Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 12:46:24 -0600 From: Ditra Henry Subject: Re: Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words Yesterday, in my semantics course, we got into a big discussion about whether or not there is something we can call Spanglish? There were many examples of codeswitching and why people code switch and how they do it and then the discussion went to the idea of borrowed words such as pushale, leading to the comment that many young Amercan Spanish speakers were even trying to conjugate pusha in the Spanish forms. Also, the discussion led to the idea that many young Spanish speakers use constructions in spanish that are very unfamiliar to those who come from other countries. For example, a young person born in Guatemala and raised in the US will go back to Guatemala and are told that their Spaninsh has an accent o Gutemalams say that they don't understand their Spanish. Next, I asked some young people I know. These university students that have been here or grwon up here and come from Spanish speaking households said they start to use the vocabulary of the people that come from the different spanish speaking countries when they are addressing them and so forth. So I believe that there is a dialect of Spanish that can be described as Spanglish. what are others findings on this? Ditra Henry Northeastern Illinois University Chicago