Almost forgot about this. Last night NPR had a story on the controversy over Spanglish — basically a dialect spoken by some Hispanic youths which combines English and Spanish. Most of the speakers featured on NPR seemed to stick with English sentence structure while mixing in a lot of Spanish nouns.
The controversy is largely the same as that over Ebonics — is Spanglish just slang or is it a legitimate dialect, and regardless will students learn better and adjust better to life if they are forced to speak and write straightforward English in schools, or should schools accommodate the mix of English/Spanish language.
I haven’t really thought about this, but the person who NPR had who opposed Spanglish had me unintentionally laughing out loud when he told the reporter that the polyglot was bad for kids because English is the lingua franca of the United States. Fine, but isn’t that mixing English and French? I guess he just wants to maintain the status quo. Oops, darn Latin.
English has been very successful in large measure because of its ability to integrate so many different linguistic sources. The professor who supports Spanglish drove this home when the reporter mentioned that he had edited a Spanglish dictionary which included his favorite Spanglish phrase — Hasta la vista, baby.
Clearly whether anyone likes it or not, the rising population and position of Hispanics will dramatically increase the linguistic influences that Spanish exerts on English, and if it makes for great Arnold Schwarzenegger movie lines, I’m all for it.