On Global English and the American Language
"¡JUNTOS PODEMOS!"
This handout is a collection of quotes, notes, and observations relevant to our reading of James Baldwin, Ilan Stavans, Bharati Mukherjee, and Richard Rodriguez.
Encapsulated development of English (just the broad strokes):
Old English (Germanic) --> Latin incorp. from Roman missionaries --> Norman Invasion (1066)/English Frenchified --> Middle English (5 major dialects)/Chaucer --> Early Modern English (Shakespeare) --> Conquest of the New World, incorporation of indigenous languages and Spanish (e.g. vaquero becomes buckaroo, barbacoa becomes barbecue) --> Continuing immigration & diaspora make for MexiStani, Frángles, Blaxicans, Cubonics, the Blackcent, etc.
ANECDOTES: bulshitería (Guatemalan friends), fahita (Alma Pita restaurant), puro party (Texas)
“The first American colonists had perforce to invent Americanisms if only to describe the unfamiliar landscape and weather, flora and fauna confronting them. … But this occasional tolerance for things American was never extended to the American language. Most of the English books of travel mentioned Americanisms only to revile them … The climax came in 1863, when the Very Rev. Henry Alford, D.D. dean of Canterbury, printed his ‘Plea for the Queen’s English.’ He said: ‘Look at the process of deterioration which our Queen’s English has undergone at the hands of the Americans.’” (Mencken 3 and 27)
antibaby: “birth control pill” (Stavans 69)
bananaspli: “banana split” (Stavans 74)
cat: “Dude, hipster, a righteous groover” (Décharné 26)
el cheapo: “…cheap”
hip-hop: “…a subculture esp. of inner-city youths whose amusements include rap music, graffiti, and break dancing…”
hipiteca: “Aztec hippy” (Stavans 143)
loco: “mentally disordered: CRAZY, FRENZIED”
“On and on, Latinos’ marketing popularity is uncritically treated as a sign of their ‘coming of age’ in U.S. society or else, equally uncritically, condemned as a sign of their commodification; but seldom have studies looked at marketing as constitutive of U.S. Latinidad. … In these constructions the Spanish language is built as the paramount basis of U.S. Latinidad.” (Dávila 3-4)
“There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society if they dream in English.” (Huntington 45)
Works Cited
Dávila, Arlene. Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: UC Press, 2001.
Décharné, Max. Straight From the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang. NY: Broadway Books, 2000.
“El cheapo.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
“Hip-hop.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
Huntington, Samuel. “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy March/April 2004: 30-45.
“Loco.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
Mencken, H.L. The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States. 4th ed. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.
Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
Posted by Benjamin at October 3, 2006 11:36 AM
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