By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Hinglish or Tamilish may not have arrived here yet but Spanglish, a hybrid form of English and Spanish, is becoming a key to opening the American door, according to a US professor.
Spanglish is “a very creative, jazzy way of being Latino in the US today,” says Ilan Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Especially popular among young people, Spanglish is one of the most striking ways two of the world’s most widely used languages are evolving in response to immigration and globalisation, he says.
Almost 92 percent of US Latinos say it is very important to learn English, and another 7 percent say it is somewhat important, according to the Latino National Survey, the most in-depth look at the country’s 43 million people of Latin American descent. But English-language acquisition usually does not happen all at once.
In “Spanglish: The Making of A New American Language (2003)”, Stavans presented thousands of American words with both Spanish and English etymological roots spoken by a wide array of people, young and old- immigrants, Latinos born in the United States and non-Latinos.
“It is also a general form of communication used in Puerto Rico, the US-Mexican border and other ‘hybrid’ spaces. In other words, it breaches boundaries,” Stavans told USINFO, a US state department web site.
Spanglish is widely spoken in the Latino community, although its usage varies from place to place and generation to generation. Stavans sees it as a good thing. He has been translating Don Quijote de la Mancha, or Don Quixote, by Cervantes, into Spanglish, just in case anyone doubts what this hybrid can do.
One of Stavans’ favourite Spanglish words is estressar, which expresses a very modern form of anxiety, in English to be stressed out. Some Spanglish words render an English word-average, for example-in a form easier for Spanish speakers to say: averaje (a-ve-RAH-je).
Others show the wit and imagination characteristic of all slang: someone who is assimilating may be referred to as an avocado, or a dynamic female may be referred to as an aeróbica (ay-RO-bi-ka).
Stavans sees Spanglish not as an expression of alienation from US culture but as “an attempt to break that alienation, to find ways for Latinos to assimilate-although on our own terms.” Spanglish speakers are constructing a positive identity and the use of Spanglish seems to accelerate or facilitate their Americanisation.
To those who worry that Spanglish will corrupt English or Spanish, Stavans says: “Language exists in a state of perennial corruption. Spanglish doesn’t pollute English or Spanish more than the languages of adolescents, sports, advertising, etc.-or, for that matter, any other foreign language.
“A healthy national language always figures out a way to negotiate with its counterparts, internally and externally, no matter in what state of development these tongues find themselves.”
“Spanglish should be used as a stepping-stone in the process of English-language acquisition,” he said.
“And it’s crucial to stress that as appealing and fashionable as Spanglish is, the only route for Latinos to become full-fledged Americans is through English. This, of course, doesn’t mean they should abandon Spanglish; instead, they should use it as a key to open the American door.”
If Spanglish has arrived in the US, Hinglish, Tamilish and other variants of Indian English may not be far behind with an estimated 2.15 million people of Indian origin in America.