Spanglish refers to the blend (at different degrees) of Spanish and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live. The Hispanic population of the United States and the British population in Argentina use varieties of Spanglish. Sometimes the pidgin spoken in Spanish holiday resorts which are exposed to both Spanish and English is called Spanglish. The similar code switching used in Gibraltar is called Llanito. Spanglish may also be known by a regional name. Spanglish does not have one unified dialect and therefore lacks uniformity; Spanglish spoken in New York, Miami, Texas, and California can be different. In Texas and California a large Mexican population can be found and within that population are Chicanos or second-generation Mexican-Americans. Some of the Spanglish words used by Chicanos could be incomprehensible to Hispanics from Florida.

Spanglish is not a pidgin language. It is totally informal; there are no set hard-and-fast rules. There are two phenomena of Spanglish, borrowing and code-switching. English borrowed words will usually be adapted to Spanish phonology. Code-Switching and Code-Mixing on the other hand is commonly used by bilinguals. Code-switching means that a person will begin a sentence in one language and at a certain point this one will begin speaking in another language. This switch will occur at the beginning of a sentence or a new topic. In code-mixture this change in language will occur at any given time with no regard to the beginning of a sentence or topic.

There is no clear demarcation between Spanglish and simple "bad" Spanish or English. "Parquear" for "to park" is clear deliberate Spanglish; "actualmente" for "actually" rather than "at present" is closer to erroneous use of a false friend, and ambiguous as it has a clear, but different, meaning in true Spanish. However, implications present themselves. Researchers^{[citation needed]} differentiate: those who mostly speak Spanish are labeled limited English proficient, and those that can switch codes freely are considered bilingual. Some parents of native Spanish speaking children may wish their children to be taught in pure Spanish. Some^{[citation needed]} say bilingual education is preferable, but others^{[citation needed]} say the best way is total immersion. The longer students remain in a bilingual program, the greater their chances are of staying there^{[citation needed]}.

Spanglish and Linguistic Relativity[link]

In Mexico and the southwestern U.S., Spanglish speakers are called Pochos (said of Mexicans that adopt customs or manners of the people of the United States of America, according to the dictionary of the Spanish language of the Real Academia Española).^[1] English-influenced Spanish is called mocho, "mutilated", "amputated".

The use of Spanglish has evolved over time. It has emerged as a way of conceptualizing one's thoughts whether it be in speech or on paper. This has been seen in Chicano/a literature as well as in speech patterns. Refer to the below section for examples of Spanglish dialogue. One example of this is seen in Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldua's wiki link piece titled Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers wiki link. In it she utilizes Spanglish as a means of identifying stereotypes of minorities. It reads: "They know how to treat a man in bed, the flat faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying on her back, being fucked by the Man a la La Chingada."^[2] In this particular text Anzaldua utilizes both Spanglish and another blending of languages with the inclusion of a la. This use of Spanglish in literary writing identifies a key piece of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis[Linguistic Relativity] conceptualized by scholars Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and Benjamin Lee Whorf. In this particular theory they built upon one another's ideas which sum up to address the idea that the language we speak determines how we conceptualize the world. An example would be how in English we may identify a propane tank as being empty, yet if struck by a hard object, it may still explode. But since the use of the word empty implies an absence of matter, or anything at all, we assume there is nothing present within the propane tank. This example provides insight on how Spanglish works. By utilizing and blending different languages within the same dialogue people give themselves the freedom to communicate their thoughts more concisely. With the notion being that Spanish words such as La Chingada carry more context then aggressively, or intensely. The Sapir- whorf hypothesis elaborates on how our thinking is influenced by our language. With the case of literary writing, our thinking becomes textualized by the words we used, influenced by our language.

Distribution[link]

These phenomena are produced by close border contact and large bilingual communities on the northern side along the United States-Mexico border and California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Atlanta, The City of New York, and Chicago. It is also important to mention that the bilingual communities on the southern side along the Mexican-American border prefer to use only Spanish while in Mexico, where the term pocho is applied to people who use Spanglish words and expressions. Spanglish is also used in Gibraltar.

It is common in Panama, where the 96-year (1903–1999) U.S. control of the Panama Canal influenced much of local society, especially among the former residents of the Panama Canal Zone, the Zonians. Some version of Spanglish, whether by that name or another, is likely to be used wherever speakers of both languages mix.

In the late 1940s, the Puerto Rican linguist Salvador Tió coined the terms Spanglish, and the less commonly used inglañol^[3] for English spoken with some Spanish terms.

H.G.Wells, in his 1933 future history "The Shape of Things to Come", predicted that in the Twenty-First Century English and Spanish would "become interchangeable languages".^[4]

Examples[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (January 2011)

Spanish street ad humorously showing baidefeis instead of the Spanish gratis (free).
Baidefeis derives from the English "by the face"; Spanish: por la cara, "free".

Spanish and English have mixed quite a bit. For example, a fluent bilingual speaker addressing another, like bilingual speaker might engage in code switching with the sentence: I'm sorry I cannot attend next week's meeting porque tengo una obligación de negocios en Boston, pero espero que I'll be back for the meeting the week after. Changing some words to English, for example, "Te veo ahorita, me voy de shopping para el mall": "See you later, I'm going shopping in the mall". Spanglish is mostly spoken this way.

Spanglish phrases often use shorter words from both languages as in: "Me voy a wake up". (Rather than: "Me voy a levantar" or "I am going to wake up.") A common code switch in Puerto Rican Spanglish is using the English word "so" (therefore): "Tengo clase, so me voy" ("I have a class, so I'm leaving"), rather than the Spanish "porque" with different order ("me voy porque tengo clase").

Word borrowings from English to Spanish are more common, using false cognates in their English senses, or calquing idiomatic English expressions. Some examples:

• The non-standard word afianza is used in Spanglish in preference to the standard Spanish seguro ("insurance policy").
• The word carpeta is "folder" in standard Spanish. In some Spanglishes it means "carpet" instead of Spanish 'alfombra'.
• The word clutch (pronounced: "cloch") is Spanglish, Mexican Spanish and Latin American Spanish for the gear-shifting device of an automotive transmission. The standard Spanish word is embrague.
• In Spanglish, yonque denotes "junkyard", not the standard Spanish deshuesadero.
• In Spanglish, word boiler is both "water heater" and "boiler". The standard Spanish words are calentador de agua (water heater) and hervidor or "caldera" (boiler).
• The Spanish verb "atender", "to wait upon" or "to give service to", e.g. wait upon a table of diners; however, second-generation Spanish speakers in the Anglo-sphere use the verb as "to attend", instead of "to assist".
• The Spanish verb asistir, in Spanglish denotes "to assist" rather than true Spanish "to attend".
• Suceso, "event", is wrongly used to denote "success", leading to expressions such as fue todo un suceso, "it was a complete success" (although this can be ambiguous; interpreted in Spanish this means "it was a big event", which sometimes means about the same anyway).
• "Push" and empujar are true cognates. In Spanglish, "puchar" is used to the same effect.
• The expression llamar para atrás is calqued literally from the English "to call back"; cf. standard Spanish devolver la llamada, "to return the call". This example of calquing an English idiomatic phrase to Spanish is common Puerto Rican usage, even in zones with a lot of Hispanics like Southern Idaho.
• Van (la van) is Spanglish for the American English word Van, instead of the standard Spanish la furgoneta.
• Parquear is used instead of the correct Spanish estacionar, it derives from the English word '[to] park'. However, Standard and Colloquial Spanish uses the verb aparcar, which is accepted in the diccionary but also appears to derive from English.
• The verbs hanguear derives from "to hang out".
• Spanish verbs conversar and charlar mean "to chat"; however, an on-line conversation by IRC or IM is Spanglish chatear (Spanish "to drink a glass of wine", uncommon).^[5]
• Troca or troque denotes "pickup truck" instead of the standard Spanish camioneta.
• The adjectives serioso | seriosa denote the English serious instead of the proper serio | seria.
• Actualmente, meaning in Spanish "currently," is frequently misused to replace English actually and in fact. The proper Spanish term for actually is de hecho.
• Marketa is a frequently used word derived from the English word market (as in Supermarket) instead of the standard Spanish word mercado.
• Lonche is the Spanglish usage for lunch, as in "hora del lonche" (lunchtime). The correct Spanish term is almuerzo. Lonchera is also used to mean lunch box.
• "Heavy" used unchanged in expressions such as qué heavy, muy heavy, akin to "how awful/terrible".

Other borrowings include: emailear or emiliar, "to email"; nerdo, "nerd"; laptop, "laptop computer"; twittear, to use Twitter; facebookear, to use Facebook and googlear, to use Google.

Calques from Spanish to English also occur. In some cases Spanglish morphs into simple bad English:

• Some include cowboy and cowgirl, coming, respectively, from the Spanish words "vaquero" and "vaquera"; people that handle cattle.
• An interesting calque is canyon or gorge, in English, from "cañón" (geomorphology), in Spanish.
• Also barbecue (or Bar-B-Q), coming from barbacoa, in Spanish.
• The word rodeo has the same meaning in English as it has in the original Spanish.
• Many verbs are given indirect objects they do not have in standard English; notably, "put": "She puts him breakfast on the couch!" or "Put it the juice" (turn on the power), these correspond to the Spanish poner and meter with the indirect object pronouns le and les, indicating the action was done on behalf of someone else.
• One can "get down" from a car, instead of "getting out" of a car; this translates to the Spanish bajarse, "to dismount" or "to descend" from a motor vehicle.
• One "drinks" one's pills, from the phrase tomar medicina. The word tomar more often means drink than take in conversational Spanish, which extensively uses the word agarrar as the equivalent to take.
• U.S. and Latin American Spanglish speakers use the verb fiestar, "to party", which corresponds with fiesta, "a party", these derive from the standard Spanish verb festejar, "to celebrate", while divertirse is "to have fun", "to party" in slang American English.
• British people in Argentina use "camp" for "countryside" (from "campo") and drop many everyday formal and slang Spanish words into English ("I'll take the colectivo" (bus)). Sometimes a Spanish phrase is literally translated, incongruously and as a joke, into English: in the Buenos Aires Herald English-language newspaper "ex-president Néstor Kirchner 'could not with his genius' (to express it in Spanglish)",^[6] understood by English-speakers with reasonable knowledge of Spanish to mean "could not go against his nature".

This is a code mixture dialogue from the Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing!, by Giannina Braschi:

Ábrela tú.

¿Por qué yo? Tú tienes las keys. Yo te las entregué. Además, I left mine adentro.

¿Por qué las dejaste adentro?

Porque I knew you had yours.

¿Por qué dependes de mí?

Just open it, and make it fast.

In English:

You open it.

Why me? You've got the keys. I gave them to you. Besides, I left mine inside.

Why did you leave them inside?

Because I knew you had yours.

Why do you always depend on me?

Just open it, and make it fast.

This is a code-switching dialogue:

"Yo no estoy de acuerdo con eso. But,anyhow,I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, pero soy cubano."

In English:

"I disagree with that. But, anyhow, I think I will try again to get it."

"I have lived in Miami for a long time, but I am Cuban."

See also[link]

• Caló (Chicano) a Mexican-American argot, similar to Spanglish.
• Chicano English
• Dog Latin
• Languages in the United States
• Llanito (an Andalusian Spanish-based creole unique to Gibraltar)
• Germán Valdés A Mexican comedian known as Tin Tan who made heavy use of Spanglish. He also dressed as a pachuco.
• Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña also makes heavy use of Spanglish.
• Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi wrote the Spanglish comic novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" (1998).
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Dominican Writer Junot Diaz.
• Mexican rock band Molotov, whose members use Spanglish in their lyrics.
• American progressive rock band The Mars Volta, whose song lyrics frequently switch back and forth between English and Spanish.
• Category:Forms of English

References[link]

• On So-Called Spanglish, Ricardo Otheguy and Nancy Stern, International Journal of Bilingualism 2011, 15(1): 85-100.
• Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, Ilán Stavans, ISBN 0-06-008776-5
• Spanglish: The Third Way, A Cañas. Hokuriku University, 2001.
• Spanish/English Codeswitching in a Written Corpus, by Laura Callahan, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004.
• The Dictionary of Chicano Spanish/El Diccionario del Español Chicano: The Most Practical Guide to Chicano Spanish. Roberto A. Galván. 1995. ISBN 0-8442-7967-6.
• Anglicismos hispánicos. Emilio Lorenzo. 1996. Editorial Gredos, ISBN 84-249-1809-6.
• "Yo-Yo Boing!", Giannina Braschi, introduction by Doris Sommer, Harvard University, ISBN 978-0-935480-97-9.
• “Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity,” Isabelle de Courtivron, Palgrave McMillion, 2003.
• "In the Contact Zone: Code-Switching Strategies by Latino/a Writers: Giannina Braschi and Susana Chavez by L Torres. MELUS, JSTOR, 2007.
• Ursachen und Konsequenzen von Sprachkontakt - Spanglish in den USA. Melanie Pelzer, Duisburg: Wissenschaftsverlag und Kulturedition (2006). (in German) ISBN 3-86553-149-0
• BETTI Silvia, 2008, El Spanglish ¿medio eficaz de comunicación? Bologna, Pitagora editrice, ISBN 88-371-1730-2 (in Spanish).Presentación de Dolores Soler-Espiauba (in Spanish).
• "Bilingües, biculturales y posmodernas: Rosario Ferré y Giannina Braschi," Garrigós, Cristina, Insula. Revista de Ciencias y Letras, 2002 JUL-AGO; LVII (667-668).
• "Escritores latinos en los Estados Unidos" (a propósito de la antología de Fuguet y Paz-Soldán, se habla Español), Alfaguara, 2000.
• "Redreaming America: Toward a Bilingual American Culture," (Suny Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture), Debra A. Castillo, 2005.
• Metcalf, Allan A. "The Study of California Chicano English". International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Volume 1974, Issue 2, Pages 53–58.
• Ardila, A. Spanglish : An anglicized Spanish dialect. Hispanic journal of behavioral sciences, 27(1), 60-81.

External links[link]

• {http://current.com/groups/on-current-tv/88836867_nuyorican-power.htm} Current TV video "Nuyorican Power" on Spanglish as the Nuyorican language; featuring Daddy Yankee, Giannina Braschi, Rita Moreno, and other Nuyorican icons.
• Spanglish - the Language of Chicanos University of California
• What is Spanglish? Texas State University
• Real Academia Española

Las Ketchup is a Spanish pop group, founded by flamenco producer, Manuel Ruiz. The group is best known for the 2002 song, "The Ketchup Song" (Aserejé), which sold over 7 million singles.

Career[link]

Las Ketchup was originally discovered by the flamenco producer Manuel “Queco” Ruiz, who signed them to his newly formed independent Córdoba-based label Shaketown Music, which he ran together with Manuel Illán.^[1] They recorded the songs “Asereje” and “Kusha Las Payas" with Ruiz producing, and shopped the demo to a number of large record companies with the intention of securing a distribution deal.^[1] The demo was received by Columbia/Sony A&R Javier Portugués and director Raúl López who, on listening the recordings, stared at each other in delight exclaiming, "Wow, this is fantastic!".^[1] At first the intention was to arrange a distribution deal with Shaketown Music but on hearing the song they realised its international potential and so negotiated for Las Ketchup to sign with Sony.^[1]

In the summer of 2002 they had a major flamenco Europop fusion hit with "Aserejé" (released as "The Ketchup Song" in the UK and other countries), which reached the top of the charts in many countries including Spain, Portugal, Colombia, UK, Italy, Greece, France, Finland, Turkey, Syria, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Philippines, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, and Australia. However, it failed to hit the Top 40 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Still worldwide, the trio became instant rivals to another Spanish female trio, Lunae, who released their debut single in Europe at the same time in 2003. The title and part of the lyrics were in Spanish. The hit also had an accompanying dance.

The group re-released the Ketchup Song later in the same year, with a new video, as a Christmas song.

The name of the group is a reference to their father Juan Muñoz, a flamenco guitarist known as El Tomate (The Tomato). This also explains why their debut album carried the title Las hijas del Tomate (Daughters of Tomato).

In 2006 they were joined by Rocío, their fourth sister, to represent Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006. The girls have said themselves that Rocío has always been a member of Las Ketchup, but she wasn't in the photographs, videos or performances because she was pregnant.

The group sold over 12 million copies with the first album, but the second did not achieve the same success.

Recent events[link]

Las Ketchup came back as a 4-girl group, with a new album titled Un Blodymary (Bloody Mary). Their long absence was due to their writing songs for the album and Pilar's pregnancy. The album release was delayed until the beginning of 2006. They planned to release 1 million copies and their producer "Queco", who also produced and wrote their worldwide single "Asereje", indicated that this album retains their original sound.^{[citation needed]} Their first single from the CD was also titled "Un Blodymary". This song was the Spanish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006. The song did not perform as well as expected, ending 21st with only 18 points.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Hijas del Tomate (2002)
• Un Blodymary (2006)

Singles[link]

Awards[link]

• 2002 'Ondas awards'

– Best New Artist/group

• 2004 Billboard Latinos awards

– Best pop album from new generation ("Las hijas del Tomate")

– Most tropical-salsa song played by Duo or Group ("The Ketchup Song" (Aserejé)

• 2003 Latin Grammy Award

– Best Pop Album By a Duo or Group with Vocals Las hijas del Tomate (Nominated, lost to Bacilos Caraluna.)

• 2003 Record Fair MIDEM (Cannes)

– Best New Artist/group

• 2003 Amigo Awards

– Best New Group

– Best New Artist

• 2004 Record fair MIDEM (Cannes)

– Breakers of borders (Best-selling Album out of its country and inside of Europe with "Las hijas del Tomate") Song)

Parody[link]

In 2002, the German comedian Elmar Brandt wrote (using the tune of Aserejé) a Gerhard Schröder parody called "Der Steuersong" (The Tax Song)^[18] for the radio program The Gerd Show.

In 2002, a satirical version to the tune of Aserejé by El Groupo Mayonessa circulated in Gibraltar prior to the referendum on a proposal of joint sovereignty, entitled 'Vota Que No, Que No, Que No No No'^[19]

See also[link]

• Son de Sol

References[link]

External links[link]

• Unofficial Las Ketchup Site
• Las Ketchup at AskMen.com
• Las Ketchup at Answers.com

Téa Leoni
Leoni in June 2007
Born	Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni (1966-02-25) February 25, 1966 (age 46) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1989–present
Spouse	Neil Joseph Tardio, Jr. (m. 1991–1995) «start: (1991)–end+1: (1996)»"Marriage: Neil Joseph Tardio, Jr. to Téa Leoni" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/T%C3%A9a_Leoni) David Duchovny (m. 1997) «start: (1997)»"Marriage: David Duchovny to Téa Leoni" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/T%C3%A9a_Leoni)

Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni ( /ˈteɪ.ə pɑːntəleɪˈoʊniː/; born February 25, 1966), better known by her stage name Téa Leoni, is an American actress. She has starred in a wide range of films including Jurassic Park III, The Family Man, Deep Impact, Fun with Dick and Jane, Spanglish, Bad Boys, Ghost Town and Tower Heist.

Early life[link]

Leoni was born in New York City. Her mother, Emily Ann (née Patterson), was a dietician and nutritionist, and her father, Anthony Pantaleoni, was a corporate lawyer of the firm Fulbright & Jaworski.^[1][2] Leoni's paternal grandfather was of Italian and English descent; he was a nephew of Italian economist and politician Maffeo Pantaleoni.^[3][4][5] Leoni's paternal grandmother, Polish-American Helenka Adamowska Pantaleoni, a relative of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, was a film and stage actress who was a daughter of musicians Józef Adamowski and Antonina Szumowska-Adamowska; with Józef's brother Timothee Adamowski, they were the Adamowski Trio.^[3][6] Leoni's mother is a native of Texas, and was the niece of actor Hank Patterson.^[7]

Leoni attended two private schools, Brearley School and The Putney School. She attended but did not complete studies at Sarah Lawrence College. During her sophomore year Leoni was in a rock climbing accident in Colorado. She fell down a gorge while climbing with friends. The impact caused her to dislocate and fracture her jaw under the right interior mandible and caused extensive facial lacerations. Following the wiring shut of her jaw and extensive reconstructive surgery, Leoni was able to function and speak somewhat normally. She often credits this accident with the unique jaw shape and facial features she has come to be known for.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

In 1988, Leoni was cast as one of the stars of Angels 88, an updated version of the 1970s show Charlie's Angels. In May 1988, Life magazine ran a story on the casting of this new series.^{[citation needed]} After production delays, the show never aired. The following year, Leoni starred as "Lisa DiNapoli" in the TV daytime drama Santa Barbara.

Leoni went on to appear in the women's baseball film A League of Their Own in 1992. Later in the year, she starred with Corey Parker in the single-season Fox sitcom Flying Blind, playing an eccentric, downtown-Manhattan libertine who falls in love with an ordinary Long Island college graduate. In February 1995, she appeared in the sitcom Frasier as the fiance of Sam Malone, portrayed by guest star Ted Danson, in a crossover from Cheers.

Leoni also landed the lead role in the sitcom The Naked Truth, playing Nora Wilde, a tabloid news journalist. The show ran through 1998. In the 2000 episode of the The X-Files "Hollywood A.D." (season 7, episode 19), Leoni played an actress portraying Dana Scully in a movie under her own name.

Leoni's film work includes a lead role in Deep Impact, a big-budget disaster film about a comet menacing Earth; and Jurassic Park III, The Family Man, Bad Boys, and You Kill Me. She starred as a film studio executive in Hollywood Ending for director Woody Allen, portraying his ex-wife, and in Spanglish as the emotionally unstable wife of Adam Sandler.

Leoni ranked #79 on the FHM "100 Sexiest Women of 2000" list.^[8]

Personal life[link]

Leoni stated in the October 27, 2006 issue of Life magazine that she became a Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF partially because Helenka Pantaleoni, her paternal grandmother, was the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF for 25 years.^[9]

Leoni married her first husband, Neil Joseph Tardio, Jr., a television commercial producer, on June 8, 1991, at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Hope, New Jersey.^[10]

Leoni married her second husband, actor David Duchovny, on May 6, 1997, after an eight-week courtship.^[11][12] They have a daughter, Madelaine West, born in 1999,^[13] and son, Kyd Miller, born in 2002.^[14]

On October 15, 2008, Leoni and Duchovny confirmed that they had been separated "for several months." The media attributed the separation to Duchovny's much publicized sexual addiction.^[15] The couple publicly reconciled and were seen frequently together as a family.^[16]

On June 29, 2011, CNN reported that Leoni and Duchovny had once again split.^[17]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Téa Leoni at the Internet Movie Database

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (March 2011)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2010)

Ilan Stavans (born Ilan Stavchansky on April 7, 1961, in Mexico City) is a Mexican-American, essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, TV personality, and teacher known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.

Life[link]

Ilan Stavans was born in Mexico to a middle-class Jewish family from the Pale of Settlement. His father Abraham was a popular Mexican soap opera star. Living in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, he ultimately immigrated to the United States in 1985. Upon completing his graduate education in New York City, he settled in New England where he lives with his wife, Alison, and his two sons, Joshua and Isaiah. His journey is the topic of his autobiography On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language (2001). He received a Master’s degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Doctorate in Letters from Columbia University. He was the host of the syndicated PBS show Conversations with Ilan Stavans, which ran from 2001 to 2006.

He is best known for his investigations on language and culture. His love for lexicography is evident in Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion (2005).

Stavans's work is wide-ranging, and includes both scholarly monographs such as The Hispanic Condition (1995) and comic strips in the case of Latino USA: A Cartoon History (with Lalo Alcaraz) (2000). Stavans is editor of several anthologies including The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998). A selection of his work appeared in 2000 under the title The Essential Ilan Stavans. In 2004, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda’s birth, Stavans edited the 1,000-page-long The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. The same year he edited the 3-volume set of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories for the Library of America.

He has also displayed a strong interest in popular culture. Among other topics, he has written influential essays on the Mexican comedian, Mario Moreno ("Cantinflas")," the lampooner José Guadalupe Posada, the Chicano leader César Chávez, and the Tejana singer Selena, as well as a book about the board game Lotería! (with Teresa Villegas), which includes Stavans’s own poems. He was also featured in one of the Smithsonian Q&A books.

Since 1993 he has been on the faculty at Amherst College, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture. He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.^[1] He has also taught a various other institutions, including Columbia University. In 1997, Stavans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been the recipient of international prizes and honors, including the Latino Literature Prize, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and the Rubén Darío Distinction.

Influence[link]

He has portrayed Jewish-American identity as Eurocentric and parochial. He has been a critic of the nostalgia generated by life in the Eastern European shtetl of the 19th century. He is recognized for his explorations of Jewish culture in the Hispanic world. In 1994 he published the anthology Tropical Synagogues: Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers (1994). From 1997 to 2005 he edited the Jewish Latin America series at the University of New Mexico Press. And his anthology The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature (2005) was the recipient of the National Jewish Book Award. Some of his essays on Jewish topics are included in The Inveterate Dreamer. His work has been translated into a dozen languages.

His inspirations range from Jorge Luis Borges to Edmund Wilson and Walter Benjamin. (In his autobiography, Stavans recounts the episode, in the early stages of his career, when, in order to find his own style, he burned his collection of dozens of Borges’s books, p. 9.) He has written a small biography of the Chicano lawyer Oscar "Zeta" Acosta and a book-long meditation on Octavio Paz. In 2005, in a series of interviews with Neal Sokol called Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations, Stavans traces his beginnings, calls Hispanic civilization to task for its allergy to constructive self-criticism, discusses the work of Borges, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, Sholem Aleichem, Gabriel García Márquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Octavio Paz, Samuel Johnson, Edward Said, Miguel de Cervantes, and others, and reflects on anti-Semitism and anti-Hispanic sentiment.

Stavans has devoted many years of study to the work of Gabriel García Márquez. His biography, Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years, slated for publication in 2010, is the first of two planned volumes. The biography traces Gabriel García Márquez's artistic development from childhood to the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish in 1967 and its English translation by Gregory Rabassa in 1970. Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, has called this biography "an engaging, informative study tracking the small beginnings of a literary giant and his magnum opus. It is also a love story: that of an important contemporary critic and thinker with a writer, his life, and his text. Stavans enlightens us, not just about one literary figure, but about the culture and history of a whole hemisphere in a book that never feels plodding or overtly academic. Stavans is a magical writer himself."

In A Critic’s Journey, published in 2009 by University of Michigan Press, Stavans writes about his life and work as a cultural critic. The book is a collection of pieces that brings together three cultures: Jewish, American, and Mexican. It includes pieces on writing On Borrowed Words, the Holocaust in Latin America, the growth of Latino studies in the U.S. academy, Stavans’ relationship with the Jewish Daily Forward, and translation in the shaping of Hispanic culture, as well as pieces on Sandra Cisneros, Richard Rodríguez, Isaiah Berlin, and W. G. Sebald, asnd close readings of the Don Quixote and the oeuvre of Roberto Bolaño.

Since the late 1990s, Stavans has devoted his energy to reinvigorating the literary genre of the conversation not as a promotional tool but as a patient, insightful instrument to explore them in intellectual depth. Neal Sokol interviewed Stavans in a book-long volume Eight Conversations (2004) on his Jewish and Latino heritage, translator Verónica Albin discussed the way the word “love” has changed through the age in the book Love and Language (2007) as well as on topic like libraries and censorship in Knowledge and Censorship (2008), and Canadian journalist Mordecai Drache (Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture) probes him on the Bible as a work of literature in With All Thine Heart (2010). In the U.S. Latino literary tradition, writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Richard Rodriguez have also practiced the conversation as a meditative form.

Spanglish[link]

As a sociolinguist, Stavans is known as a world authority in Spanglish, the hybrid form of communication that emerges at the crossroad where Spanish and English speakers interact. He has edited a dictionary of Spanglish words called Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003) that includes an essay in historical analysis on the development of this linguistic phenomenon. Stavans writes that its first manifestations date back to 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed after the Mexican-American War ended and a large portion of Mexican land was sold to the United States. He describes various distinctive varieties of Spanglish, such as Cubonics (Cuban-American), Dominicanish (Dominican-American), Nuyorrican (Puerto Rican in New York), and Chicano (Mexican American). He also establishes differences across generational and geographical lines, stating that recent immigrants are prone to use a type of Spanglish that differs from second- or third-generation Latinos. Stavans studies Spanglish by making comparisons with Black English and with Yiddish as well as Yinglish (the type of Yiddish used by Jewish immigrants to the United States and their children). And he reflects on the cultural similarities between Spanglish and jazz, rap, hip-hop, and graffiti.

In 2002, Stavans published in the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia a Spanglish translation of the first chapter of Cervantes’ Don Quixote of La Mancha. The translation has been controversial throughout the world, garnishing celebrations and attacks. Critics accuse Stavans of using Spanglish to call attention to himself. Supporters say that the translation is an indication that the Latino community in the United States has come off age. Stavans has responded to the reactions with interviews in which he argues that Spanglish is today’s manifestation of “mestizaje,” the crossbreeding of racial, social, and cultural traits of Anglos and Latinos similar to what occurred during the colonization of the Americas in the sixteenth century.

The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature[link]

In 2011, after thirteen years of preparation, Stavans, as general editor, published The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, a 2,700-page compendium that includes more than two hundred authors and covers from the colonial period (the earliest author included is Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas) to the present time. The anthology features Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans in the island and the mainland, and other Latinos. It also features a section with samples by Latin American writers such as Octavio Paz and Roberto Fernández Retamar discussing the United States.

The Norton anthology followed in the footsteps of similar ventures devoted to women literature and African-American literature. It was greeted with an enthusiastic reception. Booklist gave it a starred review. It was noted in, among other places, The Boston Globe, Smithsonian, the American Book Review, World Literature Today, Literal, and NPR’s On Point with John Ashbrook. Erica Jong said “Ilan Stavans has spread a feast of Latino literature before us.” Cornell West called it ”an instant classic.” And Felipe Fernandez-Armesto of University of Notre Dame stated: “Imaginatively conceived, painstakingly executed, stunningly broad, profoundly stirring, endlessly engaging, this book can change the way the world thinks about America, and the way Americans think about themselves.” It was criticized also for including few authors born in Central America.

Fiction[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2010)

Stavans’s short stories are included in The One-Handed Pianist (1996) and The Disappearance (2006). One of them, "Morirse está en hebreo," about Jewish life in Mexico at the time of the 2000 presidential election, which appeared in the later anthology, was turned into a movie directed by Alejandro Springall called "My Mexican Shivah." The film was praised by Martin Tsai in the New York Sun ("Lifetimes To Go in Old Mexico." August 29, 2008). Mr. Tsai writes "My Mexican Shivah offers so much profundity that almost every viewer can walk out of the theater with something to mull...Mr. Springall and screenwriter Jorge Goldenberg have so skillfully infused the film with an intriguing story, convincing performances, and a breezy pace that one nearly forgets that the action unfolds almost entirely within the confines of one house. The film's coda may be somewhat anticlimactic because the confrontations do not boil over as anticipated. But, like the rest of the film, it rings utterly true."

The themes in Stavans' fiction range from redemption and revenge to cultural authenticity and political activism. In "A Heaven Without Crows," he imagines Kafka's final letter to Max Brod, suggesting that maybe he shouldn't burn his œuvre. "The One-Handed Pianist" deals with a rare disease affecting a piano concert player, impeding her the use of one hand. In "Xerox Man," written for the BBC, about an Orthodox Jewish thief of rare books, Stavans meditates on imperfection. And in "The Disappearance," about the kidnapping of a famous Jewish stage actor in the Low Countries, Stavans explores the perils of silence. "The Disappearance" serves as the basis of a play he created with the Double Edge Theater Company. The play's premiere was staged at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on October 16, 2008 (see Mike Boehm's article "Seeking Haven on Earth." Los Angeles Times October 15, 2008).

His graphic novel "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington" (2008) was hailed by the writer Rigoberto González as "Stavans' latest contribution to a stellar career in literary troublemaking." Mr. González states in the El Paso Times (Texas) "Unlike "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the Jimmy Stewart vehicle that inspires the title and premise of this book (a film that, incidentally, did not thrill Congress back in 1939 because of its depiction of a corrupt and self-absorbed branch of government), "Mr. Spic" inhabits a grittier version of this fantasy story line: There really is no place for such a pro-Latino agitator like him in Washington. And so his political career is cut short, though Stavans assures us that the ideas, dreams and visions of a pioneer do not vanish with his martyrdom." ("What If You Voted for the Vato?" El Paso Times October 19, 2008) Elaine Ayala writes in the San Antonio Express-News ""Mr. Spic" delivers Latino history lessons with comedic bows not only to Mr. Smith but Cervantes' Don Quixote, Woody Allen's "Zelig," JFK conspiracy theories, even Bill Clinton...The 110-page book is a quick, entertaining read that will appeal to a wider and younger audience than has read Stavans before. Fans of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will enjoy its comedic value and caustic satire." ("Idealistic Mr. Spic Shocks and Provokes." San Antonio Express-News July 27, 2008)

Cultural Studies[link]

His views on language are polemical in their approach to word and structure formation. Stavans believes that dictionaries and language academies are buffers whose improbable function is to provide continuity for a language, but suggests that such continuity, especially in the age of electronic communication, is fatuous. He accuses the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in Madrid of colonialism, among other things. He has also studied the Iberian conquest of the Americas in the 16th century from a linguistic perspective. Translation, for Stavans, represents appropriation. He defined modernity as “a translated way of life” and has written and lectured on the role translators perform as communicating vessels across epochs and habitats.

Critical bibliography[link]

He has been criticized by some academics and scholars who have taken issue with his formulation of US Latino identity and/or with his research in literary studies, for example, concerns regarding factual errors in his published output.

• Allatson, Paul (2006). "Ilan Stavans's Latino USA. A Cartoon History (of a cosmopolitan intellectual)." Chasqui 35(1): 21–41. (Academic Journal)
• Dalleo, Raphael and Elena Machado Sáez (2007). The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature. [1] New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Book)
• Flores, Juan (2000). From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity.[2] New York: Columbia University Press. (Book)
• Luis, William (1997). Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt UP.
• Sokol, Neal (2004). Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (Book)
• Machado Sáez, Elena (2009). "Reconquista: Ilan Stavans and Multiculturalist Latino/a Discourse." Latino Studies 7.4 (2009): 410–434. (Academic Journal)
• Mendoza, Louis (2001). "On Buffaloes, Body Snatching, and Bandidismo: Ilan Stavans’s Appropriation of Oscar Acosta and the Chicano Experience." [3] Bilingual Review 26(1): 79–86. (Academic Journal)Scholar search
• Modroño Garcia, Luz (2009). "Ilan Stavans, icono del seudointelectual norteamericano." Cuba Nuestra Digital [4] (Magazine Article)
• Richardson, Lynda (1999). "How to Be Both an Outsider and an Insider; 'The Czar of Latino Literature and Culture' Finds Himself Under Attack." The New York Times.[5] (Newspaper Article)
• (1998). "'Living in the Hyphen' Between Latin and American." The Chronicle of Higher Education. [6] (Magazine Article)
• (2009). "El esencial difamador Ilan Stavans/The Essential Slanderer Ilan Stavans." Vegamedia Press.com Source Cannot be Confirmed (Magazine Article)

Publications[link]

Complete book-length original works[link]

• 2012 - El Iluminado (with Steve Sheinkin).
• 2012 - Return to Centro Historico: A Mexican Jew Looks for His Roots.
• 2011 - José Vaconcelos: The Prophet of Race.
• 2011 - What is la hispanidad?: A Conversation (with Iván Jaksic).
• 2010 - With All Thine Heart: Love and the Bible (with Mordecai Drache).
• 2010 - Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years.
• 2009 - A Critic's Journey
• 2008 - Resurrecting Hebrew.
• 2008 - Mr. Spic Goes to Washington, illustrations by Roberto Weil.
• 2008 - Knowledge and Censorship (with Verónica Albin).
• 2007 - Love and Language (with Verónica Albin).
• 2006 - The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories.
• 2005 - Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion.
• 2005 - Conversations with Ilan Stavans (with Neal Sokol).
• 2003 - Lotería!, art by Teresa Villegas, essay and riddles by Ilan Stavans.
• 2003 - Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language.
• 2001 - On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language.
• 2001 - Octavio Paz: A Meditation.
• 2001 - The Inveterate Dreamer: Essays and Conversations on Jewish Literature.
• 2000 - The Essential Ilan Stavans.
• 2000 - Latino U.S.A.: A Cartoon History, illustrations by Lalo López Alcaraz.
• 1998 - The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Popular Hispanic Culture.
• 1996 - Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination.
• 1996 - The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories.
• 1995 - Bandido. Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta and the Chicano Experience.
• 1995 - The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America.
• 1993 - Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage.

Edited works[link]

• 2012 - Encyclopedia of Latin Music, edited by Ilan Stavans (four vols.).
• 2012 - All The Odes: Pablo Neruda, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 2011 - Béisbol (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2011 - Fútbol (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2011 - Mexican-American Cuisine (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2011 - The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - One Hundred Years of Solitude (Critical Insights), edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - Border Culture (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - César Chávez (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - Health Care (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - Quinceañera (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2010 - Telenovelas (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2009 - Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2008 - Latina Writers (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2008 - Spanglish (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2008 - Immigration (The Ilan Stavans Library of Latino Civilization), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2008 - An Organizer's Tale: Speeches, written by César Chávez, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2007 - I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems, written by Pablo Neruda, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2007 - A Luis Leal Reader (Latino Voices/Vidas), edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2006 - Lengua Fresca, co-edited by Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum.
• 2005 - Rubén Darío: Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 2005 - Encyclopedia Latina, edited by Ilan Stavans (four vols.).
• 2005 - The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 2004 - Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, edited by Ilan Stavans (3 vols.).
• 2003 - The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 2002 - The Scroll and the Cross: 1,000 Years of Jewish-Hispanic Literature, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 2001 - Wachale! Poetry and Prose on Growing Up Latino, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1999 - Mutual Impressions: Writers of the Americas Reading One Another, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1998 - The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1997 - Calvert Casey: The Collected Stories, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 1997 - The Urban Muse, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1997 - The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1996 - Oscar "Zeta" Acosta: The Uncollected Works, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1996 - New World: Young Latino Writers, edited with an introduction by Ilan Stavans.
• 1994 - Tropical Synagogues. Short Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers, edited by Ilan Stavans.
• 1993 - Growing up Latino: Memoirs and Stories, co-edited by Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum.

Television[link]

Conversations with Ilan Stavans (PBS, La Plaza)

Films[link]

Morirse está en hebreo / My Mexican Shivah (2006) Directed by Alejandro Springall.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Ilan Stavans from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Stavans on the Art of Cultural Criticism, ThoughtCast, Interview by Jenny Attiyeh
• Stavans on Censorship, Translation Journal, Interview by Verónica Albin
• Stavans on Dictionaries, Translation Journal, Interview by Verónica Albin
• Stavans on Libraries, The Vocabula Review, Interview by Verónica Albin
• Stavans on Literature and Prayer, AGNI, Interview by Kim Ben-Porat
• Stavans on Translation, Literary Review, Interview by Neal Sokol
• Stavans on Spanglish-NPR interview
• Stavans on Spanglish-PBS interview
• COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. "ARTICLES ABOUT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES". New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/colleges_and_universities/index.html?match=all&query=stavans. Retrieved 2008-08-05. 
• Profile of Stavans in Village Voice
• Profile of Stavans in the Chronicle of Higher Education
• Stavans on Spanglish in Newsweek
• Translation of Don Quixote
• PBS Conversation with Ilan Stavans
• The Salvation of Anarchy: A Review of The Disappearance nthWORD Magazine
• Stavans en Cuadernos Cervantes
• Traducción de Don Quixote
• Stavans por Jorge Ramos
• Stavans en Instituto Cervantes
• Stavans lee a Pablo Neruda
• Stavans en Barcelona Review
• En mi opinion, a blog hosted by Ilan Stavans
• En mi opinion, a blog hosted by Ilan Stavans
• radio interview with Ilan Stavans