May
8
Extranjerismos
Formula 1 auto racing is not my cup of tea and I have zero interest in it, especially after the Lewis Hamilton incident, but there was something very amusing that popped up on my computer screen today.
La Fundación del Español Urgente (Fundéu BBVA, for short) put out a report stating that extranjerismos, [words and phrases from foreign languages but we know that in this case that the burr in the saddle is English], are taking over auto racing. Why is this amusing? Because some people in Spain marvel at the amount of “Spanglish” that is spoken in the U.S. and many like to believe that “real Spanish” (i.e. Spanish from the Iberian peninsula) is somehow immune to succumbing to the same malady, thanks to the Atlantic Ocean. Get real. Chalk it up to globalization but the use of English words in Spanish is a fact of life.
English is overrun with extranjerismos like trek (Afrikaans), algebra (Arabic), typhoon (Chinese), boutique (French), karaoke (Japanese) Schadenfreude (German), pundit (Hindi), smorgasbord (Swedish), pasta (Italian), etc. The list goes on and on. But the English language doesn’t get bent out of shape over it. In fact, due to its turbulent jam-packed history filled with wars, conquests and coloniziation, the English language has a tradition of taking and using words from other languages. No need to reinvent the wheel if somebody else has already built it and named it. I read somewhere that there were at least 80,000 extranjerismos in the English language, and for all we know that may be a conservative estimate!
Spanish, however, is different. Although there are many words in Spanish that come from other languages, like Arabic, there are Spanish purists who feel uncomfortable about the incursion that English, the 21st century’s lingua franca, is making on its turf. What is disturbing to Fundéu is the growing use of English words for words and phrases that already exist in Spanish. In other words, Spanish is being supplanted by English for no good reason, from the purists’ perspective.
Here’s a sample passage from an auto racing report: «Barrichello, que entró a repostar con el safety car en pista y el pit lane cerrado, fue sancionado con un stop and go que le obligó a pasar por boxes y detenerse durante 10 segundos».
All of the terms in bold have Spanish equivalents but just like technology and business terms in English that have been adopted wholesale by Spanish speakers (Internet, blog, router, web, email, project manager, marketing, etc.), it just somehow seemed easier to the reporter filing this account to use the English words.
¿Qué opinas? Is using Spanish words when the English equivalent is more widely used a cause worth fighting for or just a losing battle?
May 9th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Well, yes, we use too many “estranjerismos”. But this isn’t new and it is not even restricted to English. We have loans from Greek, Arab, French, Basque, Nahuatl, Quechua,etc. Many, many words that today are standard Spanish once were “estranjerismos”.
Anyway, I hate them, really, really hate them. Probably because I’m an Old Castillian who was told to try to speak “con propiedad”. I try to avoid them as much as I can.
And yes, the Spanish spoken (and written) by many Hispanics in the US is appalling. There are many words that really get on my nerves: checar y accesar, for instance…me ponen malo.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Well, I can’t really criticise as I am English lol However, I think it does sound ‘strange’, especially as I work in I.T, to hear so many English terms. I personally don’t see the need: “application server”…”servidor de aplicaciones”. I think it’s because they’re quite new. Most of the borrowed words in English are pretty accepted and normal.
I also notice alot of managers like to slip in some English to sound ‘cool’, “ok”, “thanks”, “whats up”, “see you”.
Hell why not..
“Hey Joe. ¿Wie geht’s? Do you have that report? Bueno, merci. We’ll have lunch Monday. Hasta luego”
May 9th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
“stating that extranjerismos, (words and phrases from English)”
extranjerismo (words and phrases from “any” foreign language ).
Sorry I could not avoid it
.
There is not a “battle” because it has been a very commom phenomenon for some centuries.The only difference now, is English´s turn.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
When are they going to do something about sorting out all those weird words they’ve stuck in between the proper ones that you highlighted in bold in that passage?
May 10th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Forgot to say: I certainly think English should be kept pure, too. Let’s start by getting rid of any words
derived from Latin, Greek and French…
May 10th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
@Roberto, cuate, no te pongas así. I promise never to say nor write “Voy a llamarte atrás.”
@Álvaro: Yep, thanks, I knew that, but I was trying to make a point. I went back and made the change to the original text. But I honestly don’t think that Fundéu would have devoted any time or ink to a report about French words entering the world of Spanish cuisine, just to give an example.
@Andrew: It throws me for a loop sometimes because if I pronounce the English word correctly while mixing it in with Spanish, Spaniards don’t understand. So you have to mangle the pronunciation of the English word in order for it to be understood, which to me just totally defeats the whole purpose!
@Graham 1: jejeje
@Graham 2: Yes, exactly. Where would English be today if it hadn’t been built on the backs of other languages?
May 16th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
“Llamarte pa’tras”!!!, agggggg, ¡no por favor!, ¡me suicido!
Eleena, I would love to hear about the situation of the Spanish language in the US. I mean, I’m under the impression most of the 2nd o 3rd generation hispanics speak very bad Spanish because they haven’t received formal education in Spanish. Is that true?
I guess many of them have little interest in learning, because Spanish is perceived as “low-class” language. Am I wrong? I really hope so.
May 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
A survey by the Pew Hispanic Center revealed that by the third generation, the overwhelming majority prefer to speak English. Whether that means they all speak grammatically incorrect Spanish is unclear although it would be safe to assume that a high percentage would since, as you noted, they’re not being formally educated in Spanish. So many people think that just having a native Spanish speaking parent will be enough to create fluency in children but that’s a big myth.
http://spanish-podcast.com/2007/11/30/generation-gap-spanish-fades-while-english-gains-dominance/
I think this perception of Spanish being a “low-class” language in the U.S. is really a thing of the past. Years ago Hispanics in the U.S. felt pressure to assimilate and seem as white or Anglo as possible. You saw that with celebrities and news personalities who changed their names to sound more Anglo-Saxon and who avoided talking about or publicly identifying with their Hispanic heritage. Many parents in earlier generations reinforced the problem by not teaching their kids Spanish and frowning on the children speaking Spanish at home. The American Dream for many meant assimilation at any cost. What’s happened as a result is an entire generation of adults who “look” Hispanic and have names like Juan Miguel Garcia López but speak little to no Spanish. I’ve met a couple of people like that and many of them are embarrassed that they don’t speak Spanish despite their family heritage.
Today, thankfully, things are changing and U.S. Hispanics are becoming more politically active and outspoken and the one common unifying denominator for all these various immigrant populations from Latin America is the Spanish language. Heritage Spanish programs for people who grew up in Spanish-speaking households but they don’t know the grammar, etc. are becoming more widespread. It’s basically teaching Spanish to Spanish speakers. I actually have a podcast planned on this topic that hopefully I will be able to post sometime in June. Also, among gringos, Spanish is the No. 1 foreign language that they want to learn, so at least among a large segment of the U.S. population, Spanish holds a lot of interest and appeal.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
P.S. The other day I heard two different U.S. Latinos interviewed on Cadena Ser, a radio station in Spain. One lady was being interviewed about Barack Obama and her opinion of his candidacy and the other was a trifle of an interview about squirrels in Manhattan’s Central Park with a lady who works for the New York City Parks’ Dept. Anyway, after both interviews, the radio announcer made a comment about how well the ladies spoke Spanish and how funny he (the radio announcer) found it that whenever they had to say a word in English (for example “Central Park” or “West Virginia”), they said it in English with an American accent. I just had to laugh because that’s normal. No estadounidense is going to pronounce an English word with a Spanish accent or translate proper names in English to Spanish when speaking Spanish. It just doesn’t flow.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
yep, but it doesn’t work the same way the other way around, does it?. I’ve never heard a non-spanish speaker estadounidense pronouncing Amarillo, Texas , or San José, California “right”.
A mi personalmente me hace bastante gracia el nombre Jennifer (pronunciado a la americana) Lopez (pronunciado a la española), no puedo evitarlo. Es el summum del bilingüismo, tener un nombre bilingüe.
I’m really glad to hear American Hispanics are getting interested in receiving formal education in Spanish. That’s very good.
Thank you very much Eleena, for your very interesting and very well documented answers.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
[...] their hair out over the wide use of non-Spanish words in Spanish media. The last time it was over auto racing. Now it’s professional tennis. Here’s a recent sample news report, with the offending [...]