Spanglish: The language, and the History.

What is Spanglish? Well Spanglish is a linguistic phenomena that started at the end of the Mexican-American war. It is when a person, typically a Hispanisc-American, who is fluent in both English and Spanish, will use both languages in the same sentence. But how does that work? And what does the Mexican-American war have to do with it? Let’s find out.

In 1846 the United States and Mexico started their war, it lasted for two years until the treaty of Guadalupe was signed. This treaty officially saw Mexico hand off large portions of its northern territories to the US. Afterwards the Mexican people living in these lands were given two years to decide if they were going to be Mexican, or American citizens. Unfortunately, large scale communication methods like phones hadn’t reached the areas they were living in, so by the time they had heard, their two years were up, and they were forced to be American citizens. As a result they would continue to speak Spanish at home, but had to learn English inorder to access things like the newspaper, government services, and even attending school. Because of this English and Spanish began giving eachother loan words. Like how in English Salsa is a very specific sauce, but in Spanish it just means sauce. Or how the SPanish language needed a new word for the new currency the Mexican-Americans had to use, the “Dolar” of course being the American dollar.(They had to drop the second L in the Spanish version otherwise it would be pronounced, ‘Dojar’ or ‘doyar’).

Later in the year 1898 the Spanish-American war was fought between the American and Cuban troops against the Spanish. This war was for Cuba’s freedom, and to push European influence further out of the Americas. After the war had ended, and Spain had lost. The US bought the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, and Cuba was given its independence from Spain. While relations between America and Cuba became its own story, in Puerto Rico the US government began trying to make English the main language. They made all of the government services there only available in English, and made it so that all of the children were attending school in English. But beyond that everyone continued to use Spanish, today Spanish and English are co-official languages of the island. Because of this large contact between English and Spanish Spanglish has advanced even more.

Spanglish has many speakers today; most can be found in the Hispanic communities of Southern California, Texes, New York, Miami, Puerto Rico. But of course, simply having a few loan words in a language doesn’t result in something like Spanglish, so how exactly does it work? Well first You have to know how to use both English and Spanish as separate languages. Because when you switch between them the Spanish part has to follow the Spanish sentence structure and vice versa. For example you wouldn’t see Anthony walking up the stairs and say to your friend, “Anthony walks up the stairs”, you would say, “Anthony is walking up the stairs. Equally you wouldn’t, in Spanish, say “Antony está caminando arriba las escalera”(‘ando’ being the Spanish equivalent of ‘ing’). But you would say “Antony Camina arriba las escaleras”.

Now when it comes to the vocabulary this is where things get very interesting. As you can see not everything in English and Spanish directly translates to one another. But when you translate to Spanglish you can directly translate both ways. Let’s take the English expression, “I’ll call you back,” for example. In Spanish you would tell them, “Te llamo luego,” literally “I’ll call you later.” because in Spanish to call someone back doesn’t really make sense. In Spanglish however, you can easily tell someone “Te llamo pa’trás,” a literal word for word translation.

More so in Spanish and English we have false friends, a word you think looks like the equivalent, but isn’t. Someone in a Spanglish household may “Vacunar la carpeta”. Which to them makes perfect sense, Vacuum the carpet, right? Well in Spangilsh yes, but in Spanish that would be, “To vaccinate the folder”. Another fun example is when you meet someone new and you tell your friend you’re going to, “Introducir” yourself to them. In Spanglish great, in Spanish, trying to “Introducir”(to insert) might not go down as well.

Finally we have what most people are familiar with when it comes to Spanglish, code switching. Jumping from Spanish to English, and vice versa, flawlessly. So what does that even look like? Well if I was telling you about my day in English I would tell you that, “I went to the beach today, because I like swimming, and it was hot.” In Spanish I would tell you that, “Hoy, fui al playa, porque me gusta nadar, y hacía calor”. But if I was talking to you in Spanglish, I might say something like, “Fui al beach today, porque I like swimming, y fue calor”. Do you see how the second last word changed? That’s because instead of following full Spanish rules I just directly translated “It was hot” from english to Spanish.

So now that you know what Spanglish is, and where the speakers can be found, and what it looks like. Is there content you can consume in Spanglish? Well yeah, there are loads of things in Spanglish. For starters we have music, and although everyone’s first example may be, Livin the Vida Loca by Ricky Martin, there’s a whole world of spanglish music out there, such as Loca by Shakira, and the album Translation by the band Black eyed peas, with great songs such as Mamacita, A Girl Like Me, and Ritmo. But there’s more than just good songs out there, there’s even books written in Spanglish, like Los Gatos Black On Halloween, by Marisa Montes, Tortuga In Trouble, by Ann Whitford Paul, or This Is How You Lose Her, by Junto Diez. Along with books and songs, you can even find youtubers that make videos in Spanglish like Jenny Lorenzo.

So now you know what Spanglish is, some places to find it, and how to use it.