Hablando Bien: The Dynamics of Spanglish

Recently I was having a conversation with a gentleman from the Deep South in San Antonio, Texas and he informed me that he’s been told, “Hispanics are too lazy to speak just English or just Spanish.”

I stopped him in his tracks and explained a few things to him.  Mind you he’s not Latino and it was likely another Latino in San Antonio who conveyed this information to him, but this is the essence of what I told him (well, the unabridged version).

First of all, calling Latinos “lazy” is pretty serious as far as I’m concerned, it’s buying into one of the strongest and most hurtful stereotypes that exist about a particular group of people in this country.  My family was not lazy, most Latinos I know who’ve attended college, worked hard for what they have or struggle every day to make ends meet are not lazy.

Secondly, I explained to him that such a broad and abrupt comment dismisses hundreds of years of history that helps explain why Spanglish is a phenomenon along the borderlands in this country.  I didn’t tell him that Texas used to be Mexico and so Spanish has been around a lot longer in these parts than English, but I could have.

I briefly explained to him that, if your parents are from somewhere else and their education was cut short in third grade, and your school system sucks, you don’t really get to learn either language really well and so you use the tools that you have — which may be borrowed from two languages.  I could have also told him that language is for communicating, and along the border, the best way to communicate is Spanish, so it’s really actually a logical result.

And to borrow a tidbit from a family friend originally from Guadalajara, I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people in this country who have kept the Spanish language alive in any form over the years.  Many of us know people who were beaten, chastised, humiliated and otherwise punished for speaking Spanish growing up, and they consequently didn’t teach their children Spanish.  This is a language that could have been lost so many times, but by the persistence and the love of the people in this country, it’s been kept alive and a place for its use persists to this day.

So, while I could have just given the guy a cachetazo, I doubt that it would have been as effective as pointing out how hateful and dismissive it is to imply that people who speak Spanglish are either lazy or stupid.