Spanglish

Trailer.


Stepping across the cultural divide.



Don't let me be misunderstood... We have just one world but we live in different ones... My homeland is my language, said a great Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who, by the way, also wrote in English. As Hemingway and John Donne said, no one is an island. The others are not Hell, the other is a part of me. Beeing a Global language doesn't mean beeing the only language, or beeing an isolated language; on the contrary, it means the possibility of enrichment, it means permeability and interchange. When we learn English, we are not supposed to talk as native speakers, because we are not native speakers; having an accent is all right if our English is understandable and clear; we mustn't try to be perfect, but correct; when speaking another language, we need not stop beeing ourselves; authenticity is a positive value. No one is less than anyone else. Spanglish can be understood as an interlanguage between Spanish and English. Where are we? The times they are a changing, the river flows, and we have to row, that's for sure. No one's already there.


Should English be declared the official language of Government Business in the United States?


Debate on the officiality of English in the USA.


Another debate on the same subject.