Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 13:13:20 -0600 From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words I haven't got them here, but last week there was an op-ed piece and two letters in the NY Times on the question of Spanglish. You can probably retrieve them from the NYTimes web site, which I believe is www.nytimes.com. Dennis > Yesterday, in my semantics course, we got into a big discussion about >whether or not there is something we can call Spanglish? There were many >examples of codeswitching and why people code switch and how they do it >and then >the discussion went to the idea of borrowed words such as pushale, leading >to the comment that many young Amercan Spanish speakers were even trying >to conjugate pusha in the Spanish forms. Also, the discussion led to the >idea that many young Spanish speakers use constructions in spanish that >are very unfamiliar to those who come from other countries. For example, > a young person born in Guatemala and raised in the US will go >back to Guatemala and are told that their Spaninsh has an accent o >Gutemalams say that they don't understand their Spanish. > Next, I asked some young people I know. >These university students that have been here or grwon up here and come >from Spanish speaking households said they start to use the >vocabulary of the people that come from the different spanish speaking >countries when they are addressing them and so forth. So I believe that >there is a dialect of Spanish that can be described as Spanglish. what >are others findings on this? > >Ditra Henry >Northeastern Illinois University >Chicago Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu Department of English office: 217-333-2392 University of Illinois fax: 217-333-4321 608 South Wright Street home: 217-384-1683 Urbana, Illinois 61801 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baron