Spanglish…why the controversy?


This is definitely a topic I plan on exploring and writing more about. I recently posted on Facebook, me encanta el espanglish, and got some pretty negative comments about it. I guess I forget that not everybody is learning about language acquisition as much as someone who is pursuing a doctorate in the field. Now, I’m not trying to be aloof with that statement I’m just trying to figure out why some people can react with such…hmm…negative feelings towards a language. A language spoken by people who make up, as it is in my case, the state of Texas. It really is not much different than the way language works in other parts of the world. I bet if people knew that the same thing happens with more “sophisticated” languages they wouldn’t feel as much animosity towards Spanglish.

Here are two small facts about Spanglish:

People who are considered well-balanced bilinguals are the ones who can code-switch or use Spanglish more effectively than those who aren’t.

There is a method to using Spanglish. From my understanding many times people are conjugating verbs. In other words, you can’t just use a word here or there and say you are fluent in Spanglish.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I hope my bebita learns how to say truck in English, camion in Spanish or French (same spelling, different accent), and troca in Spanglish! Afterall isn’t it better to have four labels for one object than just one or two. I think so!

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3 responses »

  1. What’s interesting Eva is that children know when to use which language! It has been studied that they know which context will “accept” a different language. I once informally evaluated a classrooms work of writing to see if the children would code-switch or use Spanglish in their writing because the teacher used it ALL the time. To my surprise they DID NOT! They knew what kind of Spanish they should be using for writing assignments in class, at school.

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