By Mari D. González

Bilingual youth who construct their vocabulary between what they learn at home in Spanish and what they learn at school or work in English are more comfortable with a casual language among their peers that mixes phrases and words of these two languages, commonly known as Spanglish. Spanglish, however, is not simply picking a word or two from Spanish and mixing them up with English as non-Spanglish speaking marketers would like to think and wrongly try it on their advertisement campaigns.

Spanglish is a delicate form of incorporating words to one’s vocabulary in the language they were learned first. In general, words associated with family, emotions, and close relationships might be in Spanish. Words learned first at school might be in English. Spanglish, then solidifies when a group of people shares the same set of words in both languages without the need to translate them into a second language.

According to my research study on language preferences in digital media among second-generation, Latinos/Hispanics, the less acculturated ones side with Spanglish-themed Netflix series and music such as the Bad Bunny phenomenon because traditional media does not resonate with who they are collectively.

*The image is by www.ushispanicministry.com