Formación de Palabras

Spanglish utilizes a number of processes to create new lexical items. One seemingly obvious technique is borrowing, or the use of vocabulary from another language (in this case, Spanish or English). Calquing is the literal translation of a word or phrase in one language to replace a word or phrase with the same meaning in another language. For example, the Spanish translation of “to find guilty” is “declarar culpable” (literally, to declare guilty), but the Spanglish translation is “encontrar culpable” (to find guilty). Encontrar would not appear in this usage in Spanish (citation below, see “calquing”).

            A third linguistic process that occurs frequently in Spanglish (in fact, some might define the language an extended form of this) is code switching. Code switching, or alternating between Spanish and English, may occur with words, clauses, or sentences. Contrary to the belief of Spanish and English “purists” who decry the status of Spanglish as a legitimate language, code switching does not occur randomly. Its grammatical rules will be discussed in the next post.

 

A few Spanglish vocabulary items:

-loncheria – a place to eat lunch, English “lunch” + Spanish “-eria” (suffix which denotes a place where something is sold, eg pescaderia – a fish shop)

-cheateo – a person who cheats, cheater, English “cheat” + Spanish “-eo” (suffix meaning a person who does something)

-estresar – to be stressed out, English “stress” + Spanish “-ar” (suffix denoting an infinitive); cited by Stavans in an NPR interview as one of his favorite Spanglish words

-honron – homerun, Spanish pronunciation of the English word

-cliquear – to click (a mouse), English “click” + Spanish “-ear” (suffix meaning to do something)

 

Torres, Lourdes. “Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?”. Romance Quarterly 52.4 (2005 Fall), pp. 328-334

 “Calquing” Trusted Translations. http://translation-blog.trustedtranslations.com/tags/calque 27 April 2009.

Is Spanglish a "real" language?

While many scholars celebrate Spanglish as an inevitable result of the mixing of two civilizations, it is not without its critics. Both Spanish and English speakers have scorned the language, claiming it is a form of “broken” English or Spanish or a corruption of both languages. According to the renowned Octavio Paz, “No es ni bueno no malo, sino abominable.” (It is neither good nor bad, but abominable). Jimena Berceño, the arts coordinator of the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C., claims that “using Spanglish dilutes not only two languages, but two distinct and vast civilizations” (Gordon).  Berceño, along with many other Spanish-language purists, cites the shock she presumes Cervantes might feel were he alive to witness the growth of Spanglish.

            However, not all students of Cervantes would agree. A representative of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua Castellana snidely remarked to Ilan Stavans that Spanish could never be a “real” language without a translation of Don Quijote. In response, Stavans did exactly that (I’ll discuss his work further in a future post on written Spanglish). In an essay titled Don Quixote in Spanglish: tradductor, traditore?, Lourdes Torres contests the notion of an appalled Cervantes. According to Torres, Cervantes would have embraced the Spanglish translation, because, “after all, Don Quixote is, above all, a novel about the encounter of cultures, classes, and ways of speaking” (331).

            Despite the thousands of translations of the novel across the world, having Don Quixote does not make a language “real.” Linguist Max Weinreich notes, “The difference between a language and a dialect is that the language has an army and navy behind it” (Stavans). While some might argue that Spanglish has a number of armies and navies behind it, it is important to remember that even the United States has no “official” language yet few dispute the status of American English. Additionally, dialectologists often cite the “mutual intelligibility” of the dialects of a language as a marker of distinction between dialects and full-blown “languages.” However, according to numerous Spanglish scholars, Spanglish is not mutually intelligible for either speakers of English or Spanish. In fact, the only individuals who can understand Spanglish are bilingual speakers of Spanish and English. This claim implicitly asserts that no one speaks Spanglish as his or her native language, but as Spanglish grows in the U.S. this is likely to change. In fact, children born of Spanglish-speaking parents may already contradict this assertion.   

            According to Lourdes Torres, Spanglish employs three major linguistic strategies that affirm its status as a language, not a “broken” or incorrect form of Spanish or English. These strategies are borrowing, code switching, and calquing (330). Each process occurs not randomly but with constraints regulating their usage and defining the parameters the language. In the next few posts I’ll discuss some of these strategies and the grammatical principles of Spanglish.

Gordon, Malaika. Fresh Air. NPR. Washington, D.C. 12 May 2008.

 Stavans, Ilan. "Spanglish: Speaking la Lengua Loca." EJournal USA (2008). America.gov. 11 Apr.2008. .21 Apr. 2009  

 Torres, Lourdes. “Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?”. Romance Quarterly 52.4 (2005 Fall), pp. 328 334

Variedades del Spanglish

         Unsurprisingly, cities with massive populations of Spanglish speakers have developed their own dialects. Many Spanglish speakers in Texas, Gloria Anzaldúa included, consider themselves “TexMex” or “Tejano” speakers. A wave of Puerto Rican immigrants to New York has led to “Nuyorican” speech, while Cubans in Miami speak “Cubonics” (Torres 331). Chicano speech patterns connect Americans of Mexican heritage across the country.  Below are some links with examples of several varieties of Spanglish in the U.S.

 TexMex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTFds-BQjUc

In this short documentary by Kimberly Dahl, Jennifer Lang and Shawn Warner on bilingualism in Bayside, Texas, community members discuss the use of Spanish, English and Spanglish in their community. There are several good examples of code-switching from 1:11-1:30, as well as a discussion on TexMex speech and its differences from “proper” Spanish, as noted by one resident (approximately 3:15). 

 

Nuyorican

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ltOUYyMRE

Felipe Luciano, founder of the Young Lords Party (a political group for Puerto Rican-Americans in New York) speaks on the relevance of “old” Latino music such as Tito Puente. Even non-Spanish speakers can gauge, by the audience’s reaction, that Luciano code switches to emphasize a punch line. 

 

Cubonics

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6580/cubonics.html

This website contains a number of Cubonics transliterations in which Spanish idiomatic phrases are translated literally into English, where the original meaning is not necessarily maintained.  I hesitate to say that the idiomatic meaning has been lost, however, as speakers of Cubonics are likely to understand what might seem odd to an English speaker. My favorite from the list is the Cubonics, “I care three cucumbers,” meaning “I don’t care,” translated from the Spanish “Me importa tres pepinos.”

Torres, Lourdes.  "Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?". Romance Quarterly: 52.4 ( 2005 Fall), pp. 328-34. 

Historia y Hablantes

Spanglish, a hybrid form of Spanish and English, is a primarily spoken language found not only across the United States, but even in predominantly Spanish-speaking countries such as Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba. This phenomenon may be attributed to the spread of English across the globe, but anglophiles must not forget the equally important contributions of Spanish. According to Ed Morales, a Spanglish-speaking anthropologist, Spanglish has origins as far back as 1848 (33). While Spanglish evolves today primarily by way of Spanish speakers adopting English words and structures, in 1848 the process was much the opposite. Morales cites the U.S. acquisition of Texas, California, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico as an introduction of Spanish into the English language, bringing “Western” words such as “bronco, buckaroo, burro, mesa, canyon, rodeo, corral and lariat.” According to Morales, “every John Wayne movie you’ve ever seen is in Spanglish” (34).

            Spanglish, like any language, has evolved greatly since its origins. The flow of Latino immigrants into the U.S. in conjunction with the spread of English into Latin America has created one great mezcla – a mix. Who speaks Spanglish today? Lourdes Torres, a Spanglish scholar, claims that Spanglish is only accessible to bilinguals (333). A speaker who is not fully bilingual may employ some elements of the language, but his or her speech will lack the grammatical features of “true” Spanglish.

            Latino youth in the United States form a major Spanglish-speaking population. Many have grown up speaking Spanish in their homes and English in schools, and thus have full access both languages. In an NPR interview conducted by Malaika Gordon in 2002, Spanglish-speaking teenagers use the language as a “practical, functional and expressive way to make a point.”  “I guess it’s some reflex…it’s something that is done subconsciously,” says a 17-year-old Latino interviewed in the report. Gordon also interviews Spanglish scholar Ilan Stavans, who theorizes that like all languages, Spanglish is “born out of necessity” and emerges from the need to “combine two worlds.” 

 Listen to Spanglish samples in Malaika Gordon’s interview: http://www.npr.org/about/nextgen/prc02/participants.html (click the first link on the right which says “Listen”)

           Thus, Spanglish appears to have evolved to fill a need for bilingual Latinos. While some, such as the teenagers interviewed by Gordon, use Spanglish unconsciously, others employ the language as a method of affirming their identity (Latinidad, according to author Susana Chávez-Silverman). While Spanglish may affirm a shared notion of identity, it does not exist in one standard form. In the next post I’ll discuss some of the varieties of Spanglish found in the U.S. 

Chávez-Silverman, Susana. Killer Crónicas. University of Wisconon Press, 2002.

 Gordon, Malaika. Fresh Air. NPR. Washington, D.C. 12 May 2008.

 Morales, Ed. Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America. New York: St Martin's Press, 2002. 

 Torres, Lourdes.  "Don Quixote in Spanglish: Traducttore, traditore?". Romance Quarterly: 52.4 ( 2005 Fall), pp. 328-34.