Ilan Stavans: “Every language that is taking shape goes through a phase similar to Spanglish”

Recently, he has published, together with Juan Villoro, El ojo en la nuca (Anagrama, 2014), and he is going to publish two other works: Reclaiming Travel (Duke) and Quixote: The Novel and The World (Norton).

“Every language has been mixed —says Stavans during the lecture he gives at the Faculty of Philology of the UB, invited by the Consulate General of the United States in Barcelona and the Department of Spanish of the University of Barcelona (UB)—: every language that is taking shape goes through a phase similar to Spanglish. I really love studying figures like Nebrija and observe how they answered to Latin, to vulgar Latin, to classical Latin —the languages spoken on that period— and how all that allow us understanding the process by which Spanish became the national language”. Stavans tells an anecdote happened ten years ago which marked a turning point in his career: “I was here, in Barcelona; I was participating in a radio programme with two other people whose names I do not want to remember, when one of them, a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), a very intelligent person (I am not being ironic), said me that Spanglish should not be taken into account until it would create a work as important as The Quixote because —he said— only a language able to produce such a complex novel deserves attention. I answered him that he was true, that it would not surprise me if in some years Spanglish would produce such a great work that it would be translated into Spanish to be understood in Madrid, Bogotá, etc. And I compared Spanglish with Yiddish”.

Stavans caught the attention of the audience during the lecture he pronounced last March in front of the group of students of Antonio Torres, lecturer of Spanish at the UB and expert on Spanglish. He explains: “Yiddish was the language of Jewish people from Eastern Europe. It appeared in the 13th century in the Rhine. It was the language spoken by women, children and illiterate. The language of cooking. A mix of Hebrew and German. From 13th to 19th centuries, rabbis and Talmudic Jews considered it a secondary language. No one would have discussed about the Bible or the Talmud in Yiddish; it was a language of inferior quality! Later, in the mid- 19th century, a group of writers who wanted to be novelists like German, England and French intellectuals realized that, if they wanted to write for a wide public, they should write in Yiddish and not in Hebrew because if they wrote in Hebrew only a small group of people will read their work, but if they wrote in Yiddish many people would read them. And they translated their works from Hebrew into Yiddish. In 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish writer, won the Nobel Prize”.

After his explanation, Stavans resumes the anecdote about the member of the RAE: “I told him that I considered absolutely possible to have a Nobel Prize in Spanglish, maybe in fifty yearsʼ time (today, languages, like childrenʼs sexuality, go much faster). I also said him that I would like to imagine how The Quixote would be in Spanglish. When I got out of the radio, I went to the hotel and I had already received a call from the newspaper La Vanguardia, so I began to translate its first chapter. The day after the publication of the first chapter in La Vanguardia, I received hundreds and hundreds of messages by people from all over the world who had already read it. Half of them affirmed I was an idiot. How could I consider myself a master, a lecturer and a teacher if I devoted myself to the study of Spanglish? It was an unprecedented controversy in the States. No one is offended if Shakespeare is translated into African American Vernacular English. On the contrary, they love the adaptation of Romeo and Juliette. Itʼs great!”.

After his lecture, he answers eagerly when we tell him that Professor Joan Solà, one of the most prestigious linguists in our country, stated that a language can move from downstairs, from general people using it in the street, to upstairs, to academics, but not on the contrary. “Of course! Absolutely! The strength of Spanglish is, was and will be in the street. At universities, we must go out to the street and try to understand what is taking place there. The street will always be one step ahead. Languages are owned by general people, not academics. No matter how much we try to standardize, conceptualize, catalogue a language, people will always do whatever they want with the language, and we must follow its popular development. I absolutely agree Professor Solà”.

“Here, you —he affirms making reference to Barcelona— live two different realities. Every bilingual person is, in fact, two individuals, or even more than two. People live in two different universes. People in Madrid will never understand it. For them, bilingualism has to do with tourism, but for you it is identity. For us, the Latino, is exactly that. For that very reason I always feel at home in Barcelona, in Catalonia. Because here people lives several realities and know that one language can oppress the other, and that a language can comes from downstairs and reform everything. You know it perfectly. And you also mix languages, donʼt you? For better or for worse”.

An extract of his lecture is offered below:

“We are 60 million Latin people in the United States: the biggest minority in the country. There are more Latin people in the USA than Canadian people in Canada, or Spanish people in Spain. We are the fourth largest population in the Hispanic world”.

“In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe stated that an important part of Mexico would become part of the United States, and citizens inhabiting in that region were automatically integrated in the country. Moreover, a large amount of immigrants continue coming to the States for economic, political and social reasons. Despite September 11, the patriot act and George W. Bush decision to control borders, migration flows have not stopped in the States. We are the fastest growing population, with the highest birth rate. There are more Latin people aged between 15 and 25 than in any other ethnic group in the States, including Caucasian population. Latin population increases due to continuous migratory movements as people keep their relationships with Latin America”.

In media, politics, advertising and show business

“American presidential election campaigns invest more money in Latin channels like Univisión and Telemundo than in ABC, CBS and NBC (English-speaking ones). Instead of getting smaller or disappearing, Spanish-speaking radio stations have gained power. There are more radio stations in Spanish in California than in all Central America!” One of them stopped Spanish emissions in 2007 and began to emit in Spanglish. There is a soap, Una maid en Manhattan, based on a Jennifer López starred film, which is broadcast in Spanglish, with Spanish or English subtitles. Some plays have also been produced in Spanish during the last years: in Broadway, Romeo and Juliette has showed two families, one speaks English and the other speaks Spanish, so lovers speak Spanglish.

“Some companies and corporations used Spanglish in ads, not only in TV and radio but also in magazines, newspapers and Internet. For instance, a TV ad for a hybrid Toyota car. A Latin dad drives the car. His son is in the back of the car. Day says to his son: “Sabes? This is a new car. Y usa tanto gasolina como electricity”. Then the son asks him: “Oh, really? Es como el carro de mamá?” And dad answers: “Well, not quiet; el carro de mamá nada más utiliza gasolina”. And finally, the child tells to his father: “So, is exactly as same thing que tú haces y yo cuando cambiamos el idioma?” The end: “Toyota Hybrids”.

“I do not believe that Spanglish is exclusively linked to verbal manifestation. It is the outbreak of a new civilization, a new miscegenation that is taking place in the United States. But I do not think that Spanglish has achieved standardization. In the last ten years, we have experienced a transition from oral to written language. We are writing in Spanglish, we are creating dictionaries, novels, poems, theatre plays, etc. Orthography as well as syntax are becoming stable”.

“Spanglish has gone through a process similar to jazz, a musical expression that appeared at the end of the 19th century among Afro American population who did not have access to academies, education, money and musical instruments, and began to improvise in the street with buckets, stones, sticks, etc. as a way to create music. Today, jazz is listened in Carneggie Hall and in the most prestigious concert halls all over the world. The same happened with graffiti. It began as an urban anti-aesthetic movement, an aesthetic of minority groups who scribble on metro trains, but today we can enjoy graffiti exhibitions at the MOMA.

“Minorities have always been provoking the centre of culture and, at a certain moment, the centre adopts minoritiesʼ art so they have to invent something new. Spanglish is one of these phenomena; it began to be spoken by working class Latin people in the 1950s, middle-class in the 1960s, and upper class… This transition from low class to high class can be clearly observed when Toyota uses Spanglish to sell a car or the presidential candidate Jeb Bush uses it to catch the attention of Latin voters.

“Fifteen years ago, when we talked about Spanglish, the RAE thought —and I think it stills considers it— that it did not deserves any attention. “Spanglish does not exist”, repeated over and over again the then president of the former institution. In Latin America and the United Stes, we split our sides laughing! Finally, three or four years ago, the RAE decided to include the definition of Spanglish in the dictionary. Their definition is dreadful, inexcusable: it describes Spanglish as a deformation, not as something related to renewal or coexistence. Anyway, those who have been denying and ignoring it are now realizing that it deserves a definition and recognition”.