[Nettime-bold] Cyber-Spanglish

["fran ilich" <ilich@sputnik.com.mx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/080600spanish-internet-review.html

On the Language of Cervantes, the Imprint of the Internet
By SAM DILLON
MEXICO CITY --

CINDY FLORES DÁVALOS, a 24-year-old Mexican with neon pink
hair, speaks native Spanish and minimal English. But in her job as the
editor
of a women's "channel" at Elsitio.com, an Internet company here, she
operates
in a linguistic netherworld experts call Cyber-Spanglish.
Sitting at her computer, Ms. Flores keeps her hand on "el maus," which she
uses to "clickear" on the icons on her screen. She loves to "chatear" with
her
clients online, and when someone sends her an intriguing "imail," she may
"forwardear" it to a friend. Her instantaneous e-mail service, AOL's ICQ
(named for the play on "I seek you"), gets this rave review: "I love to
ICQuear" (pronounced eye-see-kay-YAR).

"Our daily routine obliges us to work in English," Ms. Flores says in
Spanish.
"The force of English on the computer screen is overwhelming."

Ms. Flores's linguistic experience is shared by millions of Hispanics who
are
adopting computers and the Internet as the tools and toys of daily life.
From
Mexico to Madrid and from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, Spanish-speakers are
freely importing English technology-related words into their vocabulary.
They
"taipear" rather than "escribir a máquina." When they save a file, they make
"el backup." And when their computer jams, it is time to "resetear."
Pronunciations tend to retain the simplicity of American vowels -- the first
syllable of "brainstormear," for instance, is usually said brayn, rather
than
bry-een.

The hybridization of Spanish and English into Spanglish is not new, of
course.
It has been accelerating for half a century, and has often irritated Latin
nationalists who see the process as cultural infiltration from the United
States, as well as purists who think the mother tongue of Miguel de
Cervantes
Saavedra is quite nice in its classic form, gracias. What is different now,
experts say, is that linguistic gatekeepers in much of the Latin world
appear
to be throwing up their hands in the face of the latest English invasion.

"This was a hard-fought battle from the 60's through the 80's," says José
Carreño Carlón, director of the Department of Communication at the
Iberoamerican University here. "But the nationalists and purists are in
retreat, especially because in the cybernetic world many English words have
no
easy equivalent."

Without a doubt, many computer-related words -- "click," for instance --
resist neat translation. But Ilan Stavans, a Mexican-born professor of
Spanish
at Amherst College who has compiled a forthcoming dictionary of Spanglish
terms, says there is another reason for the quick welcome given to many
English terms now.

"There's a shift in the cultural climate not only in Mexico, but all over
Latin America and Spain," Mr. Stavans says, noting that the left had once
held
intellectual sway there. "Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, everything
that
came from the imperialist gringo had to be rejected. But attitudes have
become
more receptive to U.S. popular culture, especially among the middle classes.
They don't reject, they absorb."

Some 10 percent of the 6,000 hybrid terms Mr. Stavans has collected are
Cyber-Spanglish, underlining the Internet culture's growing influence in the
Hispanic world.

The United States is expected to have 128 million Internet users by 2001.
There are far fewer users in Latin America and Spain, but the number is
rising
rapidly. Some 2.7 million Mexicans will be wired into the Internet by year's
end, says Marc Alexander, an analyst at I.D.C., an American Internet market
research company, and Mexican users are increasing by 50 percent annually.
In
all of Latin America, there are now 13.2 million Internet users, up from 8.4
million last year. Nine million Spaniards are now wired. (English is also
bending the Portuguese of Brazil, South America's largest Internet market.)

The rapid growth has made cyberspace the linguistic crucible that a century
ago was centered on America's southwest border and later in cities like
Miami
and New York, where Latinos intending to drive their trucks to market began
saying "Voy a manejar mi troca a la marketa" instead of the "Voy a manejar
mi
camión al mercado."

In more recent decades, Spanglish was fed by English-language movies, radio
and television broadcasts, and advertising. In 1982, President José Lopez
Portillo tried to turn back the tide by creating the Commission for the
Defense of the Spanish Language, which campaigned to rid Mexico City
billboards of words like hamburgers and pub.

"People rejected that purist campaign," says Tarsicio Herrera Zapién, the
professor of classical letters who is secretary of the prestigious Academia
Mexicana.

"Languages evolve, and we don't need to fight for Spanish if it is alive,"
Dr.
Herrera says.

The Academia Mexicana was set up 125 years ago, its statutes say, to "seek
the
conservation, purity and perfection of the Spanish language" in Mexico. But
in
recent years, Dr. Herrera says. its members have put less focus on purity
and
will likely do nothing to prevent the use of Cyber-Spanglish.

"We can't legislate how people speak," Dr. Herrera says. "We simply catalog
Mexican usages."

The Academia Mexicana is one of 20 organizations in Latin America affiliated
with the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy) in Madrid,
established in 1713 to protect Castilian Spanish from an earlier source of
linguistic pollution: words derived from Quechua, Nahuatl and other
indigenous
tongues were being incorporated into Latin American speech.

To encourage the use of proper Spanish, the Real Academia has established a
Web site at www.rae.es . It offers an interactive service, Español al Día,
to answer questions about the correct use of Spanish.

Mario Tascón, the editor of El País Digital, the Internet version of Spain's
largest newspaper, says the Real Academia has urged Spaniards to resist the
English onslaught by seeking correct Spanish translations of
computer-related
terms, a practice he tries to follow as an editor.

"We don't use el atachment," Mr. Tascon says. "We use archivo adjunto, which
is longer, but at least it's Spanish. We try to use el sitio instead of el
site, but that's a battle." Half the papers in Spain now routinely use el
site, he said.

"Sometimes English words just force their way into general use," he said.
"We
try to get people to use 'charlar,' for instance, but they say 'chatear'
anyway."

nos vemos en el futuro.

ilich.
editor sputnik en-linea.
co-editor sputnik impreso.

http://www.sputnik.com.mx
http://calarts.edu/~ntntnt/
http://egroups.com/group/cinematik


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