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20 August 2007

Immigrants Infuse English Language with Dynamism

Hispanics, Asians are reinvigorating English, professor says

 

Sara Martinez, coordinator of the Hispanic Resource Center at Martin Regional Library in Tulsa, Oklahoma, selects books about Spanish-speaking cultures, Spanish and English language books, and books written or translated in Spanish for the library, May 28, 2004.

Hispanic Resource Center coordinator Sara Martinez selects resource books for their Spanish-speaking patrons. (© AP Images)

By Carolee Walker
Staff Writer

Washington — English is a living, dynamic language that is invigorated by new speakers, including foreign students, tourists and immigrants, says cultural critic Ilan Stavans.

Even native English speakers never use the exact same language, Stavans said in an Ask America webchat August 20, 2007.  “As the language changes, often as a result of newcomers, so do its speakers.”

For example, the mixing of Chinese and English, Korean and English, Japanese and English, and Vietnamese and English are worldwide phenomena, he said. Within the United States, Asian immigrants are using English as their language of communication while also infusing it with their own linguistic attributes. Stavans predicted that English in the late 21st century will borrow from the constellation of Asian languages in unforeseen ways.

“It is a mistake to think of the English taught in the classroom as divorced from the living English, the one heard on the street, in restaurants, on TV and music,” he said. Teachers should introduce students, even beginners, to the wide array of possibilities of a language, he added. “In a multiethnic society like ours, it is important to use different linguistic varieties as education tools.”

Spanglish is a hybrid form of English and Spanish especially popular among young people, and one of the most striking ways language evolves in response to immigration and globalization, Stavans said. (See “Spanglish Offers Stepping-Stone to English, Professor Says.”)

 

Mizuki Kuno gets some help on her homework from her ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, Karen Pfeiffer, not pictured, during a class at Dublin Jerome High School in Dublin, Ohio. English is a living, dynamic language that is invigorated by new speakers, including foreign students, says Ilan Stavans. (© AP Images)

Mizuki Kuno gets some help on her homework from her ESL teacher. (© AP Images)

In the last five years, Spanglish has become an important marketing tool in the United States, he said. Such companies as Taco Bell, Hallmark and Mountain Dew are using Spanglish to reach a new type of customer.

In a global economy, companies seek diverse ways to advertise their products, and those ways often include an array of linguistic possibilities, according to Stavans.

Translators play an especially important role in understanding innovations in language – to be successful they need to be attuned to two languages and must be willing to improvise, “perhaps even to coin new terms,” he said.

The characters in a novel seldom use a standard language to communicate, Stavans said.  Instead, they personalize the language, adapting it to their needs, making the language “local.” A good translator is also an ethnolinguist, capable of recreating the various sounds or tone of spoken language, he said.

Stavans teaches at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is an internationally known cultural critic, translator, public speaker, editor, short-story writer and TV host.

For more on recent developments in English, see the electronic journal Dynamic English.

A transcript of Stavans’ discussion and information on previous and upcoming webchats are available on Ask America.