I overheard someone today at the grocery store complaining about people speaking "Spanglish" and not making the effort to learn to speak fluent English. Then my mother made a comment remembering how easy it was for one of my brothers to learn Spanish when we moved to Mexico and how hard it was for her.
Which led me to imagine what it would be like if I moved to somewhere like Germany at this point in my life. It would be a big fat pain in the arse for me to learn German now. I'm pretty sure I could do it, but I don't think it would be easy and I'd probably wind up saying, "To heck with this...I'm just going to focus on the words and phrases I absolutely need to know to get by". And then just smile a lot to cover the look of incomprehension whenever someone went past the edge of my knowledge.
English is a horrible language to have to learn as an adult. Spanish is a whole lot easier simply because it doesn't have all of the convoluted rules, double meanings, spelling variations, etc., that English has. Think about it - in Spanish each vowel only has one sound. There's none of this long or short vowel crap to learn.
The pondering led from one thing to another and I remembered how I used to feel as a teenager living in southern Mexico when some American would accidentally wind up in our city (it had to be an accident because foreigners simply didn't vacation in Chilpancingo). I was invariably embarrassed by how loud they were (because somehow it has gotten ingrained in the average American tourist psyche that if you raise your voice people will miraculously understand what you're saying), the way they dressed (as if every place in Mexico was a beach) and most of all by the way they got annoyed about the fact that very few people there spoke English well enough to understand their mangled version of Spanish.
I have to admit that there was one that makes me laugh every time I remember it:
"Yo need some uno to pusha la truck a la corner."
An excellent example of what I will henceforth refer to as Engpañol.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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Engpañol exists and is distinct from Spanglish. Spanglish is what English speakers hear, like "The light is jello." "Jew want to give me?" Engpañol is what Spanish speakers hear from confused English speakers, for example, "Imigración" which isnt a word in any language, the proper word is "Migración", it is corrupted by English word "Immigration". Likewise "Transportación" isn't a Spanish word, the proper word is "Transporte", again corrupted by English "Transportation".
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