Spanglish

No, this is not the story involving a young single hispanic mother and her fling with Adam Sandler…this is the story of two young “study abroaders” and their inability to pick between English, their native language, and Spanish, the language which has taken over their lives.

To an outsider, a conversation between Raz and me might be a bit confusing…one might think, “Do I know this language or not? I recognize some of the words, but not others…not so much. Plus, their sentence construction is whack.”

A few ejemplos (er, examples, for you gringo folk):

-When trying to determine the word for the people who make bread, I said the bakist….I knew that people who made my delicious pan were called “bake-something” in my native tongue, but the ending escaped mi mente.

-When asking someone their age, most people would say “How old are you?” but if you are a Spanglish speaker you might be caught saying “How many years do you have?” (In Spanish, this is the literal translation).

-The other día, Raz was trying to say she just didn’t want to do something, just didn’t have the energy. In Spanish you would say, “No tengo ganas de __________.” So needless to say that when Raz said “I just don’t have the ganas,” although I understood perfectly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a health education teacher listening in wouldn’t have been a bit relieved…or apalled.

At times we switch between languages 4 or 5 times in just a few sentences. This works out fine for us now because we understand e@ch other…we’re both pretty fluent in Spanglish…but sometimes it causes problems. At times, in class, I’ll know that the word is a cognate, but I’m so stuck in “language limbo” that I can’t even grasp the word in English to translate into Spanish. This also happens when talking to folks back in the States…I’ll suddenly stop…my mind wiped clear of any way to communicate. Words? What are they? When I finally do come up with some utterances, I might receive silence in return…”What? Dynastical isn’t a real word? Well, that’s peculiar. It should be, right?”

I can only hope that sometime, in the near future, I will once again be able to sound eloquent…or at the very least, decipherable. Otherwise I’m going to need a translator…and I’m just not sure how many “Spaglish certified” ones are out their in this large mundo.