tb05.doc (B5) // H. Ueda // 2002-04-20

Journey With Language – Variations in Spanish (5)USA●Destination - USA
The United States is another Spanish-speaking country. According to its
1990 census, the Spanish-speaking population is 13 million in the Southwest;
California (California), New Mexico (Nuevo México), Texas (Texas), Colorado(Colorado) and Arizona (Arizona). This vast area of land used to belong to Mexico
until 1848, and there are still many people migrating from Mexico today. There arealso as many as 1.8 million immigrants from Puerto Rico etc. in the state of New
York (Nueva York), followed by 1.45 million Cubans in Florida (Florida) and 730
thousand Spanish-speakers in Illinois (Illinois).

【Picture 1: In Miami】
The graph (U.S. Census Bureau) below shows states with large
Spanish-speaking populations.
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/1

30,000,000
25,000,000
20,000,000
15,000,000
10,000,000
5,000,0000

Californ New
NewNew
Texas Florida Illinois
ArizonaiaYorkJersey
MexicoSpanish-speaking population 5,478,71 1,848,82 3,443,10 1,447,74 728,380 621,416 478,234 388,186
Others21,904,8 14,894,2 12,162,7 10,647,5 9,857,45 6,579,28 2,896,57 1,001,86【Graphic 1: States with large Spanish-speaking populations】
The total number of Spanish-speakers in the United States has reachedapproximately 26 million, occupying 10% of the population (El País, June 3, 1998).
Some say Spanish will become another official language in the United States, andSpanish will be as important a language as English in order to understand thecountry.
Spanish is unquestionably the most popular foreign language studied inhigh schools and universities in the United States. There are 3.5 million high schoolstudents (65%) and 600 thousand university students (62%) studying Spanish under
40 thousand teachers (El País, June 18, 1996).
Carmen Silva-Corvalán, a leading researcher of Spanish language atUniversity of Southern California has reported that there is a frequent language
switching of Spanish and English among the conversation of Spanish speakers in theUnited States ("El Español actual en Estados Unidos", en C. Hernández Alonso (ed.)
Historia y presente del español de América, Junta de Castilla y León, 1992). Hereare some examples:
Me dijeron que podía go ahead, y so pues me fui. Y como cuarta milla alguien
estaba coming down at me. Ｎadie lo paró y me, me machucó de frente.
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I was told that I could “go ahead”, so I did. And after about a quarter mile,
someone is “coming down at me”. No one stopped me, so we ran into each other.
Y la señora que my grandmother worked for tenía twenty-seven rooms, you know,
and we had our own house - in the back, where we lived at, y - mi abuelito nopagaba renta.
The woman “my grandmother worked for” had “twenty-seven rooms, you know,
and we had our own house – in the back, where we lived at”, and – my aunt didn’t
pay the rent.
This type of language switching (code-switching) is different from English
loanwords (extranjerismos) taken into Japanese in scale and characteristics. It iscalled Spanglish (Spanglish), and is not considered Spanish nor English.
Spanish + English = Spanglish
There are numerous Web sites written in Spanglish on the Internet, andmany feature lively discussions and cultural activities.

3【Graphic 2: Website in Spanglish】
http://www.el-castellano.com/spanglis.html
On the right hand side of this screen, there is a cartoon of a computer withthe comment “¿DELETEAR? (Delete?)”. “Deletear” is a Spanglish expression
coming from “delete” in English, and “borrar” would be the word in standard
Spanish.
●Pursuit of Language --Power of Spanish
According to research conducted in 1999 (Jaime Otero, 1999, "Demografíade la lengua española", en Español en el Mundo, Instituto Cervantes,
http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/anuario_99/oteró),

thetotal

numberof

Spanish-speaking population in Spanish-speaking countries is 333 million. The
following chart is a list of countries with more than 10 million Spanish speakers.
【Chart: Spanish-speaking Population (Top 9)】
Country

Spanish-speaking

Total Population％

population
México92,890,000

94,275,000

98.5

España38,969,000

39,323,000

99.1

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Colombia

35,850,000

36,200,000

99.0

Argentina

35,300,000

35,409,000

99.7

Venezuela

22,060,000

22,777,000

96.9

Perú

19,440,000

24,371,000

79.8

Chile

13,080,000

14,583,000

89.7Cuba

11,190,000

11,190,000

100.0

Ecuador

11,100,000

11,937,000

93.0

As you can see, the United States (26 million Spanish-speakers) is a worldlevel 5 Spanish-speaking country after Mexico, Spain, Columbia and Argentina. If
the United States were included, the Spanish-speaking population in the world
would be as many as 360 million.
Population-wise, Spanish is indeed an extremely important language, andis it also true geographically? The total area of Spanish-speaking lands accounts for
9% of all land area in the world, almost 12 million square kilometers. The following
pie graph shows the ratio.

Otros
26%

Inglés
30%

Chino
7%

Francés
15%

Español
9%
Ruso
13%

【Graphic 3: Language and Area】
Adding the United States to the above figure, more than 10% of all land on
Earth would be Spanish-speaking.

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●Language Variations --“Computer”“Internet” is Internet, and “multimedia” is multimedia in any Spanishspeaking region, but there is a clear difference between Spain and Latin America in
the preference for the word “computer”. Ordenador (Or in map) is generally used in
Spain, and computadora (Ca) is common in Latin America, computador (Cr) is
also found in Columbia, Venezuela and Chile. This reflects the French (ordinateur)
influence in Spain, and English (computer) influence in Latin America coming fromthe United States.

【Map: “Computer”】*Assignment -5a
Read the following Web page, and explain the transition of Spanish-speaking
population in the United States between 1990 and 2000.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf
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*Assignment -5b
Read the following examples of “Spanglish”, and discuss what you have noticed.
tiquete [boleto, billete] (13), chou [espectáculo] (13), yarda [patio, solar] (12),troca [camioneta] (12), soda [refresco] (12), seil [venta] (12), raid [aventón](12), cash [efectivo] (12), cherri [cereza] (12), cora [cuarto, 25 centavos] (12),bil [cobro] (12), yonque [desgüesadero] (11), sinc [fregadero] (11), ponchar[perforar] (11), overtime [tiempo extra] (11), movis [películas] (11), lonche[comida] (11), yins [pantalones de dril] (11), fríser [congelador] (11), e-mail[correo electrónico] (11), chequear [examinar] (11), babysit [cuidar niños](11), tax [impuesto] (10), chopin [compras] (10), parti [fiesta] (10), liquear[gotear] (10), daime [diez centavos] (10), cliquear [oprimir] (10), breik[descanso] (10), appointment [cita] (10), guachar [observar, mirar] (9),puchar [empujar] (9), parquear [estacionar] (9), marqueta [mercado] (9),librería [biblioteca] (9), joni [querida] (9), dil [trato] (9), beibi [bebé] (9),bloque [cuadra] (9), sain [letrero] (8), cuitear [dejar] (8), lóquer [casillero](8), carpeta [alfombra] (8), mopear [trapear] (7), taipear [escribir a máquina](6), trainear [entrenar] (6), parqueadero [estacionamiento] (6), fild [campo](6), breca [freno] (6), trai [bandeja] (5), sainear [firmar] (5), pompear[bombear] (5), ganga [pandilla] (5), espelear [deletrear] (4), esquipear [faltara clase] (4), dar para atrás [regresar, devolver] (4), bompe [tope] (3), brif[modelo de trabajo] (3), sortear [clasificar] (2), mailear [enviar correo] (2),cuquetear [cocinar] (2), guachatería [lavandería] (1), vacunar [aspirar] (1),soquetines [calcetines] (1), startear [prender] (1), rufo [techo] (1), grocería[alimentos] (1), gasolín [gasolina] (1), ben [arcón] (1), glaso [vaso] (0).
＊ 13 university students in Los Angeles were given the above list of Spanglish
vocabulary. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of students whoused the word. (e.g. (10): 10 out of 13 students used the word.)*Assignment -5c7

Study regional variations of the word “computer” in Spanish.
Varilex: http://gamp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ueda/varilex/

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