Spanglish, A Creation Of The XXI Century

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Throughout human history, foreigners have always been seen as invaders. In this sense, tourism, refugees, and adventurers were usually bad news because of how brutal times used to be in the past. But in the current XXI century, there are many countries in which there are so many foreigners that they start to displace natives.

What this means is that the societies of today are usually characterized by a mixture of qualities from cultures all around the world. One of these mixtures bred a new kind of language, Spanglish.

Spanglish, a creation of the XXI century

Spanglish is a mixture of Spanish and English. This is a phenomenon that has occurred thanks to the meetings between so many Hispanic and Anglo cultures, like in the case of the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Costa Rica, etc.

This mixture has been so widely spread that it has now sort of become an unofficial language for all the people living abroad. And, there are territories where the conjunction of both languages has become so natural that Spanglish is more readily available than pure English or Spanish, like in the case of Costa Rica.

This has created a need for authors to appear and fill the void as the writers of this new kind of population. Authors who specialize in this kind of language have several distinct qualities. For example, they usually grew up in mixed contexts in which Spanish and English were spoken, like the case of Latin American migrants to the United States who spoke Spanish in their household and English outside of it.

Another quality is that these kinds of authors need to be, in a sense, trilingual. This is because there's an English component, a Spanish component, and a Spanglish component. Spanglish is not as easy as mixing two languages together because there's so much variation among the populations that speak it that sometimes they can't understand each other.

What this means is that a Spanglish author is a kind of diplomatic ambassador that tries to represent a new, rising culture. While trying to get in touch with the two mother languages and cultures that bred them. In this sense, an author of this language has to fulfill the anthropological need of creating and describing a new population. This all happens while trying to navigate two sets of grammar rules that, when mixed together, create all sorts of problems for the author of this rising culture.

For more information on Spanglish literature authors, contact a professional near you

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10 March 2023