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Maybe arent able to talk Spanish correctly, but not being able to talk English? Come on now.
Spanglish isn't English any more than it's Spanish. Inability to speak English I believe is the reason for the over 50% drop out rates. School begins to get quite difficult by the 7th or 8th grade when you cannot read and write in English and the work is more difficult. They may of course know some phrases and words in English but cannot read instructions in English or a book, cannot write a paragraph and do not do well in tests. They get discouraged. I believe English language ability (lack of it) is a big factor in the drop out rates.
Maybe arent able to talk Spanish correctly, but not being able to talk English? Come on now.
Agreed AMC I consider myself bilingual and work as so.
My Spanish is of course not perfect, mostly because I only spent 9 years of my life in Peru before coming to America [legally that is!]. But I do try my hardest to speak it correctly. Honestly I write, read, and speak English better than I do Spanish. I had to study to pass my AP Spanish test. Back to the mexican thing though AMC In my Spanish 3class in HS, the scores went like this:
Native speakers not from Mexico or El Salvador: top 10% averaging 95%
Non native speakers but from another country [having learned english as a second language] : around 20% of the class with around a 85% in the class.
Mexican and El Salvadorian native speakers: the rest with many failing the class.
The problem is that most immigrants are not even bilingual, they are not even monolingual =p
Spanglish isn't English any more than it's Spanish. Inability to speak English I believe is the reason for the over 50% drop out rates. School begins to get quite difficult by the 7th or 8th grade when you cannot read and write in English and the work is more difficult. They may of course know some phrases and words in English but cannot read instructions in English or a book, cannot write a paragraph and do not do well in tests. They get discouraged. I believe English language ability (lack of it) is a big factor in the drop out rates.
Okay, but what I had a problem with is your claim that there are people who only speak Spanglish. Spanglish is mostly slang. But in the border area, some English words are borrowed.
Maybe arent able to talk Spanish correctly, but not being able to talk English? Come on now.
Anybody who knows basic spanish are going to know how to say trabajando and lapiz. If they say it like that, its just spanglish, by choice or habit. Like saying "ain't" or "gonna" in English.
Troka is more likely, but thats just slang coming from the connection of the border area of Mexico and the US.
Assumptions.
I also don't believe it has anything to do with the border. You don't see American kids speaking a mix of two languages. The kids whose families speak English, speak English as well as kids anywhere do -- and that includes the hispanics kids whose families speak English.
I live on the border and it's very very rare to meet someone who is truly bilingual. In most cases one language is dominant but too often it's not even that but two languages intefering with true language acquisition. Many people who grew up here cannot carry on a conversation completely in one language. They use the verbs and partial grammar of one language but the nouns of another. Or limitations on vocabulary have them switching between the two.
I know Spanglish speakers who traveled to Mexico and had a very difficult time -- more difficult than an English speaker learning Spanish. For example -- when someone is trying to describe a station wagon as "vagoncita", they think they know the Spanish word but of course no one knows what they're trying to say. It's better to not know the word and learn "camioneta" is the word to use. Como se llama esa cosa works better than a meaningless word.
Okay, but what I had a problem with is your claim that there are people who only speak Spanglish. Spanglish is mostly slang. But in the border area, some English words are borrowed.
Actually, a lot like American English.
Where I live there are people who speak only Spanglish. They really cannot speak in one language only. They mostly converse with others who speak the same way and have difficulty when trying to speak to someone who speaks only Spanish or only English. They cannot avoid using words from the two languages in the same sentences. They can usually make themselves understood -- but that's not language fluency.
I have met some East Indians and Filipinos who were not even born in the U.S yet their grasp of the English language is alot better than that of many American born Hispanics from the bairros.
I have met some East Indians and Filipinos who were not even born in the U.S yet their grasp of the English language is alot better than that of many American born Hispanics from the bairros.
I have noticed that as well. Although in all fairness both nations English is indeed an official language.
It is weird looking at websites for businesses in the Philippines in which the main language is English with Tagalog being the secondary tongue. Never Spanish though: apparently; despite the very strong (Mexican) Hispanic roots of that nation--------after we (the USA) took over in 1898, Spanish died out very quickly because the Philippines have been independent since 1946. Read that we had dominion there for less than 50 years with Japan controlling it from 1942-45.
I have met some East Indians and Filipinos who were not even born in the U.S yet their grasp of the English language is alot better than that of many American born Hispanics from the bairros.
Even sometimes better than the grasp of English by American born non-hispanics.
Some of those are the immigrants that will give Americans a run for the money because they value education and literacy and they value the English language.
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Perhaps because the US is one of the VERY FEW countries in the world that is mono-lingual - perhaps because Spanish is one of the top five languages spoken on the planet - perhaps because there are more LEGALS and illegals in the US. And lastly, perhaps because their Spanish grammar is certainly more enhanced than yours.
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