The Use of Spanglish

Question

Hi all. I have been absent for a while. I just got back from a week of sailing with a group of Mexicans from D.F. They were all truly bi-lingual having learned both from grade school and having attended univiersity in the US. Harvard, Brown and Stanford. All professionals in their mid-30's.

It was a very interesting week and I cannot say if it is typical or not. But all of them switched between English and Spanish everyother sentence and sometimes mid-sentence. It appeared to me to be natural for them to use whichever language was easier to express certain ideas.

Point is, Spanglish is not only alive and well but thriving. Also, don't worry too much about mixing the two based on your audience.

PS: It is good to be home and back on S.D.

Welcome back, amigo. :):) - rac1, Jan 5, 2015

Good to have you back safe and sound mate , and sounding out at that , which is good. - ray76, Jan 18, 2015

Answer 1

¡Qué bueno que you're back! Me parece que te divirtieras mucho. (Don't know if that one is right). Let's continue our journey of learning!

Answer 2

My mom is from India and code-switching happens all the time between English and Gujarati.

Kinda makes sense that your friends would code-switch between Spanish and English.

I have a tenuous connection with Gujarat province. - ray76, Jan 18, 2015

Answer 3

Gringo, I am not sure have taken into account that that phenomenon also occurs with any two different countries that have common borders with two different languages.

Right?

Yes it does. Danish - German - Swedish and English (in my honour) were spoken around my in-laws' dinner table. Plus the South Jutland dialect. - ian-hill, Jan 5, 2015

And I bet they (the ones that were bilingual/trilingual like natives) mixed all three languages in their speech, right? - chileno, Jan 5, 2015

All the time - mixing words and half and half sentences. Lots of fun. - ian-hill, Jan 5, 2015

Right... :) - chileno, Jan 5, 2015

Answer 4

Listening to Asian Australians talking on cell phones ,( wish I did not have to )

and it is quite funny to hear Mandarin ,or Hokkien interspersed with

Aussie colloquial phrases or even whole sentences , they go back

and forth across the cultural and linguistic divide with ease , it is

both amusing and fascinating . Thanks gringo for this post it's interesting.

Thanks to all of you for your insights. You all reinforce my point. Don't be afraid to use Spanglish. Everyone does, including the truly bi-linguals. The stuffy academics will tell you it is wrong and bad etc. Ignore them. Communicate however youcan - gringojrf, Jan 18, 2015

Answer 5

I often walk into Asian shops at home & hear the shopkeeper on the telephone, presumably speaking to a fellow Asian because the conversation is in Urdu... Until it turns to numbers, then invariably they speak in English. It seems to me that modern British Urdu has almost universally adopted the English counting system for commerce.

Has notado that I siempre hago eso all the time. :) I had a question hace unas semanas about this. "¿Espanglés anyone? - Daniela2041, Jan 17, 2015

Answer 6

Gringo, I've noticed the exact same thing. Whether it be the seemingly random injection of English words into Spanish conversation or the sudden switch from one language to another, Spanglish is alive and well here in the US.

I suppose it's to be expected. And as Chileno mentioned, I'm sure this happens anywhere 2 or more languages meet, another good example being the combination of Spanish and Portuguese in Brazil, or portanhol / portuñol.