The American Dialect Society

Spanglish: Language Contact in Puerto Rico

Author(s): Rose Nash
Source: American Speech, Vol. 45, No. 3/4 (Autumn - Winter, 1970), pp. 223-233
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/454837 .
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SPANGLISH: LANGUAGE CONTACT

IN PUERTO RICO
ROSE NASH
Inter American University

LTHOUGHTHE INFLUENCE of American English is present, to some extent,

in all parts of Spanish-speaking America, Puerto Rico is unique in

having both English and Spanish as official languages.' In accordance with
the government policy of bilingualism, English is taught as a required
subject in all schools from the first grade through the university level.2 The
close contact of Puerto Rican Spanish and American English since the turn
of the century has greatly intensified in recent years, largely because of the
ever-increasing number of Newyorricans (New York Puerto Ricans) who
have returned to the island to live, bringing with them the language and
culture of Spanish Harlem.3 In the metropolitan areas of Puerto Rico, where
Newyorricans play an influential role in the economic life of the island, there
has arisen a hybrid variety of language, often given the slightly derogatory
label of Spanglish, which coexists with less mixed forms of standard English
and standard Spanish and has at least one of the characteristics of an
autonomous language: a substantial number of native speakers.4 The
emerging language retains the phonological, morphological, and syntactic
structure of Puerto Rican Spanish. However, much of its vocabulary is
English-derived. That it is an autonomous language has been recognized
not only by some Puerto Rican intellectuals, most of whom strongly disapprove of it for reasons that will appear later, but also by the New York
School of Social Research, which has offered a course in Spanglish for doctors,
1. The only exception, to my knowledge, is the state of New Mexico, where Spanish has a
legal status equal to English.
2. Until 1950, English was the medium of instruction in the public schools. It is still
maintained in many private schools. For a discussion of this highly controversial issue, see
E. Epstein, ed., Politics and Educationin PuertoRico.
3. For an in-depth study of Newyorricans, see J. Fishman, ed., Bilingualismin the Barrio.
4. In addition to the presence of Newyorricans, several other factors may be mentioned
that encourage language mixture. First, there is a large English-speaking population,
including military personnel, non-Puerto Rican permanent residents from various parts of
the United States, and transient tourists. Second, virtually all of the products sold in Puerto
Rico are manufactured in the United States and are referred to by their English names.
Third, Puerto Rico is geographically isolated from other Spanish-speaking areas, so that
borrowings from English quickly become institutionalized.

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224

AMERICAN SPEECH

nurses, and social workers.5 The other well-known language mixtures, such
as Franglais, Yinglish, Japlish, or Honglais, have not, I believe, achieved
such distinction.
This paper will briefly describe some typical examples of Spanglish used
in Puerto Rico; they were collected over a period of five years from a variety
of sources: newspapers, radio, television, public signs, and conversations
heard on busses, at parties and meetings, and in classrooms, post offices,
stores, banks, and hospitals-in short, everywhere that language is used in
daily affairs. First, however, the term Spanglish must be defined because it
has been applied to more than one cross-language phenomenon." Although
the division between what is and is not Spanglish is not always clear-cut,
utterances of the following type can be excluded:
No speak very good the English. [no espik beri gud di inglis] 'I do not speak
English very well.' = 'No hablo muy bien el inglks.'
Utterances of this kind, in which English words are put in Spanish order
and pronounced in a Spanish manner, are common enough on the streets of
San Juan, and journalists have used the technique of word-for-word translation consciously for fun and profit.7 To accept such an obviously ungrammatical English sentence as Spanglish, however, would leave no
reason to reject an equally ungrammatical sentence that might be produced
by an English monoglot:
Yo hago no hablar espaiiol muy bueno. [yow hagow now hablar espanyol
muwiy bweynow] 'I do not speak Spanish very well.'
Also excluded from consideration as Spanglish is switching from one
language into the other for a special effect, unless the switching takes place
within an utterance in a natural way. Examples of such deliberate switching
that will not be considered Spanglish can be seen in two-language advertisements, such as:
Buy your home in Levittown Lakes, donde la buena vida comienza. (radio
advertisement)
Yo y mi Winston-porque Winstons taste good like a cigarette should. (advertisement, sung in a movie house)

5. See C. Varo, Consideraciones

politicas en tornoa la ensenianzadel "Spanglish"
antropoldgicasy
en Nueva York.
6. I reserve the term Spanglish for English-influenced Spanish as a first language, distinguishing it from Spanish-influenced English spoken as a second language, which I call
Englauiol.The latter will be treated in a subsequent paper.
7. The late journalist Eddie Lopez was a master of this literary genre. He created a character called Candid Flores, whose letters, written in hilariously mangled English, appeared
periodically in the San Juan Star, Puerto Rico's English-language newspaper.

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SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO

225

To put it differently, Spanglish as defined here is neither language containing

grammatical errors due to interference nor intentionally mixed language.
Examples of Spanglish can be conveniently, although somewhat arbitrarily, divided into three main types, each with subtypes. Type I is characterized by the extensive use of English lexical items occurring in their
original form in otherwise Spanish utterances. These items fall into several
groups. First, there are international terms in science and technology, which
also appear in many other languages and are therefore not uniquely characteristic of Spanglish.
Second, there are simple substitutions of high-frequency English words
that have Spanish equivalents:
Juan estaba en el army, pero se pas6 al navy. 'John was in the army (ejdrcito),
but he transferredto the navy (a la marina).'
El bos dijo que habia que trabajar overtime este weekend. 'The boss (jefe) said
that we had to work overtime (extra) this weekend (fin de semana).'
Higalo anyway. 'Do it anyway (de todas maneras).'
La gente de mi building vive del welfare. 'The people living in my building
(edificio) are on welfare (bienestar pdiblico).'
C6gelo easy. 'Take it easy (con calma).'
? Qu6 size es ? 'What size (tamafio) is it ?'
Voy al shopping center. 'I'm going to the shopping center (centro comercial).'
Ella tiene ojos braun. 'She has brown (carmelita) eyes.'
Mi prima es bien nice. 'My cousin is very nice (muy agradable).'
Se me perdi6 el lipstick. 'I lost my lipstick (lapiz labial).'
As such common English words gradually replace their Spanish equivalents,
the Spanish words tend to become obsolete through disuse or change their
status from colloquial to formal. In Puerto Rico today it is rare to hear a
freezer referred to as a congelador,or a truck called a camion.
Third, there are cultural borrowings, many of them slangy expressions.
Some, like hotpants, are untranslatable English idioms. Others could be
rendered in Spanish only by awkward and often unrecognizable paraphrases.
Examples of this category are the following:
El baby esti bonito con su T-shirt. 'The baby is pretty in his T-shirt.'
El beisbol es mi hobby favorito. 'Baseball is my favorite hobby.'
Deme dos hamburgers plain sin lechuga y tomate. 'Give me two hamburgers
plain without lettuce and tomato.'
Esto es un rush job. "It'sa rushjob.'
iQud down! 'What a letdown!'
iQu groovy! 'That's great !'
Lo mio es love. 'My thing is love.'
Todos los substitute clerk carriers estin off mafiana. 'All the substitute clerk
carriers (postal workers) are off tomorrow.'

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226

AMERICAN SPEECH
Cartas airmail para stateside con menos de 11 son surfaces. 'Airmail letters
going out stiteside with less than 11 are surface mail.'
Vas al coffee break ahora. 'Take your coffee break now.'
Amplio parking gratis. 'Plenty of free parking.'

Finally, the vocabulary of American merchandising, the names of business

establishments, and the slogans and mixed-up messages of advertising are a
rich source of type 1 Spanglish, as in the following examples:
Sears de Puerto Rico: Use nuestro plan de compra Lay-Away. Use el plan
Easy Payment de Sears. Use el plan Revolving Charge de Sears. (signs in a
store)
Este album contiene el hit de gran combo. (on a record jacket)
Recurt's Office Supplies: folders, miquinas de escribir, account books, papeleria,
sillas, desks. (sign on a store window)
Design Mens Salon, toupees a la medida, hair weaving y pelucas stretch para
caballeros. (advertisement in the yellow pages of the telephone book)
Marco Discount House: Cabecera con frame, 2 mesas de noche, 1 triple dresser
con 2 espejos. Fibra lavable, 2 corner bed y ottomon en azul. Elegante sofacama. (newspaper advertisement)
The last example presents an interesting case of lexico-semantic fusion. Bed
and cama, which are identical in meaning, are used as synonyms in the same
advertisement, in which English and Spanish have converged. In effect, the
words bed and cama have become, for this advertiser, part of the same
language. Many Puerto Ricans who classify themselves as monolingual
speakers of Spanish are quite unaware that some of the words they use
naturally and unselfconsciously are English in origin.8 One of my colleagues
at the University of Puerto Rico relates an anecdote about a visitor from
Spain who was to give a lecture on the campus. When he asked a campus
guard for directions to the paraninfo, the guard replied that he was sorry but
he did not understand English. After the visitor clarified what he meant, the
guard informed him that the Spanish word for that was asemblyjol(assembly
hall).
In type 2 Spanglish, English words lose their non-Spanish identity. Their
pronunciation changes more noticeably to conform to Spanish phonology,
and they frequently appear in written form spelled according to Spanish
orthography. Nouns and verbs assume the morphological characteristics and
inflections of Spanish words. Thus the feminine articles la and las and the
masculine articles el and los agree in number and gender with their nouns,
though I have as yet been unable to determine the exact rules for assigning
gender to borrowed nouns. Many, but not all, nouns take the grammatical
8. In general, the level of awareness is proportionate to the level of education, but this has
little effect on the frequency of usage. Ease of communication is the chief motivation for
employing English words, although the prestige factor, for some speakers, cannot be ignored.

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SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO

227

gender of the Spanish words they replace, for example el rufo 'roof' replacing
el techo.9Some nouns appear in both masculine and feminine forms, following
the pattern of gender marking in such pairs as la hermana 'sister' and el
hermano'brother,' for instance la bosa and el bos 'boss.'
Among the most frequent types of phonological and orthographic
adaptation are the following (the Spanglish spelling is cited when it is
attested; the pronunciation is cited when a spelling is not available or the
pronunciation does not follow Spanish orthoepy):
Addition of a final vowel: bosa 'boss,' rufo 'roof,' caucho 'couch,' norsa
'nurse,' ganga 'gang.'
Addition of a final vowel and shift of stress to the penultimate syllable:
marqueta [malketa] 'market,' furnitura [fulnituira] 'furniture,' factoria
'factory,' groceria 'grocery,' carpeta [kalpeta] 'carpet.'
Addition of an initial vowel before [s] plus a consonant and change of the
[s] to [h] (in accordance with the allophonic rules of Puerto Rican Spanish):
[ehtri] 'street,' swich [ehwik] 'switch,' [ehtinyi] 'stingy,' [ehtofa] 'stuff,'
[ehlip] 'slip.'
Change of /r/ to [1] in syllable final position: norsa [nolsa] 'nurse,' frizer
[frisel] 'freezer,' [almi] 'army,' [folman] 'foreman,' [mihtel] 'mister.'
in final position: [obeltayij] 'overtime,'
'room.'
Change of [m] to
[ru13]
[i1]
Reduction of clusters or omission of a final consonant: cuara 'quarter,'
suera 'sweater,'"o [lihti] 'lipstick,' saibo [saybol] 'sideboard,' [deparmen
ehtol] 'department store.'
Ephenthesis: gauchiman 'watchman.'
Interpretation of ge as [he]: tinager [tinahel] 'teenager.'
Verbs in Spanglish are created by taking on the productive infinitive
suffixes -ar, -ear, and -iar. They are then conjugated for person, number, and
tense according to the regular Spanish paradigms, producing such forms as
the following: /flunk"r/ 'to flunk (an examination),' /fluinko, flfinkas, flfinka/
'I, you, he flunk(s),' /flunk6, flunkare, he flunkado/ 'I flunked,.will flunk,
have flunked.'
New verbal formations reflect the activities of everyday life, which is the
primary source of Spanglish vocabulary, and may, if used in written form,

9. Exceptions are la marqueta,also la marketa,replacing el mercado,and el window,replacing

la ventana.Use of the inappropriate article, such as *la window,is considered ungrammatical.
10. The attested spellings cuara and suera derive from articulatory similarities between
Spanish /r/, which is a single-tap voiced alveolar, and the English voiced variant of /t/ in
intervocalic position, which is voiced alveolar stop. English speakers with voiced /t/ may make
no distinction between latterand ladder.In such words, the Spanish speaker "hears" /r/, and
therefore uses the r grapheme. The Spanish phoneme /d/ is realized in intervocalic position
as the fricative [6]: todo'all' [t6o], toro'bull' [t6ro].

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AMERICAN SPEECH

have variant spellings, depending on the user's familiarity with the English
form or the frequency with which the adaptation occurs. Some common
words, such as parquear 'to park,' have well established orthographic forms,
and their use cuts across all social classes. Others are in a state of flux with
regard to spelling, but not pronunciation. In the home, for example, one
hears bakear, mopear,heatear,freezear, vacuunear;in the office, taipear, chequear,
clipear; and in sports, pitchear, batear, catchear, hitear, trainear, rollear, slipear,
flipear, bowlear. One also hears lonchear,flirtear, foolear, and new creations
appear every day with no loss of intelligibility.
Some words of type 2 exhibit a range of meaning more restricted than
that of the English words from which they were derived. Thus the Spanglish
word estofa, from English stuff, refers only to narcotics. There are also semantic
expansions: the Spanish word ganga 'sale' converges in Spanglish with ganga
from English gang and can be used in either sense depending on context. A
similar case is Spanglish yarda from English yard, which in pre-Spanglish
usage referred only to cloth measurement, but now is also used in the sense
'patio.'
There are also lexical innovations of several kinds. Zafacon 'garbage can,'
a uniquely Puerto Rican word of unknown origin, has been connected by
folk etymology with a supposed English source, safety can or save-a-can. Other
creations are chinero'china closet' and clipiadora 'stapler.'
Some examples of sentences using type 2 Spanglish are the following:

No jangues por aqui. 'Don't hang around here.' (janguear'hang')

Yo no estoy fuleando. 'I'm not fooling.' (fuliar 'fool')
El rufo liquea. 'The roof leaks.' (liquiar'leak')
Limpia la yarda. 'Clean up the yard.'
? Cuil es tu job en la factoria? 'What's your job in the factory?'
Jumpi6 la bateria. 'He jumped the battery.' (jumpiar'jump')
Deme la clipiadora. 'Give me the stapler.'
j Sabes taipiar? 'Do you know how to type ?'
Me friso. 'I freeze up.' (frizar 'freeze')
Type 3 Spanglish includes such things as calques, syntactic idioms, and
some original expressions that can be recognized as a distinctive new form of
Spanish evolving under the influence of English, much as English itself was
influenced by Norman French. Syntactic influence directly from English is
not always easy to pin down because some of the manifestations attributed
to it, for example excessive use of the redundant nonemphatic subject pronoun, as in yo no se 'I don't know,' have been shown to be widespread in
other Spanish-speaking areas not in close contact with English or can be
traced to literary usage. The examples here are therefore limited to well-

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SPANGLISH IN PUER TO RICO

229

attested instances of calques cited in a recently completed dissertation by

Paulino Perez-Sala (the conventional Spanish equivalent is in parentheses):
El es un drogadicto. 'He's a drug addict.' (Es un adicto a las drogas.)
Lo mataron por ninguna raz6n. 'They killed him for no reason.' (Lo mataron
sin razon alguna.)
Mi salario compara con el de E.U. 'My salary compares with that of the U.S.'
(Mi salario es similar al que se paga en los E.U.)
El estaisupuesto a venir. 'He is supposed to come.' (Se supone que el venga.)
Ahora si esto hace sentido. 'Now it makes sense.' (Ahora esto si tiene sentido.)
Eso hace una diferencia en mis planes. 'That makes a difference in my plans.'
(Eso cambia mis planes.)
Nos unimos en simpatia con usted. 'We join you in sympathy.' (Le acompafio
en el sentimiento.)
Le dar6 pensamiento a eso. 'I'll give it some thought.' (Hay que estudiar el
problema.)
Alberto es 20 afios viejo. 'Albert is 20 years old.' (Alberto tiene 20 afios.)
El pasado afio 'last year' (el afio pasado)
El plan parecia uno demasiado costoso. 'The plan seemed to be a very expensive
one.' (El plan parecia demasiado costoso.)
j C6mo le gusta Puerto Rico? 'How do you like Puerto Rico?' (QLe gusta Puerto
Rico ?)
El sabe como hablar ingl6s. 'He knows how to speak English.' (Sabe hablar
ingl6s.)
Llamame para atras (= pa'atras). 'Call me back.' (Vu6lveme a llamar.)
Traigalo para atras. 'Bring it back.' (Devuelvalo.)
Loan translations of the more obvious kind, such as perro caliente for hot dog,
Caballo Blanco for White Horse (Whiskey), and Siete Arriba for Seven-Up are
relatively rare, which perhaps makes their use particularly effective, as in
the following:
!EstAen la bola! 'He's on the ball!'
Felicidad es comprar en Pueblo. 'Happiness is shopping at Pueblo (Supermarket).'
Other expressions in common use (with the conventional Spanish in parentheses) are the following:
demasiado mucho 'too much' (excesivo)
salvar tiempo 'to save time' (ahorrar tiempo)
el alto costo de la vida 'the high cost of living' (la carestida de la vida).
The last group of examples, which most nearly represent a merger of
Spanish and English into a new dialect, contains elements of all three types
and something more. English and Spanish are not only mixed, but fused into

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AMERICAN SPEECH

expressions with a special Puerto Rican flavor that goes beyond linguistic
analysis because it reflects the life of the speakers:
Estas en algo. 'You're in!'
EstAshecho. 'You have it made.'
Estaba tripiando anoche. 'Last night he turned on with pot.'
Todavia
en el tinegeo. 'He still acts like a teenager.'
estr
Quiero un jamon sandwich. 'I want a ham sandwich.'
Tengo dos cheeseburgerstrabajando. 'I've got two cheeseburgers working.'
Maria esta en la high. 'Maria is in high school.'
Esta ahora en el grin. 'The traffic light just turned green.'
La estofa esta caliente. 'The stuff is hot (illegal).'
i Qu6 fallo! 'What a let-down!'
In summary, Spanglish may be characterized as a gradual relexification
of Puerto Rican Spanish through borrowings, adaptations, and innovations
of the kind observable in every living language. The vocabulary of Spanglish
is the vocabulary of practical everyday living and working in a two-language
world, in which not everyone commands those two languages fluently. A
person must, therefore, select from each source the linguistic materials he
needs in order to communicate effectively, economically, and intelligibly with
other members of his speech community. In a great majority of cases, the
English lexical item meets these requirements better than its Spanish counterpart, though the reasons for substitutions are various. A Puerto Rican buys a
freezer rather than a congeladorbecause that is the word he sees in the advertisements; he speaks of la high rather than la escuela superior because it is
shorter; he can express a keener sense of disappointment with i Quifallo! than
with the bookish i Que'desenganio!And in every case, he knows that he will
be immediately understood by his peers without need of clarification,
because this is their common language.
The chief purpose of this paper has been to present a brief description of
some types of Spanglish chosen from a continuum of use that is too complex
both linguistically and sociolinguistically for thorough treatment here. It
would not be proper, however, to conclude without mentioning the attitudes
towards the use of Spanglish expressed by Puerto Rican educators, intellectuals, and political leaders and the effect of those attitudes upon that group
of college age. For
in society with which I am most familiar-people
such
creative
of
view
the
from
activity may be
linguist's point
although
considered normal, healthy, and even inevitable, given the existing language
contact situation, there are bitter disagreements about its cultural significance.
Puerto Ricans today are a people living in two worlds simultaneously-the
world of Spanish colonial traditions and the world of modern American
industrial society. They do not want to give up the former, and they cannot

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SPANGLISH IN PUERTO RICO

231

escape the latter. The Spanish

search for a national identity,
replaced is seen as a symptom of
language is in fact one of the

language holds a cherished place in their

and any indication that Spanish is being
cultural breakdown. The fear of losing their
strongest arguments in the movement for
political independence. Regardless of political persuasion, everyone agrees
that Spanish must remain the dominant language."1 There is, however,
considerable disagreement concerning what Spanish is and what to do about
the "dangerous" influence of English.
The most optimistic opinion is held by Ruben del Rosario, professor of
philology at the University of Puerto Rico, who has written extensively on
language change in Spanish America: "La lengua es lo que se dice" (language
is that which is spoken), and there is no cause for alarm. Puerto Rican
Spanish, he says, has been enriched by vocabulary from many different
languages, and the changes that have occurred are no different in kind from
those in other Spanish-speaking countries. Syntactic interference from
English, he feels, is minimal, and he sees little possibility that Spanish will be
replaced, whether or not English is present as a second language.
Sharply opposed to this view is the opinion of Salvador Tio, a journalist
and literary figure. He sees language mixture as a degradation and impoverishment of the glorious tongue of Cervantes and castigates those who
speak Spanglish. The true culprit, he believes, is the official policy of bilingualism, and he would do away with the required teaching of English
altogether, so that its presence could not encourage language mixture.12
Supporters of the bilingual policy feel that the solution to the problem of
language mixture lies in raising the standards of education. By improving
the teaching of both Spanish and English, they feel, it will be possible to keep
the languages functionally separate. Luis Mufioz Marin, the island's first
11. During the Governors' Conference held in San Juan in 1971, one of the American
governors from a southern state said publicly that English would have to become the dominant
language if Puerto Rico were to continue its association with the United States. The mayor of
San Juan, who was with him, immediately left the stage in protest and refused to speak to
him again. The mayor belongs to the Statehood party.
12. Tio claims credit for inventing the term Spanglish in a bitterly satirical article written
in 1952. Pronouncements against the menace of English are made with great frequency by
highly placed cultural, professional, and educational leaders, but have little noticeable effect
on speech habits. Some examples of vituperative remarks, translated from the Spanishlanguage newspaper El Mundo, are the following: "For Puerto Rico, bilingualism is the
dissolution of its national personality through the loss of its language" (a prominent attorney);
"The only bilingualism which exists in Puerto Rico is the struggle between English, which
attempts to impose itself, and Spanish, which wishes to save itself" (director of the Institute
of Puerto Rican Culture); "Puerto Ricans should not permit a foreign language in one's
mouth or in one's soul" (independentista professor). Members of the intellectual elite strongly
identify with Puerto Rico's Hispanic cultural heritage and minimize the contribution of
Africa, as well as other European countries and the United States.

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AMERICAN SPEECH

elected governor, who instituted the present school policy in 1950, had the
vision of a truly bilingual society, in which the two great world languages
would flourish. Yet he warned his fellow countrymen not to mix English and
Spanish, lest they become "semilingual in two languages."13
The official disapproval of Spanglish is hardest psychologically on the
college student, who feels he is being unpatriotic when he uses English words
instead of the "perfectly good Spanish words" that he does not know or
cannot remember. This feeling frequently carries over into an aversion for
learning English itself. There is an anecdote about one student asking another,
"How come your English is so bad? Is it because you're patriotic, or are you
just stupid ?"
This is the linguistic dilemma of Puerto Rico today: a generation of
students who feel inadequate with their Spanish, uncomfortable with their
English, and guilty about their culturally unacceptable Spanglish.

REFERENCES

Alvarez Nazario, M. La naturaleza del espanol que se habla en Puerto Rico. San Juan:
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquefia, 1963.
Dillard, J. J. "Standard Average Foreign in Puerto Rican Spanish." Studies in
Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later. Ed. E. B. Atwood and

A. A. Hill. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1969.

Epstein, Erwin H., ed. Politics and Education in Puerto Rico: A DocumentarySurvey of the
Language Issue. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1970.
Fishman, Joshua, ed. Bilingualism in the Barrio. 2 vols. Washington: U.S. Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1968.
Gili Gaya, Samuel. Nuestra lengua materna. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquefia, 1965.
Granda, German de. Transculturacti6ne interferencia lingiiistica en el Puerto Rico contemporaneo(1898-1968). Bogota: Instituto Caro y Cuevro, 1968.
Navarro Tomas, T. El espainolen Puerto Rico. Rio Piedras: Univ. of Puerto Rico, 1948.
13. From a speech before the Teachers Association of Puerto Rico in 1953. The context
is as follows (translated):
In one of the small towns in the interior of the island I came across a commercial
establishment with a sign that read "Agapito's Bar." Why did you do that, Agapito?
Why, when not even once a year, do you ever see a customer go by your street whose
vernacular is English ? Is it that you feel better when you say it in a language that is not
your own ? And if you scorn your language, aren't you to some extent despising yourself?
And if this attitude spreads unconsciously a thousandfold, from where will this country
get the spiritual strength needed to continue making a respectable cultural contribution
to America, the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and to itself? . . . In the long
run, we shall be bilingual individuals, but we must decide now not to be semilingual in
two languages. Language is the breath of the spirit. Let us not hinder that breath. We
cannot climb the mountain if we lack breath.

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SPANGLISH IN PUERTO

RICO

233

P6rez Sala, Paulino. "Interferencia del ingles en la sintaxis del espafiol hablado en
la zona metropolitana de San Juan." Diss. Univ. of Puerto Rico, 1971.
Porras Cruz, J. L., et al. Recomendaciones
para el uso del idiomaespanolen PuertoRico.
San Juan: Departamento de Instrucci6n Publica, 1968.
Rosario, Rub6n del. La lenguadePuertoRico.7th ed. Rio Piedras: Univ. of Puerto Rico,
1971.
Tio, Salvador. "Teoria del Espanglish." A fuego lento, cien columnasde humory una
cornisa.Rio Piedras: Univ. of Puerto Rico, 1954.
Varo, Carlos. Consideraciones
antropoldgicasy
politicasen tornoa la ensenanzadel "Spanglish"
en Nueva York.Rio Piedras: Ediciones Liberia International, 1971.

[Received August 1972]

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