The Wanderer: A distinguished speaker…of Spanglish - Ilan Stavans, a prolific author and professor at Amherst College

Yo quiero Taco Bell. It takes quite a bit of skill to provoke deep thinking about what may have been one of the most inanely addictive advertising campaigns of all time.

But for Ilan Stavans, a prolific author and professor at Amherst College, Spanglish — the mix of English and Spanish used by immigrant communities and increasingly in popular culture — is a source of fascination. Spanglish, Stavans thinks, is a “cultural phenomenon.”

“With Latinos, there is something unique taking place,” Stavans told us this week as a visiting distinguished speaker to the Stanford center in Santiago. “Instead of losing [the immigrant language], it is becoming stronger.” The retention of Spanish in the U.S., and the Spanglish that is resulting, is so important, Stavans said, that Toyota is using it to sell cars. In a recent ad for hybrids, a bi-lingual father alternates between talking to his son in English and Spanish as he explains how the car works, concluding that hybrids, both of cars and language, are “for the future.””*

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Did You Know? To those who worry that Spanglish will corrupt English or Spanish, Stavans says: “Language exists in a state of perennial corruption. Spanglish doesnt pollute English or Spanish more than the languages of adolescents, sports, advertising, etc. -- or, for that matter, any other foreign language.

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