Spanglish : the making of a new American language / Ilan Stavans.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-270).

Publisher description: With the release of the census figures in 2000, Latino America was anointed the future driving force of American culture. The emergence of Spanglish as a form of communication is one of the more influential markers of an America gone Latino. Spanish, present on this continent since the fifteenth century, when Iberian explorers sought to colonize territories in what are now Florida, New Mexico, Texas, and California, has become ubiquitous in the last few decades. The nation's unofficial second language, it is highly visible on several 24-hour TV networks and on more than 200 radio stations across the country. But Spanish north of the Rio Grande has not spread in its pure Iberian form. On the contrary, a signature of the brewing "Latin Fever" that has swept the United States since the mid-1980s is the astonishing creative linguistic amalgam of tongues used by people of Hispanic descent, not only in major cities but in rural areas as well -- neither Spanish nor English, but a hybrid, known only as Spanglish. About the Author: IlnÌ Stavans naci Ìen MxÌico, en 1961. Curs Ìestudios de posgrado en la Universidad de Columbia, y ahora tiene la ctÌedra Lewis-Sebring de cultura latina y latinoamericana en Amherst College. Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sibring Professor of Latin American and Latino Cultures at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, The Riddle of Cantinflas, and The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories. He has been a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee and the recipient of the Latino Literature Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. His work has been translated into half a dozen languages. Routledge published The Essential Ilan Stavans in 2000, and his memoir On Borrowed Words will be published in the Fall 2001.