Languages Magazine

The Mounting Revolt Against Spanglish Language

By Tlb
Spanglish crowd

Image by blmurch via Flickr

Are you familiar with Spanglish? This blog has written an article about Spanglish already, and it’s basically the combination of English and Spanish language. If you could recall how the English plus Spanish Equals Spanglish article detailed both the positive and negative sides of this mixed language, still. Many people condemn this language’s existence.

Fabiola Santiago, writer of The Miami Herald wrote an editorial about scholars fighting to squelch Spanglish. She quoted how Toni Miranda, the district supervisor of bilingual education for Miami-Dade County Public Schools was so furious of how Spanish language became “atrocious”. She cited examples of a certain furniture storefront in Miami boasted this sign: “Aqui se venden muebles para niños de madera.” It was supposed to be promoting furniture for children, but it was the other way around. The quoted Spanish sentence actually means furniture for wooden children. It was an ignominy.

And worse, emcees in a recent American Music Awards spoke Spanish when they introduced Enrique Iglesias in a presentation. They said “Quiero introducir a Enrique Iglesias!” Spanish-language expert Gerardo Pina-Rosales was one who lamented on this issue.

“”Using introducir instead of presentar is one of the most common misusages of Spanish. I have even heard a university professor do it. He was introducing a speaker and he used the Anglicism introducir. The woman behind him looked like she was ready to hit him!” said Pina-Rosales.

A deep need to revolt against Spanglish was greatly encouraged among Spanish advocates. Pina-Rosales even disappointingly stated how their children abandoned their mother tongue when they learned English. “We want them to learn English, but we don’t want them to abandon Spanish.”

The essence of Spanish was already deprived when Spanglish was already the idiom used among the people. With the great influence of social media among youngsters, they even developed “Spanish” words related to Facebook and Twitter. These young people already use words like “facebuqueando” (facebooking) and “tuiteando” (tweeting) when they go for their social media moments. The Spanish enthusiasts greatly oppose these words because they’re not even recognized as Spanish words.

How about you, do you take Spanglish as a threat among Spanish and English speakers? No wonder Spanish enthusiasts encourage people to learn Spanish at language school, because it is an assurance that people will acquire at the same time utter the précised and excellent Spanish language based on standards.

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