Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [45]
The flood of migrants since then has apparently crested recently because of the economic slowdown and stricter policing of the Mexican border. But by 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that there were about 45 million Hispanics who speak Spanish as their first or second language and that more than half of these people speak English well.
But many Latino immigrants don’t learn English and may get along fine for a generation with their native Spanish, since many public notices are now in both languages. Second-generation Latinos invariably learn English in school and become proficient in Spanglish, both of which which can serve as stepping stones to better jobs and lives.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play, In the Heights, dramatizes this process with real-life Latinos singing and verbalizing, like, “Foo, you know! Spanish mixed con Ingles mixed with Spanglish y tambien the occasional local/urban dicho?” as the program notes say.33
THE SPANISH ACADEMY
Spain has its own language control group, the Royal Spanish Academy, but it is much less aggressive than its French equivalent. In 2009, the academy issued a new grammar book for the nearly half a billion people in twenty-two countries that have Spanish as their primary language.
Among the English words officially accepted by the Spanish Academy were esponsor (sponsor), cederrom (CD-ROM), and striptease. Other words undergoing an extended process of acceptance are market, parking, and mitin (for meeting). The academy also issues dictionaries that give the official spelling of Spanish words, which are supposed to set the pattern for all Spanish speakers.
In 2010, the group decided to drop the two letters ch plus numerous accents and frills from the Spanish alphabet. That action caused a stir in South America, where President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela claimed that he would henceforth have to be known as “Avez,” even though his name would not change.
In Mexico, the daily El Universal scoffed at the elimination of the letters and said the action should not be accepted by the Spanish-speaking nation. The paper was most upset by the procedure of having its national language manipulated by “a conference room abroad.”
But the academy claims it has been trying to keep up with natural language changes, not trying to stop them. Another factor may be in play. According to Ilan Stavans, the author of Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, Spain still harbors a grudge against Anglo-Saxon culture stemming from the defeat of its Spanish Armada in 1588. He says that may explain why there is so much disdain in Madrid for any incursion of English words into the Spanish language.
Meanwhile, Spanglish is becoming so entrenched that it is being institutionalized in the form of books, music, and permanent vocabularies worldwide.
In an interview with the Barcelona Review, Stavans said that until the previous decade, Spanglish was known as “lowly regarded jergo callejero [street jargon],” but now it has graduated to a “decisive cultural phenomenon” that is rapidly being standardized by radio, magazines, and business firms, and it’s even featured on a line of Hallmark cards.34
COUNTRYWIDE BANS
Numerous nations, in addition to France and Spain, have sought to curb imported words. In 1999, Brazil imposed a ban on the use of any foreign language on public documents. But the action has not stopped the spread of American English throughout the country.
In 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently had received one too many e-mails. He issued a ban not only on that word but some two thousand other foreign words that were being used in his country. As a result, Iranians could no longer order pizza by mobile phone or chat on one with forbidden words. Pizzas became elastic loaves, cell phones became companion phones, and a chat grew into a short talk,