Spanglish in Chronicle of Higher Education (and Yinglish)

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:27 PM +0100 10/30/00, Grant Barrett wrote:
>The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a quick review by Ilan Stavans of the
>political history of English and Spanish and a few comments on the
>various versions of
>Spanglish.
>
>http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i07/07b00701.htm
>
>One things strikes me as odd; Stavans uses the phrase "Dominicanish
>(Nuyorican)
>Spanglish" to describe one version. But "Nuyorican" refers
>specifically to Puerto Ricans,
>does it not? Not Dominicans? Is there is a difference between the
>New York Spanglish
>spoken in the two groups?
>
>Also of interest: Stavans writes, "This semester I'm offering a
>course based on my
>research, "The Sounds of Spanglish." In historical and geographic
>scope, it is, I
>believe, the first of its kind and has drawn about 60 students
>(unusual for a small
>liberal-arts institution like Amherst College)."
>
>Finally, I would be interested in comments on his brief treatment of
>"Ebonics" and
>the comparison to Spanglish.

Like Grant, I've only ever heard "Nuyorican" for New York-based
Puerto Rican culture and people.  I'm surprised there's no reference
in Stavans's piece to the rather voluminous body of knowledge on code
switching; the author seems to have discovered the phenomenon
independently.  I also wonder about his characterization of Yiddish.
The characterization of "ebonics" (the very label is telling) as "an
intraethnic slang" perpetuates a misunderstanding that could be
debunked by spending five minutes on John Rickford's web site or
glancing at any one of a fairly large number of publications on the
topic.  Oh well--I shouldn't go on, I'm starting to sound snobby.

By the way, on a related topic:  thanks to everyone who responded on
Yinglish.  I did check with Ellen Prince and Jerry Sadock, whose
names were brought up by a couple of people, and as I suspected
neither of them knows of anything of the sort I was looking for:  a
sound descriptive treatment in the form of a book chapter or article
of the traits of Yiddish-influenced English, focusing on the
grammatical patterns, comparable to what's available for AAVE and
Appalachian English.  Well, I did determine that there would be a
market for such a resource.  (Jerry and I tried to convince Ellen to
write one, without noticeable success.)

larry