Can a new language be a hybrid of two existing tongues?

Last week, at Book Expo America in New York, I had some extra time and went to the Latino Book Awards, not knowing anything about the event.

I walked in on Bill Santiago’s stand up comedy routine in Spanglish, the mix between English and Spanish. He’s written a book in Spanglish called, Pardon my Spanglish: Porque, Because, including jokes and explanations about how Spanglish is used. This is based on his Comedy Central Special. The English is written in plain text and the Spanish in italics. Since I speak Spanish, I could understand how the Spanish sections of the jokes sounded better in Spanish than in English. According to Bill, his is the only book actually written in Spanglish. All the rest are academic by nature. Since I love languages, but fall asleep with boring academic linguistic explanations, I appreciate Bill’s humor and work to make the book.

Bill says “Life is too short to be multilingual.” He is totally right. It’s fun to be able to mix languages mid-sentence and know that one’s audience can understand him or her. I often wish I could put in a word from another language when I am speaking but I can’t because I know the other person can’t understand the foreign words I want to use. When I do put in those exotic words, I then have to spend time explaining what they mean.

Gracias Bill por el libro!
(Thanks Bill for the book!)

(Susanna Zaraysky writes on issues of being a global citizen. She can be reached at info@susansword.com. Her website is www.createyourworldbooks.com.)