English to Spanish Code-Switching Using COHA - Research Paper Example

Spanish Loan words/English to Spanish switching using COHA s Introduction The Spanish loan word or English to Spanish code switching using COHA is commonly referred to as Spanglish. This is a language formed by blending Latin and Germanic languages (Ardila 2005). The languages are blended at different degrees of both English and Spanish in the speeches of people who speak parts of the two languages or whose day to day language is different from that of their original country. Spanglish is not an actual language despite the fact that it is widespread among the Hispanic population (Ardila 2005). It is rather a pidgin, which is a language based on a simplified syntax and grammar that can act as an intermediary between people who lack a common language. English to Spanish code switching using COHA has been in existence since 1902 when the early colonial administration of US army tried to impose the English language on island residents (Ardila 2005). Between 1902 tom 1948, all public schools were instructed using English language and all subjects were taught using English except the Spanish language courses. This led to incorporation of many American English words into the Puerto Rican vocabulary. Spanglish is known by regional names since it lacks uniformity due to lack of one unified dialect. For instance, the Spanglish languages spoken in Texas, New York, California, and Miami among other parts of America each is unique. The language is widely used in Spanish-speaking communities in the US despite the fact that it is not always uniform (Ardila 2005). The Miami Hispanic community is the most known community to use the language. The language is an informal one since there are no set hard and fast rules. When considered from a linguistic point of view, the language can be branded many things like pidgin since most of its words borrowed from the English language are intended to bring a common meaning for different words among all native Spanish speakers with varying definitions of the same word (Ardila 2005). The language can be also considered to be Creole or dialect of Spanish because it has become the native language of some second generation Hispanic children who are most of the time exposed to Spanglish at home and when using this dialect, they mostly understand monolingual Spanish speakers. The language can be also considered to be a Spanish-English inter-language because it represents the linguistic border between Unites States and Mexico. Categorising words according to semantic field and seeing which words occur in Sport texts, Food & Drink texts, Music texts and technology texts The inauguration of Spanglish was as a result of the influx of Latin American people into the Northern part of America and more specifically the US. The phenomenon of Spanglish can be categorised into two parts; code switching or borrowing and lexical grammatical shifts (Morales 2002). For instance, a fluent bilingual speaker addressing another bilingual speaker is likely to engage in code switching with the sentence. For example, “sorry I will not be able to attend next week’s meeting porque tengo una obligación de negocios en Boston, pero espero que I will embark on the meeting the week after this.” This simply means that (Im sorry I cannot attend next weeks meeting because I have a business obligation in Boston, but I hope to be back for the meeting the week after). Spanglish is a good example of the lexical phenomenon especially with the emergence of new verbs (Morales 2002). For instance, when an English verb is added onto the spanish infinitive morphemes like –er, -ar and ir it makes a good example of the lexical phenomenon in Spanglish. For example, the spanish verb to call, which is llamar, changes to, telefonear (telephone+ar), the spanish verb to eat lunch, which is almorzar changes to lunchear (lunch+ar). Other examples include; watchear, puchar, parquear, emailear, twittear. Calques form the simplest forms of Spanglish because they do not undergo any lexical or grammatical structural change (Morales 2002). This is the reason why they are the most common forms of Spanglish. Examples of Spanish calques in Spanglish include; Amigo, Lasso, Rpdeo, Tortilla and Mañana among others. Examples of English calques in Spanglish include; Bacuncliner which means sandwich; El- mouse- El top- Jamberger. Another example of Spanglish is Fromlostiano; a type of wordplay which involves taking Spanish idioms and translating them literally into English language. The word Fromlostiano is taken from the expression from lost to the river. This is a word to word translation of de perdidos al río, which means that an individual is prone to choose a particular risk action in a desperate situation (Morales 2002). The saying can be compared to the English idiom that says in for a penny, in for a pound. It is humorous because despite the fact that the expression makes grammatical sense in English, it makes no sense to a native English speaker. Hence it is important for one to understand the two languages for him or her to appreciate the humor. The book From Lost to the River (1995) has noted this phenomenon. It has gone further to describe six forms of fromlostiano. These are (Morales 2002); 1. The translations of Spanish idioms into English language. For example; with you bread and onion (Contigo pan y cebolla), Nobody gave you a candle in this burial (Nadie te ha dado vela en este entierro), To good hours, green sleeves (A buenas horas mangas verdes). 2. The translations of American and British celebrities names into Spanish. For example; Vanesa Tumbarroja (Vanessa Redgrave). 3. The translations from English to Spanish of American and British street names. For example; Calle Del Panadero (Baker Street). 4. The translations of Spanish street names into English names. For example; Shell Thorn Street (Calle de Concha Espina). 5. The translations of multinational corporations names from English to Spanish. For example; Ordenadores Manzana (Apple Computers). 6. The translations of Spanish minced oaths from Spanish to English. For example; Tu-tut that I saw you (Tararí que te vi). Sport texts, Bonito -from Spanish bonito, meaning "beautiful"] Caribbean- from Spanish Caribe, from name of Carib Indians of the region. Sierra- from sierra, meaning a mountain range Food & Drink texts, Burrito- from burrito, a dish originally from Northern Mexico, literally “little donkey” Cafeteria- from cafetería, “coffee store” Caldera- from Spanish caldera meaning “cauldron" from Latin caldaria, “cooking pot.” Cassava- from cazabe, from Taino caçábi Chayote-from Spanish, literally: “squash”, from Nahuatl chayotl meaning “spiny squash” Chicha- from Spanish chicha, meaning “maize” Chile- from Spanish chile, meaning chilli Chocolate- from Spanish chocolate, meaning “hot water” or a combination of the mayan word chocol meaning “hot” and the Nahuatl word atl meaning “water.” Chorizo-from chorizo, meaning “sausage.” Coca- from Spanish, coca meaning “coke”. Cocoa or cacao- from Spanish cacao. Meaning cocoa Potato- from Peninsular Spanish patata, itself from batata, meaning “sweet potato.” Tomato- from Spanish tomate, meaning a type of fruit Music texts Bandolier-from Spanish bandolera, meaning “band (for a weapon or other) that crosses from one shoulder to the opposite hip" and bandolero, loosely meaning “he who wears a bandolier” Rumba- from rumba, a type of music Technology texts Canoe- from Spanish canoa, carbonado- from carbonada, from carbón meaning "coal" Cargo- from the verb cargar meaning "to load" Plaza- from plaza, meaning “a public square, spot or place" Collocates The loan words in various domains have different collocates. A collocation is a series of words that co-occur more often than expected by chance. For example, Pronunciamento from pronunciamiento proclamation, “military Coup d’etat”, which establishes a military dictatorship. Collocation phrases are mostly compositional hence they should not be confused with idioms that derive meaning (Ricardo & Stern 2011). Spanglish Patterns Spanglish occurs in two incidents, i.e. borrowing and code switching. In borrowing, English borrowed words are usually adapted to Spanish phonology while in code switching and code mixing; an individual begins a sentence with one language and switches off to the other language in the course of speech (Callahan & Benjamins 2004). The switching occurs at the beginning of a sentence or a new topic. Code switching is common when one is speaking Spanish instead of English. This is because it is supposed that a native Spanish speaker understands as opposed to English. It is supposed that native Spanish speakers understand more English as compared to how English speakers do Spanish (Ricardo & Stern 2011). Hence code switching resulting into Spanglish is acceptable to native speakers. Code switching comprise of intrasentential and intersentential. Intersentential is code switching between sentences and intersentential is code switching within sentences. Intersentential code switching is more elaborative and involves bilingual individuals who are proficient in the two languages (Ricardo & Stern 2011). This is because switching within sentences requires a high level of efficiency to avoid violations of grammatical rules. Important Syntactic Constraints on Code Switching (Callahan & Benjamins 2004) 1. The equivalence constraint claims that code-switching is allowed where the grammars of Spanish and English coincide 2. An example of Equivalence Constraint is: “The student brought the homework para la profesora.” This is grammatical because both languages place the prepositional phrase in the same place,after the object, in the sentence 3. The object clitic (pronoun or determiner) constraint relates to the equivalence constraint, as it deals with coinciding grammars, and claims that the clitic must be in the same language as the verb and in the position required by the language of that verb 4. The noun phrase constraint does not allow switching between a noun and a modifying adjective that follows the noun. 5. The free morpheme (which can stand alone as a word) constraint asserts that a switch may not occur between a bound morpheme (that which appears only as a part of words that cannot function independently) and a lexical form (that which represents actual word forms) unless the lexical form has been integrated into the language of the bound morpheme. Language Relativity Espanglish speakers in Mexico and the Southwestern US are referred to as Pochos. Pochos are mexicans who have adopted customs of the US people. The English influenced Spanish are called the Mocho (Ricardo & Stern 2011). This group has been amputated or mutilated their native language. Most Hispanic-American Spanglish authors like Piri Thomas, Junot Diaz, Pedro Pietri and Giannina Braschi among others have written various works like fiction, poetry and drama among others in Spanglish (Stavans 2004). The use of Spanglish in America and other parts of the world have evolved over time leading to the emerging of the language as away of conceptualising people’s thoughts whether it should be presented as speech or as written work. The language has continued to be distributed all over the world, consequently affecting various cultures of the world in different ways. Since the coining of the word Spanglish in 1940 by a linguist from Puerto Rican by the name Salvador Tion, Spanish has continuously borrowed English words which have led to English spoken with Spanish terms (Stavans 2004). For instance, it is common in Panama since the America controlled the Panama Canal over 96 years ago. The language has influenced much of local members more especially among the former residents of the Panama Canal Zone who are called the Zonians. Due to frequent migrations by natives of the language, it has led to evolvement of varous versions of Spanglish which have in some cases changed the name of the language from Spanglish to word like Mocha (Callahan & Benjamins 2004). However the language has been used continuously by its natives wherever they settle in the world. The language has grown to an extent that there are radio stations broadcasting in the language in some parts of US like Southern California (Stavans 2004). Most predictions made earlier that English and Spanish languages will be interchangeable languages have come true. One of these predicaments was given by H.G. wells in his Future History: the Shape of Things to Come (1933). References Ardila, A 2005, “Spanglish: An Anglicized Spanish Dialect.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 61, no. 71. pp. 35-39. Callahan, L & Benjamins, J 2004, Spanish/English Code switching in a Written Corpus, Oxford Publishing Company, Oxford. Morales, E 2002, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan. Ricardo, O & Stern, N 2011, International Journal of Bilingualism, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 85-100. Stavans, I 2004, Spanglish, the Making of a New American Language, Harper Perennial, New York.  |accessdate= requires |url= (help) Read More