When an English Rule Deserves to be Broken – Part I

Unlike Spanish, which has the Royal Spanish Academy that – together with the other twenty-one national language academies in Spanish-speaking nations – ensures a common standard for Spanish, English has no such body. Instead, there are a number of rule books or “style guides”, each with its own set of rules and guidelines. The Oxford Manual of Style is one of the most popular for British English, as are style guides from The Economist, The Telegraph and The Guardian. For American English, The Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style are commonly used for most texts, while the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing is the standard for academic publications, especially in the humanities.

English grammar rulesThis lack of standardization has led to conflicting rules – some of which have no historical linguistic basis – and the perpetuation of what can only be called “grammar myths”, with the concomitant confusion about what “correct” English actually is.

Given this reality, what’s a writer to do?

For the first of this two-part blog post, we’ll examine three of the more common “commandments” that have no historical linguistic basis.

1. Never start a sentence with a conjunction such as “and” or “but”.

Inculcated in school children from the time they first pick up a pencil, this rule is useful for youngsters learning to organize their thoughts on a page, but has been repeatedly “broken” by some of the finest writers in the English language, including Shakespeare:

“And your large speeches may your deeds approve
That good effects may spring from words of love.”

King Lear

2. Never end a sentence with a dangling preposition.

Latin does not place prepositions at the end of sentences and, because Latin was considered at one time to be the “perfect” language and thus the model to be emulated, English grammarians applied this rule to English. Though first articulated by 17th-century English poet John Dryden, it became popularized in Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar published in 1762.

Unfortunately, he seemed to be unable to follow his own rule, writing in the book, “This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to.”

3. Do not split an infinitive.

Once again, Latin grammar rears its ugly head. Since Latin infinitives comprise a single word, they cannot be split, unlike English, whose infinitives comprise two words: “to + verb” (or the bare infinitive, the form used with modal auxiliary verbs) and, once again, prescriptivist grammarians applied the Latin rule to English, despite there being no logical reason for English infinitives to not be split. Henry Alford, the Dean of Canterbury popularized this notion in his 1864 book The Queen’s English. Perhaps one of the most widely known examples of a split infinitive can be found in the opening sequence to the famous Star Trek series:

“…to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

If you’re looking for a more traditional example, Robert Burns wrote in The North Briton, published in 1766:

“Is this the cue given him in his instructions, to boldly assert, that Englishmen are all born to be slaves to a few persons.”

Unfortunately, there are still a few diehards who insist on applying this senseless rule, including United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who unilaterally changed “will faithfully execute” to “will execute faithfully” when swearing in Barack Obama for his second term as president, causing Obama to mix up his words. This inevitably led to charges that his presidency was not legal because he had not uttered the Oath as written, and thus to the two repeating the ceremony – this time, word for word, the following day in the White House.

It is important to remember that many things taught as “rules” are nothing more than stylistic choices, usage conventions or, quite simply, preferences.

Our next post will debunk some more long-standing grammar myths.

Spanglish: A foot in each…language

Spanglish

What happens when one language spoken by millions meets up with another language spoken by millions?

In the case of Spanish and English, the answer is “Spanglish.”

Spanglish – a term invented in the middle of the last century by Puerto Rican linguist Salvador Tió, (who called it “Espanglish”) – describes both the mixture of Spanish with a heavy usage of English words, or of English with a heavy usage of Spanish words (Tió originally called this latter “Inglañol”).

Spanglish is a geographical or migration-linked phenomenon; in the US, the vast majority of speakers are located in areas bordering a Spanish-speaking country, such as southern California, Texas and Arizona, or in areas with a high percentage of Spanish-speaking immigrants, such as New York City and Miami. The phenomenon can also be found outside the US due to political and/or historical reasons – such as the US government’s policy of educating in English in Puerto Rico until the mid 1940s, and the US control of the Panama Canal Zone until 1999. On the other side of the world, Andalusian Spanish has mixed with British English to form “Llanito”, the “Spanglish” of the British colony of Gibraltar.

Because of the diversity of the Spanish and English variants that end up forming Spanglish in different locations, Spanglish itself lacks uniformity in the ways it varies from standard Spanish. So, it is correct to say that there are different Spanglishes, or variants of Spanglish, and some of them even have their own names: Tex-Mex (Chicano), Cubonics (spoken in Florida and derived from Cuban Spanish), Nuyorican (spoken in New York and derived from Puerto Rican Spanish) and the previously mentioned Llanito.

Despite these differences, the following semantic, phonological and morphological phenomenon can be found in all versions.

Code-switching

Probably the most obvious phenomenon of all, code-switching (alternating between two or more languages in a single conversation in a way that is consistent with each language’s syntax and phonology) in Spanglish gives us sentences like:

No, I can’t go to the fiesta porque mañana tengo que trabajar.
Te llamaré pa´tras.
Está p’arriba de ti.
Va a correr para presidente.
¿Cuando puedes deliberar las groserías?
Voy a vacunar la carpeta.

The first is an example of “intersentential” code-switching. Only the language changes; otherwise, the sentence is grammatically and semantically correct.
The second, third and fourth are examples of a “calque”, a literal translation that disregards context.
The fifth and sixth are examples of “semantic extension”, where speakers extend an original meaning or assign a new meaning to a word in their own language due to its similarity to a word in the other language. This is often the result of false cognates.

Loan Words

Loans words occur as new items or ideas arise for which the original language does not have a specific term, or when the original language of the term has more linguistic prestige than the borrowing language. The original word is often adapted to fit the second language’s phonetic or morphological rules. Examples are rife; below are a few.

rufo – roof
troca – truck
likear – to like (Facebook)
likear – to leak
dale play – turn on (video, music, etc.)
lonche – lunch
mopear – to mop
dropear – to drop
marqueta – market
chores – shorts

Finally, Spanglish can be fun. Fromlostiano is a kind of artificial play on words that only Spanish/English bilinguals can enjoy. It consists of translating Spanish idioms literally into English resulting in an expression that is grammatically correct but entirely nonsensical.

Here are a few that we hope will make you smile. We encourage you to play around and come up with your own.

1. No es moco de pavo – It’s not turkey snot!
2. Estar al loro – To be at the parrot.
3. Estar a dos velas – To be at two candles.
4. Manda huevos – Send eggs.
5. Estoy sin blanca – I’m without white.

Translation Events – April 2015

Translation events. April 2015

9

Localization QA for Responsive Design, Globalization and Localization Association, webinar

10-11

New Spaces of Translation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Université Denis Diderot, Champaign, Illinois, USA

11

 Conferência regional da ProZ.com em Porto, Portugal

13-15

LocWorld Shanghai, Localization World, Ltd., Shanghai, China

16-18

Elia Networking Days Lyon, Elia (European Language Industry Association), Lyon, France

16

The Future of Global Online Marketing: Localization Workflow and Optimization, The International Multilingual User Group (IMUG), Mountain View, California, USA

18

Seminario regional de ProZ.com en Córdoba, Argentina.
“Recursos informáticos para traductores”

21

Stories are the Fabric of Our Lives, The Content Wrangler, online

23-25

Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI). ITI Conference 2015.
Newcastle-Gateshead, UK

23-24

10th EUATC International Conference, European Union of Associations of Translation Companies, Lisbon, Portugal

23-26

2015 International Medical Interpreters Conference, International Medical Interpreters Association, Rockville, Maryland USA

24-26

International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA). 18th Annual International Congress. United We Are Stronger! Washington, DC, USA

25-26

ATA Spanish Language Division (SPD). Delaware Valley Translators Association (DVTA). English<>Spanish Translators & Interpreters Conference. Philadelphia, PA, USA

Sixth Language Creation Conference, CONLANG, Horsham, UK

26

Assn of Translators & Interpreters in the San Diego Area (ATISDA).
English <> Spanish Criminal Procedure Law Terminology Latin-American Reforms Workshop. San Diego, CA, USA

28-30

Thailand Translation & Interpretation Conference, Association of Asian Translation Industry, Bangkok, Thailand

30-May 3

NeMLA 2015, Northeast Modern Language Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada