Jose D Junco

ENG 1311
University of Texas at El Paso
Spanglish
















Spanglish is the term that is given to the language spoken by United States His-
panics, and Latinos that combine the English language with the Spanish language, hence
Spanglish, and it seems to be becoming a more recognizable and fluent language
throughout the United States-Mexico border, but is it really a language or is it only a dia-
lect? If you live in the border then you know you can hear it mostly everywhere. Malls,
on the street, restaurants, sporting events, even at school. According to Silvia Betti (2011)
on her article Spanglish cant be considered a new phenomenon because it goes all the
way back to 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo where Mexico
sold to the United States the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and
California, so as a result, suddenly this people were practically obligated to speak only
English and threw their mother language, Spanish, away. A lot of Hispanics want to be
part of this new system, but at the same time they wanted it to keep their cultural identity.
As a result they started using the English language, but they would use the pronunciation
of the Spanish language, creating the peculiar language of Spanglish.

I am not the fondest of this particular language. I am a person that has always
thought of the Spanglish language as a dull and even sometimes lazy mixture of English
and Spanish, and that the people who speak it are just too lazy to decide whether to speak
the English Language, or the Spanish language. Here in El Paso, Texas we are presented
with this issue a lot, since we are so close to Ciudad Juarez, we tend to hear the Spanish
language a lot, but that doesn't mean that you can mix it in order for you to communicate
with them. I have always been the person that believes that you either stick with your


mother language, whether it is English or Spanish, it doesn't matter, or you start learning
the other language in order for you to be able to communicate in a more proper way.