Living on the Hyphen
November 2, 2014 3:44 AM Subscribe
Spanglish is not random. It is not simply a piecemeal cobbling-together, a collecting of scraps of random vocabulary into a raggedy orphan of a sentence. It has logic and rules, and more interestingly and importantly, it embodies a constantly shifting and intimate morphology of miscegenation. It is the mix of my husband’s innate Mexicanness and my innate Americanness, of my adaptive Mexicanness and his adaptive Americanness, in Spanish and English morphemes that come neatly together and apart like so many Legos into new and ever-changing constructions.
sammyo: That would be "filtro", "filtrero" would be something like "filterer".
It's refreshing to see how flexible and elegant Junot Diaz' Spanglish is, by the way. As she says, it makes no big deal of itself, it feels natural. Her Spanglish isn't bad, but it's not quite as smooth. Then again, most non-Latino Americans who try to slip in a Spanish word or two to sound like they know what's up just sound ridiculous (I see a lot of this kind of stuff in American or other English-language reviews of Mexican movies, where the writer feels the need to use "la frontera" randomly instead of "the border", and stuff like that), so she's not doing too badly.
(If I have a complaint about this article, it's that she doesn't know how to write "cohete". It's not "cuete", which is a cut of meat, it's "cohete" (rocket), and "cohetero", etc. It's a common mistake made in Mexico too, though, so she probably picked it up from her husband. Oh, and playing multi-lingual Scrabble doesn't really work, it throws the balance of the game off, since letter scores are based on frequency in the language it's made for.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:13 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's refreshing to see how flexible and elegant Junot Diaz' Spanglish is, by the way. As she says, it makes no big deal of itself, it feels natural. Her Spanglish isn't bad, but it's not quite as smooth. Then again, most non-Latino Americans who try to slip in a Spanish word or two to sound like they know what's up just sound ridiculous (I see a lot of this kind of stuff in American or other English-language reviews of Mexican movies, where the writer feels the need to use "la frontera" randomly instead of "the border", and stuff like that), so she's not doing too badly.
(If I have a complaint about this article, it's that she doesn't know how to write "cohete". It's not "cuete", which is a cut of meat, it's "cohete" (rocket), and "cohetero", etc. It's a common mistake made in Mexico too, though, so she probably picked it up from her husband. Oh, and playing multi-lingual Scrabble doesn't really work, it throws the balance of the game off, since letter scores are based on frequency in the language it's made for.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:13 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
Mod note: A couple of comments deleted; let's not totally derail this with a Lego vs Legos rant / argument?
posted by taz (staff) at 4:32 AM on November 2, 2014
posted by taz (staff) at 4:32 AM on November 2, 2014
My spanglish is mostly spanish, with english mixed in here and there where i dont know the spanish word, which is frequently. I don't see the point of peppering my speech with spanish, even though I could, because Spanish is less expressive for me -- I don't have the complex web of associations with the words that a native would.
posted by empath at 4:49 AM on November 2, 2014
posted by empath at 4:49 AM on November 2, 2014
Sorry, el typocito, well and I'm just an atrocious speller in any lingua, even madeup ones.
posted by sammyo at 5:05 AM on November 2, 2014
posted by sammyo at 5:05 AM on November 2, 2014
When a bilingual six-year-old of my acquaintance was learning to speak, his vocabulary seemed to be based on which alternative was easier to articulate. "Keys" was easier than "chiaves" but "agua" was easier to say than "water."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:16 AM on November 2, 2014
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:16 AM on November 2, 2014
There is a "reverse Spanglish" (forgive me; it's quite late here) that you find in professional classes in Spain.
Some of it is aspirational and snobbish, as peppering your phrases with English words is a status marker. Some of it, however, is professional jargon: if, like me, you're a programmer, you end up learning a lot of vocabulary from reading English, and then you use it in a professional context in the middle of your Spanish sentences, often bastardised by Spanish conjugation or concordance. And then there are all the words in computing that, despite having good Spanish options, people keep using in English.
Off the top of my head, and mixing common words and specialist usage, "hintear" (hinting), "la interface", "la güi (pronounced "gooey", for GUI), "un deadlock", "los mutexes", "voy a deployar", "una conexión dial-up", "necesito los drivers para la impresora", "te lo envío por mail", "un framework de programación", etc.
My daughters have English as their first language and Spanish for a second language, and they are already codeswitching, but not with each other. I don't hear any structure in their Spanglish as I could hear when I visited New York.
posted by kandinski at 5:31 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
Some of it is aspirational and snobbish, as peppering your phrases with English words is a status marker. Some of it, however, is professional jargon: if, like me, you're a programmer, you end up learning a lot of vocabulary from reading English, and then you use it in a professional context in the middle of your Spanish sentences, often bastardised by Spanish conjugation or concordance. And then there are all the words in computing that, despite having good Spanish options, people keep using in English.
Off the top of my head, and mixing common words and specialist usage, "hintear" (hinting), "la interface", "la güi (pronounced "gooey", for GUI), "un deadlock", "los mutexes", "voy a deployar", "una conexión dial-up", "necesito los drivers para la impresora", "te lo envío por mail", "un framework de programación", etc.
My daughters have English as their first language and Spanish for a second language, and they are already codeswitching, but not with each other. I don't hear any structure in their Spanglish as I could hear when I visited New York.
posted by kandinski at 5:31 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
Then again, most non-Latino Americans who try to slip in a Spanish word or two to sound like they know what's up just sound ridiculous (I see a lot of this kind of stuff in American or other English-language reviews of Mexican movies, where the writer feels the need to use "la frontera" randomly instead of "the border", and stuff like that), so she's not doing too badly.
You see it all the time in dialogue in books and movies, where a character is all "Meet me at el mercado, amigo," dropping in precisely the Spanish words that a monolingual English reader will understand, but never the words or grammar that get used in actual Spanglish.
I like the article's emphasis on code switching and fluidity; I love hearing (and reading not just authors like Diaz but also on friends' posts on facebook) the way people manipulate and play with languages; from places like Oaxaca, that often includes the additional interplay with indigenous languages like Mixtec or Zapotec.
what Ilan Stavans, the foremost champion of Spanglish, calls to “live on the hyphen, in between.”
I haven't read that book by Stavans but I think in this he is drawing on Gloria E. Anzaldúa. There has been a lot of writing about hybridity and living in the spaces in between, and Anzaldúa's is among the best.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:25 AM on November 2, 2014
You see it all the time in dialogue in books and movies, where a character is all "Meet me at el mercado, amigo," dropping in precisely the Spanish words that a monolingual English reader will understand, but never the words or grammar that get used in actual Spanglish.
I like the article's emphasis on code switching and fluidity; I love hearing (and reading not just authors like Diaz but also on friends' posts on facebook) the way people manipulate and play with languages; from places like Oaxaca, that often includes the additional interplay with indigenous languages like Mixtec or Zapotec.
what Ilan Stavans, the foremost champion of Spanglish, calls to “live on the hyphen, in between.”
I haven't read that book by Stavans but I think in this he is drawing on Gloria E. Anzaldúa. There has been a lot of writing about hybridity and living in the spaces in between, and Anzaldúa's is among the best.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:25 AM on November 2, 2014
I completely get this as an English person living in France, mine is franglais. There are just too many words that are best expressed in the other language to stick to just French or English.
posted by ellieBOA at 6:46 AM on November 2, 2014
posted by ellieBOA at 6:46 AM on November 2, 2014
"Los Mutexes" sounds so much like a garage band from 1960s Los Angeles. Maybe I'm predisposed to thinking so by the existence of Os Mutantes.
kandinksi, I'm wondering how it's pronounced. If people pick it up from hearing it, 'x' would be 'ks', and the accent on the first syllable (like the English). But if it's from reading it, the 'x' could be a rough 'h', and the accent on the second syllable (like Spanish, or actually Mexican, which I know.)
posted by benito.strauss at 7:27 AM on November 2, 2014
kandinksi, I'm wondering how it's pronounced. If people pick it up from hearing it, 'x' would be 'ks', and the accent on the first syllable (like the English). But if it's from reading it, the 'x' could be a rough 'h', and the accent on the second syllable (like Spanish, or actually Mexican, which I know.)
posted by benito.strauss at 7:27 AM on November 2, 2014
Our relationship is its own miniaturized clash of cultures, most obviously discernable when we use sentences like these: Cuándo va a terminar este pinche winter para que podemos tomar chelas otra vez en el front porch?
"...para que podamos tomar..." [/subjunctivefilter]
My own experience with Spanglish is that it doesn't have much in the way of "logic and rules." Growing up speaking both, but in a Spanish-only household, I used English whenever I didn't know the right word in Spanish, rather than when the word in English was more descriptive or apt than the correct Spanish word. I didn't apply Spanish diminutives to English words or any of the other linguistic tricks discussed in the article. That people do wouldn't mean that Spanglish doesn't have some sort of internal logic. even if it's not discernible to the speaker, but the author's tone, at least upon first reading, seems defensive about the fact that it could be a hodge-podge. Which would not be a bad thing that requires defending. I just found her attempts at ennobling their mutual lack of fluency into some sort of magical linguistic synergy a bit annoying.
posted by the sobsister at 7:39 AM on November 2, 2014
"...para que podamos tomar..." [/subjunctivefilter]
My own experience with Spanglish is that it doesn't have much in the way of "logic and rules." Growing up speaking both, but in a Spanish-only household, I used English whenever I didn't know the right word in Spanish, rather than when the word in English was more descriptive or apt than the correct Spanish word. I didn't apply Spanish diminutives to English words or any of the other linguistic tricks discussed in the article. That people do wouldn't mean that Spanglish doesn't have some sort of internal logic. even if it's not discernible to the speaker, but the author's tone, at least upon first reading, seems defensive about the fact that it could be a hodge-podge. Which would not be a bad thing that requires defending. I just found her attempts at ennobling their mutual lack of fluency into some sort of magical linguistic synergy a bit annoying.
posted by the sobsister at 7:39 AM on November 2, 2014
As a native Texican I have been exposed to this cultural synthesis my entire life and it extends well beyond linguistics. Por ejemplo, Tex-Mex is a sort of culinary Spanglish and it too slowly moved from being dismissed as a bastardization to being accepted as legitimate in its own right...
posted by jim in austin at 7:45 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by jim in austin at 7:45 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
You see it all the time in dialogue in books and movies, where a character is all "Meet me at el mercado, amigo," dropping in precisely the Spanish words that a monolingual English reader will understand, but never the words or grammar that get used in actual Spanglish.
I think I was about 14, taking Spanish in high school, when I realized how precisely backward movie Spanglish is. Okay, so this character is able to say, in perfect English, "I saw four men with black hats sneaking through the woods. I think they were headed toward the old dry well" but then suddenly can't remember how to say Conversational English Class Day 1 vocabulary like "Good-bye" or "Thank you."
Now that I live in Laredo (right on the US/Mexico border), I hear Spanglish pretty much all the time. My Spanish fluency is still (sadly) minimal, and I can confirm from daily experience that when someone who is not-in-the-movies switches from English to Spanish vocabulary, I have no idea what they are saying. You don't go back to your primary language for the common words (usually).
TL,DR: My life still stubbornly refusing to become an action movie.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:34 AM on November 2, 2014
I think I was about 14, taking Spanish in high school, when I realized how precisely backward movie Spanglish is. Okay, so this character is able to say, in perfect English, "I saw four men with black hats sneaking through the woods. I think they were headed toward the old dry well" but then suddenly can't remember how to say Conversational English Class Day 1 vocabulary like "Good-bye" or "Thank you."
Now that I live in Laredo (right on the US/Mexico border), I hear Spanglish pretty much all the time. My Spanish fluency is still (sadly) minimal, and I can confirm from daily experience that when someone who is not-in-the-movies switches from English to Spanish vocabulary, I have no idea what they are saying. You don't go back to your primary language for the common words (usually).
TL,DR: My life still stubbornly refusing to become an action movie.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:34 AM on November 2, 2014
Oh, BTW, we talk quite about about Spanglish in the communication courses I teach, since it's the lingua franca around here. I always show this video in class, and it gets plenty of laughs of recognition from my students.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:36 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:36 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
Spanglish is my native tongue, it's what I use in my head. When I speak straight Spanish or English, it's an act of translation.
My son speaks beautiful Spanglish, intra- and inter-sentence (even though I speak only English to him, and my wife only Spanish). I only notice it when somebody else points it out or I make an effort; otherwise, 'Daddy, I just saw un video bacán de Youtube, and I want to grabar one también! Me ayudas to do it?' doesn't register as odd at all.
When I get together with my Miami cousins, who were also raised as fully bilingual, Spanglish is the default mode of communication, it's just faster and more fluid than sticking to pure Spanish or English.
posted by signal at 10:46 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
My son speaks beautiful Spanglish, intra- and inter-sentence (even though I speak only English to him, and my wife only Spanish). I only notice it when somebody else points it out or I make an effort; otherwise, 'Daddy, I just saw un video bacán de Youtube, and I want to grabar one también! Me ayudas to do it?' doesn't register as odd at all.
When I get together with my Miami cousins, who were also raised as fully bilingual, Spanglish is the default mode of communication, it's just faster and more fluid than sticking to pure Spanish or English.
posted by signal at 10:46 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
Joakim Ziegler: "If I have a complaint about this article, it's that she doesn't know how to write "cohete". It's not "cuete", which is a cut of meat, it's "cohete" (rocket), and "cohetero", etc."
In Chile, it's cohete when talking about NASA and cuete when talking about homemade fireworks or when used in constructions like 'me fui hecho un cuete pa'l centro' (I went downtown fast as a rocket).
posted by signal at 10:54 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
In Chile, it's cohete when talking about NASA and cuete when talking about homemade fireworks or when used in constructions like 'me fui hecho un cuete pa'l centro' (I went downtown fast as a rocket).
posted by signal at 10:54 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
Oh, it's also cuete when you're going to smoke it, as in 'fumémonos un cuete hueón?'. I'll leave you to figure that one out from context.
posted by signal at 11:10 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 11:10 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also also, spelling is not a thing anyone does any more. I teach middle grades ESOL English writing and my kids - even the ones that went to awesome schools *just last year* - mostly spell by touch. It's not too bad in Spanish because spelling logic mostly works, but the -h/no-h rules, -b/-v, -ll/-y, -g/-j, correct resolution of diphthongs - well, they mostly guess wrong.
So then those people grow up, and they way they spell it is the way they've always spelled it. Ain't nobody paying copyeditors any more, you may have noticed.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:42 PM on November 2, 2014
So then those people grow up, and they way they spell it is the way they've always spelled it. Ain't nobody paying copyeditors any more, you may have noticed.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:42 PM on November 2, 2014
kandinksi, I'm wondering how it's pronounced. If people pick it up from hearing it, 'x' would be 'ks', and the accent on the first syllable (like the English). But if it's from reading it, the 'x' could be a rough 'h', and the accent on the second syllable (like Spanish, or actually Mexican, which I know.)
The aspirated h sound for the x glyph is exclusively Mexican. In Spain, "Mexico" was spelt "Mejico" as well, to help with the correct pronounciation. Younger people say "Meksico", but that's because they've seen too much badly dubbed American TV.
In Spanish from Spain, the 'x' is officially pronounced 'ks', though it gets frequently downgraded to an 's', at least in Madrid, where I've spent most of my life. So "taxi" is often pronounced 'tasi'. It's also a class and register thing, though. If you are educated enough to know what a mutex is, it's likely you'll pronounce "MUteks" and "muTEKses" or "MUtekses".
posted by kandinski at 5:35 PM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
The aspirated h sound for the x glyph is exclusively Mexican. In Spain, "Mexico" was spelt "Mejico" as well, to help with the correct pronounciation. Younger people say "Meksico", but that's because they've seen too much badly dubbed American TV.
In Spanish from Spain, the 'x' is officially pronounced 'ks', though it gets frequently downgraded to an 's', at least in Madrid, where I've spent most of my life. So "taxi" is often pronounced 'tasi'. It's also a class and register thing, though. If you are educated enough to know what a mutex is, it's likely you'll pronounce "MUteks" and "muTEKses" or "MUtekses".
posted by kandinski at 5:35 PM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
And about good and bad Spanglish in American media: Dexter did it beautifully.
posted by kandinski at 5:36 PM on November 2, 2014
posted by kandinski at 5:36 PM on November 2, 2014
kandinski: "And about good and bad Spanglish in American media: Dexter did it beautifully."
I thought it was all over the place, especially Ángel Batista, who was supposed to be Cuban, but the actor's accent is so obviously Boricua that I found it really distracting. Also, his code-switching tends to the easily understandable for non-Spanish-speaking audiences, instead of the stuff that's hard to express in English.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:05 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
I thought it was all over the place, especially Ángel Batista, who was supposed to be Cuban, but the actor's accent is so obviously Boricua that I found it really distracting. Also, his code-switching tends to the easily understandable for non-Spanish-speaking audiences, instead of the stuff that's hard to express in English.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:05 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
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posted by sammyo at 3:56 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]