Pride in one’s own culture and language is understandable and admirable, provided it is kept in proper perspective. Unfortunately, lack of knowledge about the relationship between languages or between language and culture sometimes results in misunderstanding and gross misinterpretations.
Mexicans sometimes have the mistaken impression that the Spanish language is in imminent danger of losing its distinctive character by the invasion of English. Nothing could be further from the truth. A language that does not incorporate new words and forms ceases to develop as a viable means of communication.
English is the world’s most important language (Greenbaum et al. A Grammar of Contemporary English). This has nothing to do with national pride or ethnocentric notions of superiority. English is in fact the language most widely used and most in demand worldwide. Some Mexicans lament the intrusion of English words into Spanish. But English is dominant precisely because no such attempt is made to set artificial limits on its growth and dissemination. The French and Spanish Language Academies attempt to keep their language free from foreign influence. It doesn’t work.
Living languages change constantly. Those who would argue that Spanish is being corrupted by the influence of English fall into the same error as feminists who confuse grammatical gender with sexual gender or, worse still, sexual bias. Nothing of the sort. Historical linguistics, the scientific study of language change, tells a much different story.
The lexical level of language deals with word formation and vocabulary, as distinct from grammatical forms and meaning. English has a large common stock of words ranging from the colloquial to the literary. This in turn is augmented by different strands of language: scientific, foreign, dialectal, slang, and technical. So too for Spanish. In addition, English and Spanish both belong to the Indo-European family of languages and therefore share certain common words. Many scientific and medical terms in English and Spanish are derived directly from Greek and Latin roots. An English word, such as hydrocephalus (water on the brain) - hidrocephalia in Spanish - does not invade Spanish; both are derived from the Greek words meaning water and head (unfortunately, for technical reasons, the original Greek forms cannot be given here).
The charge that Spanish is being corrupted by English arises from a misunderstanding of the way in which languages change through time. There are three main causes: phonological changes, grammatical changes, and semantic changes. First, older forms (sounds) are replaced by more recent ones, although there is little evidence that the interaction of two languages brings about any profound changes in pronunciation. Secondly, grammar changes in two ways: morphological (changes in shape and form) and syntactic (changes in structure or the way a sentence is constructed). Thirdly, words may take on new meanings. House may refer to a hut, a home, or a cottage. By extension it may also mean audience, senate, or a dormitory.
Languages develop by borrowing from one another. For dialect borrowing to take place the languages must be different enough from each other but not entirely mutually unintelligible. The speakers must also understand the general context of the word they borrow, or think they do. And there must be some motive for the borrowing. The speakers of one language may admire or even envy the speakers of the language from which they borrow. New experiences, products, or concepts may require new terms. English and Spanish share just such a common linguistic core.
Language change is inevitable. Mexican Spanish is the rich language it is because it has taken in vast amounts of Nahuatl and other borrowed words, which have become an integral part of the language today. Let’s not confuse national pride and inter-cultural conflict with the facts of language.
