“If there’s no participation," Steggles cautions, “you don’t know whether you’ve been understood or not.”

When trying to communicate in English with a group of people with varying levels of fluency, it’s important to be receptive and adaptable, tuning your ears into a whole range of different ways of using English, Jenkins says.

“If you can communicate efficiently with limited, simple language you save time, avoid misinterpretation and you don’t have errors in communication,” Nerriere says.

“Too many non-Anglophones, especially the Asians and the French, are too concerned about not ‘losing face’ — and nod approvingly while not getting the message at all,” he says.

“English speakers with no other language often have a lack of awareness of how to speak English internationally.”

At meetings, he adds, “typically, native English speakers dominate about 90% of the time. But the other people have been invited for a reason.”

Unusual words, speed of talking and mumbling don’t help, he adds — especially if the phone or video connection is poor quality. “You start disengaging and doing something else because there isn’t any chance of understanding,” he says.

And then there’s cultural style, Blattner says. When a Brit reacts to a proposal by saying, “That’s interesting” a fellow Brit might recognise this as understatement for, “That’s rubbish.” But other nationalities would take the word “interesting” on face value, he says.

The first time I worked in an international context somebody said ‘Eta 16:53’ and I thought ‘What the hell is ETA?’,” says Blattner. “To add to the confusion, some of the abbreviations in British English are very different from American English.”

“I often hear from non-native colleagues that they do understand me better when listening to me than when doing so to natives,”

“The native English speaker… is the only one who might not feel the need to accommodate or adapt to the others,” she adds.

In emails, they use baffling abbreviations such as ‘OOO’, instead of simply saying that they will be out of the office.

“A lot of native speakers are happy that English has become the world’s global language. They feel they don’t have to spend time learning another language,” says Chong. “But… often you have a boardroom full of people from different countries communicating in English and all understanding each other and then suddenly the American or Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them.”

When such misunderstandings happen, it’s usually the native speakers who are to blame.

“Things spiralled out of control because both parties were thinking the opposite.”

The message, written in English, was sent by a native speaker to a colleague for whom English was a second language. Unsure of the word, the recipient found two contradictory meanings in his dictionary. He acted on the wrong one.

In a room full of non-native speakers, ‘there isn’t any chance of understanding’. It might be their language, but the message is often lost.

The final question I would like to consider here is: should we be telling Latinos what they should call the mixed variety they use and how they should think of themselves, based on purely linguistic research, or should we listen and take into account their cultural, social and political motivations?

We have seen that Spanglish is not restricted to casual oral registers and is being accepted by many Latinos as a reflection of their hybrid culture and identity. However, it is still being rejected by some linguists, who claim it is harmful to Latinos

Spanglish cannot be said to be restricted to casual oral registers. In fact, its use is expanding so much that many Latinos are reappropriating the name and using it with pride.

in addition to face-to-face conversations, Spanglish appears in literary works, films, TV series and commercials, radio programs, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, song lyrics, comedy acts, websites, e-mails, blogs, Facebook, chats and text messages. That is, all kinds of oral and written interaction and all types of artistic expression.

Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.

The language practices of Latinos in the US continue to attract attention from politicians, educators, journalists, linguists and the general Hispanic and non-Hispanic public.

Effective code-switching largely depends on the ability of the individual to understand the workings of both English and Spanish.

I must clarify that code-switchers usually are individuals who learn English out of necessity and not by choice.

You are hereHome » The Archive » 1995 - 1996 » "Spanglish": The Language of Chicanos "Spanglish": The Language of Chicanos Rosa María Jiménez

n order to code-switch, speakers must have a degree of proficiency and flexibility in each language, but they need not be completely bilingual. The traditional meaning of bilingual refers to the ability to master two languages equally or almost equally well. However, linguists use bilingual to include varying degrees of proficiency in two languages

It is an innovative language that defines, unites and empowers the Chicano Community. “

By living in America we have been exposed to another culture and another way of life—no longer are we strictly Mexican.

Alternative terms like Latino, Mexican-American, and Hispanic also exist; however, each term has a distinct meaning. To put it simply, Latino refers to all people from Latin American roots, Mexican-American is a person born in America, but who has Mexican origins, and Hispanic is a term created by the American government, for statistical purposes, to group together all Spanish-speaking people.

Chicano is a term used to define individuals who recognize that they no longer are purely Mexican and realize that they are not completely accepted by America.

There exists a set of unwritten rules or constraints that an effective code-switcher must control.

This is how code-switching and slang can get Chicanos into trouble.

Code-switching, however, should not be confused with linguistic borrowing. In the process of linguistic borrowing the speaker takes an English word and molds it into a Spanish one. For example, a speaker might say, “No puchen el carro.” (Don’t push the car.) In this case “puchando,” from the English word push, is pronounced in Spanish and used as a Spanish word. Similarly, the speaker has borrowed “carro” from the English “car” and assimilated into the Spanish language.

define Spanglish, or code-switching as it is more commonly termed by academics, as the practice of alternating between two languages when speaking—in this case between Spanish and English. Speakers switch single words, phrases or complete sentences.

Like black Americans, Chicanos have developed a language all their own—Spanglish.

To many, code-switching (Spanglish) may seem insignificant or confusing, but I feel that analyzing this process will demystify code-switching and reveal its importance in the Chicano community.

Most bilinguals code-switch to varying degrees, but rarely do we think about its meaning.

As a Mexican living in America, I wrote about an aspect of my culture that is part of my everyday life—my language.

U.S. Spanish has been in college course catalogs for several years. According to a 2016 survey from New Mexico State University, more than 40 colleges across the country are teaching about it.

Pure languages, she says, don't exist.

"To be able to speak Spanglish is to be able to say to people that I am Mexican American, and that's OK."

"When I was growing up, I had a lot of issues [around] being Hispanic. I didn't understand, like, what does it mean to be Hispanic? Should I be Hispanic, or should I be American? And so I think it's because I struggled with that that I want to be able to do both," Bravo says.

"Bilingual speakers have to know both languages very, very well in order to code-switch in the same sentence," she explains in Spanish.

Then she gives an example of a sentence that doesn't work as well in Spanglish: "I already told you the most interesting story." In Spanish, it would be, "Ya te dije la historia más interesante." Peace says this one is harder to translate into Spanglish because it has a different sentence structure in Spanish and English.

She writes an example on the classroom's whiteboard — the phrase "a girl who was walking her dog." In Spanish, it would be "una chica que estaba paseando su perro." One way to say it in Spanglish: "una girl que estaba walking her dog."

Peace tells her class the dialect is actually very systematic. She says its speakers follow both languages' rules when they code-switch.

There's a long history of "English only" policies in some American schools, including in Texas.

"My grandparents talk a lot about being discriminated in school for speaking Spanish,"

"I think people get confused because they assume if you're brown, you speak perfect Spanish," she says after class. "People everywhere just expect you to be a certain way because of how you look."

But what bothers me is that they only speak one language," Villines explains in Spanish. "How are you going to correct me when you don't even know what I'm saying?"

Mary Villines, a biology major from the Rio Grande Valley, says she does. She says people who speak only Spanish or English will sometimes assume she doesn't speak their language well and correct her.

she's learning there's nothing wrong with the way she speaks the language. It's just a different dialect from the one spoken in Madrid or Mexico City.

And yet Spanglish, or U.S. Spanish, is sometimes looked down upon by native speakers of both languages. Even in a state like Texas, where nearly 30% of the population speaks Spanish at home, there's a perception that it's better to speak "pure Spanish."

"When two or more languages are in constant geographic and social contact, there will always be linguistic consequences."

In a Texas college classroom, students are learning that Spanglish — a version of Spanish that's influenced by English — is just as valid as any other Spanish dialect.

Porfa please. Pero like. Janguear (to hang out). These Spanglish phrases are all the results of contact between Spanish and English.