Spanglish Research Paper

Nearly 35 million U.S. Hispanics know it as their language on the street and in their houses. You can hear it on almost every street of almost any major city in the U.S. these days. As the people from Spain celebrate the national day of Spain, the Fiesta Nacional de España, on the 12th of October, the issue of the use of Spanglish awakens. Spanglish is the combination of the Spanish language with the English language. As the Hispanic immigrants mingle with the English-speaking majority, they very often switch between the two languages within a single sentence, or borrow English words and put them into Spanish, a phenomenon called code-switching, creating Spanglish. Sentences such as “hey, como estas, I saw you the other day” are used, and instead of saying “estacionamiento” for parking, Spanglish speakers use “parquin”. While some may see Spanglish as a threat to the Spanish and English language, others see it as the future.

In the future, the culture of immigrants has to be combined with the culture of native Americans, and Spanglish is a

“Spanglish is a reflection of how immigrants here in the U.S. have defined and then redefined their identities,” he says. Language determines the way a person sees the world around him or her, shaping their identities and their culture. Being able to speak both languages simultaneously, automatically combines the two cultures. Many Hispanic-Americans view Spanglish as a metaphor for two coinciding worlds. Many magazines have therefore adapted Spanglish in their headlines to reach a bigger audience. “If we were an English magazine, we would just be general market. If we were a Spanish-language magazine, we would be Latin American. We are the intersection of the two, and we reflect a life between two languages and two cultures that our readers live in,” Ms. Haubegger, publisher of Latina magazine,