Talk:Hispanicisms in English

[Untitled]

I strongly dislike the idea of merging Spanglish into this... and are somewhat surprised that the Spanglish article hasn't been incorporated into categories encompassing Cuban and Puerto Rican culture, as it was in the Mexican-American cultural Project. Spanglish to me is not the same thing... I might be wrong, but I sense Spanglish is more like Anglicisms in Spanish, and not the other way around... where is the discussion page on the merger proposal? Demf 17:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ramon's Letter

This appears to be less a demonstration of Hispanicisms in English, and more an illustration of what is simply known outside the linguistics trade as "poor command of English." Huh? Iamvered 21:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the whole lot here. It's not obvious that it can't become fair use of copyright-protected material, but i'm omitting the copyright portion for now, since the discussion is too rambling to make clear how it constitutes a requirement for reprinting the whole text in order to make its point.

Hispanicisms are also evident in the language of expatriate English-speaking persons living in a Spanish-speaking nation. A prime example is the Anglo community residing in several South American nations, most notably Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. These individuals are now up to fourth and fifth generation citizens of their country of residence, but maintain British customs and speak an English that has become hispanicized to some degree at both the lexical and syntactic level. There is also a sub-language (frequently used for humorous effect) which deliberately exaggerates the hispanicisms to the point where the English is difficult for an outsider to understand. For many years the Buenos Aires Herald ran a regular column in which a fictitious character "Ramón" wrote a series of letters in this style.. Here is an excerpt from the collection of columns, which were published as a book in 1979; note from the fourth paragraph that "Ramón" studied to be a "traducer" (i.e. translator):

[omitted]

RAMON.

=="Back-translating" Hispanicisms in English==

To illustrate the significance of hispanicisms in English, we will "back-translate" Ramon's letter into the Spanish in which he conceived the letter. Notice how the "English" really is almost a word-for-word transliteration from Spanish, complete with lexical and syntactical hispanicisms. Some of Ramon's writing also includes Argentine slang expressions or words, which are listed here to avoid confusion:

al divino botón = useless

los milicos = the military

se han copado= have grabbed

los asuntos de las vacas = the matters dealing with cattle

el viejo = the father, the old man

no se ven bien = don't see eye to eye

se arma la grande = there is a big fuss

[omitted]

RAMON. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerzy (talk • contribs) 23:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

References