Spanglish as a Natural By-Product - Essay Example

Spanglish is only a natural by-product of the social interactions between and among English-speaking and Spanish-speaking people who need to understand and be understood. Like any other byproduct, Spanglish is unexpected and unwanted, yet has to be somehow accepted for what it is – a mere byproduct. As a mere byproduct, Spanglish can never substitute either English or Spanish as a medium of mainstream communication. As a result of the collision of two languages, Spanglish takes different forms.

The most basic form is "code-switching," where words are substituted or inserted from one language into the other. For example, Spanglish might sound like "Vamos a la store para comprar milk" to mean "Let's go to the store to buy milk." A bit more complicated form is the making up of words, or basically switching between languages within a word, by translating a word or phrase literally. The most amusing form of Spanglish is when an English word is Hispanicized (e.g., “troca” or “torque” for the truck).

In all cases, the resulting language or product does not bear the generally acceptable correctness of grammar rules and word usage. The proliferation of a hybrid street language like Spanglish in the dominantly English-speaking United States poses a serious threat not only to the socio-cultural aspect of the country’s development but also to its economic and political growth. Why is Spanglish a threat to the overall development of the U.S.? Foremost, the language of politics and commerce is English.

In a highly globalized economy of nations, there is only one language used: English. It is in no way, therefore, that a mangled and prostituted English in the form of Spanglish can help facilitate the nation’s coping up and rising above the challenges brought about by globalization. Secondly, it is culturally unwell for any nation, much less the U.S., to uphold and encourage the proliferation of “languages” like Spanglish as doing so would show the people and the world as a whole a lack of healthy cultural identity.

Many groups and academicians tag it as appalling mutilation of the Spanish and English languages and is an obvious indication of laziness or inability to learn the language properly. This leads to the conclusion that Spanglish is a language of the incompetent and uneducated people, and thus, is nothing but a hip or a trend totally useless in the mainstream world. Spanglish, given the limits and its lack of clear-cut rules of word usage and grammatical composition, is definitely not even a language in the first place.

While it is understandably necessary to allow Spanglish to be used in places and in instances where it is the most convenient to use, given the growing diversity of communities in the United States, it is of primary importance aslo that the long-term benefits and losses from allowing it to take a deep root into the culture be considered over and above everything else. For instance, the use of Spanglish must be confined to the streets, where it actually originated and developed. It can also be used by people in their multicultural homes and neighborhoods.

However, the use of Spanglish informal institutions like schools and public offices, especially in government agencies must not be allowed, much less tolerated. Its inclusion in school curricula in the interest of studying it as a social phenomenon is comprehensible only in the context of understanding today’s society. It is not a curtailment of basic rights of the people to limit the use of Spanglish, rather, it is in respect for the rights of the majority who have not really embraced Spanglish as a necessary part of the socio-cultural landscape of the contemporary U.S., as well, it is also in respect for the culture of the nation and of those who fought hard for it.