Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Spanglish

Before I left for Spain I used to throw Spanish words into everyday conversations. Common Spanish words or phrases, like "anda!" or "ay dios" suddenly snuck themselves into an otherwise typical English sentence. I used to call it Spanglish, thinking that the 5-95% rate of Spanish to English was an acceptable rate for a way of speech to be considered Spanglish. Like every other assumption about language I had before I arrived here, I was wrong.
Now that I've been here three months, I wish I could call myself fluent in Spanish but I'm not. Every day I get closer to it, though, and further away from my previously excellent knowledge of English. My Spanish is increasing and my English is deteriorating. This means that the 5-95% rate that made up my definition of Spanglish this summer is rapidly turning to a 30-70% rate. Spanglish is becoming more and more Spanish and less and less English. This makes my head a constant mess of Spanish versus English. I find myself talking to myself in both languages, and even to others in both. It's no longer mostly intentional, it's 100% done subconsciously.
This makes my mind, spoken word, and written word an imperfect combination of Spanish and English. I'm now nearly truly fluent in Spanglish, which is both highly inconvenient and actually kind of cool. I feel kind of like I'm losing a huge part of myself, the part that reflexively corrected peoples' grammar and had an unnatural grasp on the English language. On the other hand, my Spanish is improving, meaning I'm fulfilling one of my goals of exchange.
This Spanglish prevents me from thinking in actual words, making writing and speaking hard for me. It's creating an explosion of awesome inside my head though. I guess that makes it worth it.

1 comment:

  1. Well as I'm sure you know by now, immersion is the best way to learn a new language. It really takes translating English to Spanish to a new level. I have been taking spanish for about 10 years now but still haven't been able to achieve the level of fluency that I desire. Mostly because I can only do short trips here and there, not long term. Maybe someday. :)

    http://spanish.dictionary.com/

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