-
The American Dialect Society
Spanglish: Language Contact in Puerto RicoAuthor(s): Rose
NashSource: American Speech, Vol. 45, No. 3/4 (Autumn - Winter,
1970), pp. 223-233Published by: Duke University PressStable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/454837 .Accessed: 07/03/2014 07:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
.
The American Dialect Society and Duke University Press are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to
American Speech.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH: LANGUAGE CONTACT IN PUERTO RICO
ROSE NASH Inter American University
A LTHOUGH THE INFLUENCE of American English is present, to some
extent, in all parts of Spanish-speaking America, Puerto Rico is
unique in having both English and Spanish as official languages.'
In accordance with the government policy of bilingualism, English
is taught as a required subject in all schools from the first grade
through the university level.2 The close contact of Puerto Rican
Spanish and American English since the turn of the century has
greatly intensified in recent years, largely because of the
ever-increasing number of Newyorricans (New York Puerto Ricans) who
have returned to the island to live, bringing with them the
language and culture of Spanish Harlem.3 In the metropolitan areas
of Puerto Rico, where Newyorricans play an influential role in the
economic life of the island, there has arisen a hybrid variety of
language, often given the slightly derogatory label of Spanglish,
which coexists with less mixed forms of standard English and
standard Spanish and has at least one of the characteristics of an
autonomous language: a substantial number of native speakers.4
The
emerging language retains the phonological, morphological, and
syntactic structure of Puerto Rican Spanish. However, much of its
vocabulary is English-derived. That it is an autonomous language
has been recognized not only by some Puerto Rican intellectuals,
most of whom strongly dis-
approve of it for reasons that will appear later, but also by
the New York School of Social Research, which has offered a course
in Spanglish for doctors,
1. The only exception, to my knowledge, is the state of New
Mexico, where Spanish has a legal status equal to English.
2. Until 1950, English was the medium of instruction in the
public schools. It is still maintained in many private schools. For
a discussion of this highly controversial issue, see E. Epstein,
ed., Politics and Education in Puerto Rico.
3. For an in-depth study of Newyorricans, see J. Fishman, ed.,
Bilingualism in the Barrio. 4. In addition to the presence of
Newyorricans, several other factors may be mentioned
that encourage language mixture. First, there is a large
English-speaking population, including military personnel,
non-Puerto Rican permanent residents from various parts of the
United States, and transient tourists. Second, virtually all of the
products sold in Puerto Rico are manufactured in the United States
and are referred to by their English names. Third, Puerto Rico is
geographically isolated from other Spanish-speaking areas, so that
borrowings from English quickly become institutionalized.
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
224 AMERICAN SPEECH
nurses, and social workers.5 The other well-known language
mixtures, such as Franglais, Yinglish, Japlish, or Honglais, have
not, I believe, achieved such distinction.
This paper will briefly describe some typical examples of
Spanglish used in Puerto Rico; they were collected over a period of
five years from a variety of sources: newspapers, radio,
television, public signs, and conversations heard on busses, at
parties and meetings, and in classrooms, post offices, stores,
banks, and hospitals-in short, everywhere that language is used in
daily affairs. First, however, the term Spanglish must be defined
because it has been applied to more than one cross-language
phenomenon." Although the division between what is and is not
Spanglish is not always clear-cut, utterances of the following type
can be excluded:
No speak very good the English. [no espik beri gud di inglis] 'I
do not speak English very well.' = 'No hablo muy bien el
inglks.'
Utterances of this kind, in which English words are put in
Spanish order and pronounced in a Spanish manner, are common enough
on the streets of San Juan, and journalists have used the technique
of word-for-word trans- lation consciously for fun and profit.7 To
accept such an obviously un- grammatical English sentence as
Spanglish, however, would leave no reason to reject an equally
ungrammatical sentence that might be produced by an English
monoglot:
Yo hago no hablar espaiiol muy bueno. [yow hagow now hablar
espanyol muwiy bweynow] 'I do not speak Spanish very well.'
Also excluded from consideration as Spanglish is switching from
one language into the other for a special effect, unless the
switching takes place within an utterance in a natural way.
Examples of such deliberate switching that will not be considered
Spanglish can be seen in two-language advertise- ments, such
as:
Buy your home in Levittown Lakes, donde la buena vida comienza.
(radio advertisement)
Yo y mi Winston-porque Winstons taste good like a cigarette
should. (advertise- ment, sung in a movie house)
5. See C. Varo, Consideraciones antropoldgicasy politicas en
torno a la ensenianza del "Spanglish" en Nueva York.
6. I reserve the term Spanglish for English-influenced Spanish
as a first language, dis- tinguishing it from Spanish-influenced
English spoken as a second language, which I call Englauiol. The
latter will be treated in a subsequent paper.
7. The late journalist Eddie Lopez was a master of this literary
genre. He created a char- acter called Candid Flores, whose
letters, written in hilariously mangled English, appeared
periodically in the San Juan Star, Puerto Rico's English-language
newspaper.
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO 225
To put it differently, Spanglish as defined here is neither
language containing grammatical errors due to interference nor
intentionally mixed language.
Examples of Spanglish can be conveniently, although somewhat
arbi- trarily, divided into three main types, each with subtypes.
Type I is char- acterized by the extensive use of English lexical
items occurring in their original form in otherwise Spanish
utterances. These items fall into several groups. First, there are
international terms in science and technology, which also appear in
many other languages and are therefore not uniquely char-
acteristic of Spanglish.
Second, there are simple substitutions of high-frequency English
words that have Spanish equivalents:
Juan estaba en el army, pero se pas6 al navy. 'John was in the
army (ejdrcito), but he transferred to the navy (a la marina).'
El bos dijo que habia que trabajar overtime este weekend. 'The
boss (jefe) said that we had to work overtime (extra) this weekend
(fin de semana).'
Higalo anyway. 'Do it anyway (de todas maneras).' La gente de mi
building vive del welfare. 'The people living in my building
(edificio) are on welfare (bienestar pdiblico).' C6gelo easy.
'Take it easy (con calma).' ? Qu6 size es ? 'What size (tamafio) is
it ?' Voy al shopping center. 'I'm going to the shopping center
(centro comercial).' Ella tiene ojos braun. 'She has brown
(carmelita) eyes.' Mi prima es bien nice. 'My cousin is very nice
(muy agradable).' Se me perdi6 el lipstick. 'I lost my lipstick
(lapiz labial).'
As such common English words gradually replace their Spanish
equivalents, the Spanish words tend to become obsolete through
disuse or change their status from colloquial to formal. In Puerto
Rico today it is rare to hear a
freezer referred to as a congelador, or a truck called a camion.
Third, there are cultural borrowings, many of them slangy
expressions.
Some, like hotpants, are untranslatable English idioms. Others
could be rendered in Spanish only by awkward and often
unrecognizable paraphrases. Examples of this category are the
following:
El baby esti bonito con su T-shirt. 'The baby is pretty in his
T-shirt.' El beisbol es mi hobby favorito. 'Baseball is my favorite
hobby.' Deme dos hamburgers plain sin lechuga y tomate. 'Give me
two hamburgers
plain without lettuce and tomato.' Esto es un rush job. "It's a
rush job.' i Qud down! 'What a letdown!' i Qu groovy! 'That's great
!' Lo mio es love. 'My thing is love.' Todos los substitute clerk
carriers estin off mafiana. 'All the substitute clerk
carriers (postal workers) are off tomorrow.'
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
226 AMERICAN SPEECH Cartas airmail para stateside con menos de
11 son surfaces. 'Airmail letters
going out stiteside with less than 11 are surface mail.' Vas al
coffee break ahora. 'Take your coffee break now.' Amplio parking
gratis. 'Plenty of free parking.'
Finally, the vocabulary of American merchandising, the names of
business establishments, and the slogans and mixed-up messages of
advertising are a rich source of type 1 Spanglish, as in the
following examples:
Sears de Puerto Rico: Use nuestro plan de compra Lay-Away. Use
el plan Easy Payment de Sears. Use el plan Revolving Charge de
Sears. (signs in a store)
Este album contiene el hit de gran combo. (on a record jacket)
Recurt's Office Supplies: folders, miquinas de escribir, account
books, papeleria,
sillas, desks. (sign on a store window) Design Mens Salon,
toupees a la medida, hair weaving y pelucas stretch para
caballeros. (advertisement in the yellow pages of the telephone
book) Marco Discount House: Cabecera con frame, 2 mesas de noche, 1
triple dresser
con 2 espejos. Fibra lavable, 2 corner bed y ottomon en azul.
Elegante sofa- cama. (newspaper advertisement)
The last example presents an interesting case of lexico-semantic
fusion. Bed and cama, which are identical in meaning, are used as
synonyms in the same advertisement, in which English and Spanish
have converged. In effect, the words bed and cama have become, for
this advertiser, part of the same
language. Many Puerto Ricans who classify themselves as
monolingual speakers of Spanish are quite unaware that some of the
words they use naturally and unselfconsciously are English in
origin.8 One of my colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico
relates an anecdote about a visitor from
Spain who was to give a lecture on the campus. When he asked a
campus guard for directions to the paraninfo, the guard replied
that he was sorry but he did not understand English. After the
visitor clarified what he meant, the
guard informed him that the Spanish word for that was asemblyjol
(assembly hall).
In type 2 Spanglish, English words lose their non-Spanish
identity. Their pronunciation changes more noticeably to conform to
Spanish phonology, and they frequently appear in written form
spelled according to Spanish orthography. Nouns and verbs assume
the morphological characteristics and inflections of Spanish words.
Thus the feminine articles la and las and the masculine articles el
and los agree in number and gender with their nouns, though I have
as yet been unable to determine the exact rules for assigning
gender to borrowed nouns. Many, but not all, nouns take the
grammatical
8. In general, the level of awareness is proportionate to the
level of education, but this has little effect on the frequency of
usage. Ease of communication is the chief motivation for employing
English words, although the prestige factor, for some speakers,
cannot be ignored.
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO 227
gender of the Spanish words they replace, for example el rufo
'roof' replacing el techo.9 Some nouns appear in both masculine and
feminine forms, following the pattern of gender marking in such
pairs as la hermana 'sister' and el hermano 'brother,' for instance
la bosa and el bos 'boss.'
Among the most frequent types of phonological and orthographic
adaptation are the following (the Spanglish spelling is cited when
it is attested; the pronunciation is cited when a spelling is not
available or the pronunciation does not follow Spanish
orthoepy):
Addition of a final vowel: bosa 'boss,' rufo 'roof,' caucho
'couch,' norsa 'nurse,' ganga 'gang.'
Addition of a final vowel and shift of stress to the penultimate
syllable: marqueta [malketa] 'market,' furnitura [fulnituira]
'furniture,' factoria 'factory,' groceria 'grocery,' carpeta
[kalpeta] 'carpet.'
Addition of an initial vowel before [s] plus a consonant and
change of the [s] to [h] (in accordance with the allophonic rules
of Puerto Rican Spanish): [ehtri] 'street,' swich [ehwik] 'switch,'
[ehtinyi] 'stingy,' [ehtofa] 'stuff,' [ehlip] 'slip.'
Change of /r/ to [1] in syllable final position: norsa [nolsa]
'nurse,' frizer [frisel] 'freezer,' [almi] 'army,' [folman]
'foreman,' [mihtel] 'mister.'
Change of [m] to [i1] in final position: [obeltayij] 'overtime,'
[ru13] 'room.' Reduction of clusters or omission of a final
consonant: cuara 'quarter,' suera 'sweater,'"o [lihti] 'lipstick,'
saibo [saybol] 'sideboard,' [deparmen ehtol] 'department
store.'
Ephenthesis: gauchiman 'watchman.' Interpretation of ge as [he]:
tinager [tinahel] 'teenager.' Verbs in Spanglish are created by
taking on the productive infinitive
suffixes -ar, -ear, and -iar. They are then conjugated for
person, number, and
tense according to the regular Spanish paradigms, producing such
forms as the following: /flunk"r/ 'to flunk (an examination),'
/fluinko, flfinkas, flfinka/ 'I, you, he flunk(s),' /flunk6,
flunkare, he flunkado/ 'I flunked,.will flunk, have flunked.'
New verbal formations reflect the activities of everyday life,
which is the primary source of Spanglish vocabulary, and may, if
used in written form,
9. Exceptions are la marqueta, also la marketa, replacing el
mercado, and el window, replacing la ventana. Use of the
inappropriate article, such as *la window, is considered
ungrammatical.
10. The attested spellings cuara and suera derive from
articulatory similarities between Spanish /r/, which is a
single-tap voiced alveolar, and the English voiced variant of /t/
in intervocalic position, which is voiced alveolar stop. English
speakers with voiced /t/ may make no distinction between latter and
ladder. In such words, the Spanish speaker "hears" /r/, and
therefore uses the r grapheme. The Spanish phoneme /d/ is realized
in intervocalic position as the fricative [6]: todo 'all' [t6o],
toro 'bull' [t6ro].
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
228 AMERICAN SPEECH
have variant spellings, depending on the user's familiarity with
the English form or the frequency with which the adaptation occurs.
Some common words, such as parquear 'to park,' have well
established orthographic forms, and their use cuts across all
social classes. Others are in a state of flux with regard to
spelling, but not pronunciation. In the home, for example, one
hears bakear, mopear, heatear, freezear, vacuunear; in the office,
taipear, chequear, clipear; and in sports, pitchear, batear,
catchear, hitear, trainear, rollear, slipear, flipear, bowlear. One
also hears lonchear, flirtear, foolear, and new creations appear
every day with no loss of intelligibility.
Some words of type 2 exhibit a range of meaning more restricted
than that of the English words from which they were derived. Thus
the Spanglish word estofa, from English stuff, refers only to
narcotics. There are also semantic expansions: the Spanish word
ganga 'sale' converges in Spanglish with ganga from English gang
and can be used in either sense depending on context. A similar
case is Spanglish yarda from English yard, which in pre-Spanglish
usage referred only to cloth measurement, but now is also used in
the sense
'patio.' There are also lexical innovations of several kinds.
Zafacon 'garbage can,'
a uniquely Puerto Rican word of unknown origin, has been
connected by folk etymology with a supposed English source, safety
can or save-a-can. Other creations are chinero 'china closet' and
clipiadora 'stapler.'
Some examples of sentences using type 2 Spanglish are the
following:
No jangues por aqui. 'Don't hang around here.' (janguear 'hang')
Yo no estoy fuleando. 'I'm not fooling.' (fuliar 'fool') El rufo
liquea. 'The roof leaks.' (liquiar 'leak') Limpia la yarda. 'Clean
up the yard.' ? Cuil es tu job en la factoria ? 'What's your job in
the factory ?' Jumpi6 la bateria. 'He jumped the battery.' (jumpiar
'jump') Deme la clipiadora. 'Give me the stapler.' j Sabes taipiar
? 'Do you know how to type ?' Me friso. 'I freeze up.' (frizar
'freeze')
Type 3 Spanglish includes such things as calques, syntactic
idioms, and some original expressions that can be recognized as a
distinctive new form of
Spanish evolving under the influence of English, much as English
itself was influenced by Norman French. Syntactic influence
directly from English is not always easy to pin down because some
of the manifestations attributed to it, for example excessive use
of the redundant nonemphatic subject pro- noun, as in yo no se 'I
don't know,' have been shown to be widespread in other
Spanish-speaking areas not in close contact with English or can be
traced to literary usage. The examples here are therefore limited
to well-
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH IN PUER TO RICO 229
attested instances of calques cited in a recently completed
dissertation by Paulino Perez-Sala (the conventional Spanish
equivalent is in parentheses):
El es un drogadicto. 'He's a drug addict.' (Es un adicto a las
drogas.) Lo mataron por ninguna raz6n. 'They killed him for no
reason.' (Lo mataron
sin razon alguna.) Mi salario compara con el de E.U. 'My salary
compares with that of the U.S.'
(Mi salario es similar al que se paga en los E.U.) El estai
supuesto a venir. 'He is supposed to come.' (Se supone que el
venga.) Ahora si esto hace sentido. 'Now it makes sense.' (Ahora
esto si tiene sentido.) Eso hace una diferencia en mis planes.
'That makes a difference in my plans.'
(Eso cambia mis planes.) Nos unimos en simpatia con usted. 'We
join you in sympathy.' (Le acompafio
en el sentimiento.) Le dar6 pensamiento a eso. 'I'll give it
some thought.' (Hay que estudiar el
problema.) Alberto es 20 afios viejo. 'Albert is 20 years old.'
(Alberto tiene 20 afios.) El pasado afio 'last year' (el afio
pasado) El plan parecia uno demasiado costoso. 'The plan seemed to
be a very expensive
one.' (El plan parecia demasiado costoso.) j C6mo le gusta
Puerto Rico? 'How do you like Puerto Rico?' (Q Le gusta Puerto
Rico ?) El sabe como hablar ingl6s. 'He knows how to speak
English.' (Sabe hablar
ingl6s.) Llamame para atras (= pa'atras). 'Call me back.'
(Vu6lveme a llamar.) Traigalo para atras. 'Bring it back.'
(Devuelvalo.)
Loan translations of the more obvious kind, such as perro
caliente for hot dog, Caballo Blanco for White Horse (Whiskey), and
Siete Arriba for Seven-Up are relatively rare, which perhaps makes
their use particularly effective, as in the following:
!EstA en la bola! 'He's on the ball!' Felicidad es comprar en
Pueblo. 'Happiness is shopping at Pueblo (Super-
market).'
Other expressions in common use (with the conventional Spanish
in paren- theses) are the following:
demasiado mucho 'too much' (excesivo) salvar tiempo 'to save
time' (ahorrar tiempo) el alto costo de la vida 'the high cost of
living' (la carestida de la vida).
The last group of examples, which most nearly represent a merger
of Spanish and English into a new dialect, contains elements of all
three types and something more. English and Spanish are not only
mixed, but fused into
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
230 AMERICAN SPEECH
expressions with a special Puerto Rican flavor that goes beyond
linguistic analysis because it reflects the life of the
speakers:
Estas en algo. 'You're in!' EstAs hecho. 'You have it made.'
Estaba tripiando anoche. 'Last night he turned on with pot.'
Todavia
estr en el tinegeo. 'He still acts like a teenager.'
Quiero un jamon sandwich. 'I want a ham sandwich.' Tengo dos
cheeseburgers trabajando. 'I've got two cheeseburgers working.'
Maria esta en la high. 'Maria is in high school.' Esta ahora en el
grin. 'The traffic light just turned green.' La estofa esta
caliente. 'The stuff is hot (illegal).' i Qu6 fallo! 'What a
let-down!'
In summary, Spanglish may be characterized as a gradual
relexification of Puerto Rican Spanish through borrowings,
adaptations, and innovations of the kind observable in every living
language. The vocabulary of Spanglish is the vocabulary of
practical everyday living and working in a two-language world, in
which not everyone commands those two languages fluently. A person
must, therefore, select from each source the linguistic materials
he needs in order to communicate effectively, economically, and
intelligibly with other members of his speech community. In a great
majority of cases, the English lexical item meets these
requirements better than its Spanish counter- part, though the
reasons for substitutions are various. A Puerto Rican buys a
freezer rather than a congelador because that is the word he
sees in the ad- vertisements; he speaks of la high rather than la
escuela superior because it is shorter; he can express a keener
sense of disappointment with i Quifallo! than with the bookish i
Que' desenganio! And in every case, he knows that he will be
immediately understood by his peers without need of clarification,
because this is their common language.
The chief purpose of this paper has been to present a brief
description of some types of Spanglish chosen from a continuum of
use that is too complex both linguistically and sociolinguistically
for thorough treatment here. It would not be proper, however, to
conclude without mentioning the attitudes towards the use of
Spanglish expressed by Puerto Rican educators, intellec- tuals, and
political leaders and the effect of those attitudes upon that group
in society with which I am most familiar-people of college age.
For
although from the linguist's point of view such creative
activity may be considered normal, healthy, and even inevitable,
given the existing language contact situation, there are bitter
disagreements about its cultural significance. Puerto Ricans today
are a people living in two worlds simultaneously-the world of
Spanish colonial traditions and the world of modern American
industrial society. They do not want to give up the former, and
they cannot
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO 231
escape the latter. The Spanish language holds a cherished place
in their search for a national identity, and any indication that
Spanish is being replaced is seen as a symptom of cultural
breakdown. The fear of losing their language is in fact one of the
strongest arguments in the movement for political independence.
Regardless of political persuasion, everyone agrees that Spanish
must remain the dominant language."1 There is, however,
considerable disagreement concerning what Spanish is and what to do
about the "dangerous" influence of English.
The most optimistic opinion is held by Ruben del Rosario,
professor of
philology at the University of Puerto Rico, who has written
extensively on language change in Spanish America: "La lengua es lo
que se dice" (language is that which is spoken), and there is no
cause for alarm. Puerto Rican Spanish, he says, has been enriched
by vocabulary from many different languages, and the changes that
have occurred are no different in kind from those in other
Spanish-speaking countries. Syntactic interference from English, he
feels, is minimal, and he sees little possibility that Spanish will
be replaced, whether or not English is present as a second
language.
Sharply opposed to this view is the opinion of Salvador Tio, a
journalist and literary figure. He sees language mixture as a
degradation and im-
poverishment of the glorious tongue of Cervantes and castigates
those who speak Spanglish. The true culprit, he believes, is the
official policy of bi- lingualism, and he would do away with the
required teaching of English altogether, so that its presence could
not encourage language mixture.12
Supporters of the bilingual policy feel that the solution to the
problem of language mixture lies in raising the standards of
education. By improving the teaching of both Spanish and English,
they feel, it will be possible to keep the languages functionally
separate. Luis Mufioz Marin, the island's first
11. During the Governors' Conference held in San Juan in 1971,
one of the American governors from a southern state said publicly
that English would have to become the dominant language if Puerto
Rico were to continue its association with the United States. The
mayor of San Juan, who was with him, immediately left the stage in
protest and refused to speak to him again. The mayor belongs to the
Statehood party.
12. Tio claims credit for inventing the term Spanglish in a
bitterly satirical article written in 1952. Pronouncements against
the menace of English are made with great frequency by highly
placed cultural, professional, and educational leaders, but have
little noticeable effect on speech habits. Some examples of
vituperative remarks, translated from the Spanish- language
newspaper El Mundo, are the following: "For Puerto Rico,
bilingualism is the dissolution of its national personality through
the loss of its language" (a prominent attorney); "The only
bilingualism which exists in Puerto Rico is the struggle between
English, which attempts to impose itself, and Spanish, which wishes
to save itself" (director of the Institute of Puerto Rican
Culture); "Puerto Ricans should not permit a foreign language in
one's mouth or in one's soul" (independentista professor). Members
of the intellectual elite strongly identify with Puerto Rico's
Hispanic cultural heritage and minimize the contribution of Africa,
as well as other European countries and the United States.
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
232 AMERICAN SPEECH
elected governor, who instituted the present school policy in
1950, had the vision of a truly bilingual society, in which the two
great world languages would flourish. Yet he warned his fellow
countrymen not to mix English and Spanish, lest they become
"semilingual in two languages."13
The official disapproval of Spanglish is hardest psychologically
on the college student, who feels he is being unpatriotic when he
uses English words instead of the "perfectly good Spanish words"
that he does not know or cannot remember. This feeling frequently
carries over into an aversion for learning English itself. There is
an anecdote about one student asking another, "How come your
English is so bad? Is it because you're patriotic, or are you just
stupid ?"
This is the linguistic dilemma of Puerto Rico today: a
generation of students who feel inadequate with their Spanish,
uncomfortable with their English, and guilty about their culturally
unacceptable Spanglish.
REFERENCES
Alvarez Nazario, M. La naturaleza del espanol que se habla en
Puerto Rico. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquefia,
1963.
Dillard, J. J. "Standard Average Foreign in Puerto Rican
Spanish." Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the
Middle Ages and Later. Ed. E. B. Atwood and A. A. Hill. Austin:
Univ. of Texas Press, 1969.
Epstein, Erwin H., ed. Politics and Education in Puerto Rico: A
Documentary Survey of the Language Issue. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow
Press, 1970.
Fishman, Joshua, ed. Bilingualism in the Barrio. 2 vols.
Washington: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,
1968.
Gili Gaya, Samuel. Nuestra lengua materna. San Juan: Instituto
de Cultura Puerto- rriquefia, 1965.
Granda, German de. Transculturacti6n e interferencia
lingiiistica en el Puerto Rico con- temporaneo (1898-1968). Bogota:
Instituto Caro y Cuevro, 1968.
Navarro Tomas, T. El espainol en Puerto Rico. Rio Piedras: Univ.
of Puerto Rico, 1948.
13. From a speech before the Teachers Association of Puerto Rico
in 1953. The context is as follows (translated):
In one of the small towns in the interior of the island I came
across a commercial establishment with a sign that read "Agapito's
Bar." Why did you do that, Agapito? Why, when not even once a year,
do you ever see a customer go by your street whose vernacular is
English ? Is it that you feel better when you say it in a language
that is not your own ? And if you scorn your language, aren't you
to some extent despising yourself? And if this attitude spreads
unconsciously a thousandfold, from where will this country get the
spiritual strength needed to continue making a respectable cultural
contribution to America, the United States, the Western Hemisphere,
and to itself? . . . In the long run, we shall be bilingual
individuals, but we must decide now not to be semilingual in two
languages. Language is the breath of the spirit. Let us not hinder
that breath. We cannot climb the mountain if we lack breath.
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
-
SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO 233
P6rez Sala, Paulino. "Interferencia del ingles en la sintaxis
del espafiol hablado en la zona metropolitana de San Juan." Diss.
Univ. of Puerto Rico, 1971.
Porras Cruz, J. L., et al. Recomendaciones para el uso del
idioma espanol en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Departamento de
Instrucci6n Publica, 1968.
Rosario, Rub6n del. La lengua de Puerto Rico. 7th ed. Rio
Piedras: Univ. of Puerto Rico, 1971.
Tio, Salvador. "Teoria del Espanglish." A fuego lento, cien
columnas de humor y una cornisa. Rio Piedras: Univ. of Puerto Rico,
1954.
Varo, Carlos. Consideraciones antropoldgicasy politicas en torno
a la ensenanza del "Spanglish" en Nueva York. Rio Piedras:
Ediciones Liberia International, 1971.
[Received August 1972]
This content downloaded from 157.181.112.0 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014
07:59:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Article Contentsp. [223]p. 224p. 225p. 226p. 227p. 228p. 229p.
230p. 231p. 232p. 233
Issue Table of ContentsAmerican Speech, Vol. 45, No. 3/4 (Autumn
- Winter, 1970), pp. 163-320Volume Information [pp. 307-320]Front
MatterPhilip Babcock Gove: 27 June 1902-16 November 1972 [pp.
163-167]Names and Terms Used in the Fashion World [pp.
168-194]Little Boy and Little Girl [pp. 195-204]The Dutch Origin of
Play Hookey [pp. 205-209]A Year of Ripoffs [pp. 210-214]The Oven in
Popular Metaphor from Hosea to the Present Day [pp.
215-222]Spanglish: Language Contact in Puerto Rico [pp.
223-233]English Patterns in Hawaii [pp. 234-239]On Deriving
Nominals from Causatives [pp. 240-246]A Note on Multiple Negatives
[pp. 247-251]ReviewsReview: Sweet Are the Usages of Diversity [pp.
252-260]Review: untitled [pp. 260-262]Review: The Tagmemic-Case
Grammar Model [pp. 262-277]Review: Diversions of Bloomsbury [pp.
278-283]Review: Language Studies Assisted by Computers [pp.
283-285]Review: untitled [pp. 285-287]
Of Matters Lexicographical [pp. 288-292]Among the New Words [pp.
293-296]MiscellanyLinguistic Predictions and the Waning of Southern
[ju] in Tune, Duke, News [pp. 297-300]Scholar's Lunch [pp.
300-302]The Literalization of Idioms [pp. 302-304]Immigrant in
British and American Usage [pp. 304-305]More Linguistic Reminders
of Everyone's Doppelgnger [pp. 305-306]Query [p. 306]
Back Matter