Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

CULTURAL RELATIONS, IMAGE AND ANTI-AMERICANISM 111
Exhibit 6.4. International Students in the United States,
Top 10 European Countries*
English is still the language that opens the door to the American Dream,
but less so than in the past. The growth in the Hispanic community and the
increasing trade and investment ties between the United States and Latin
America – the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the
United States, Mexico and Canada began in 1994, the Central American Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was approved in 2005 and a Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) could be a reality one day – make Spanish, or rather English
and Spanish, increasingly important. Speaking Spanish in the United States
long ago ceased to be done just in the privacy of the home and has spread into
commerce, the media and public services. ABC, one of the big four television
networks in the United States, announced in September 2005 that it would dub
or subtitle all of its prime-time shows into Spanish.
The surge in the study of Spanish, which is the natural consequence of the
emergence of multiculturalism into US society, has led to the rise in Spanglish.
Ilan Stavans, the main academic who has studied and made a career out of it,
defines Spanglish as “the verbal encounter between Anglo and Hispano
civilizations.” 7 Spanglish, a hybrid of English and Spanish, is a widely used
and understood argot, which varies a lot from area to area. The Spanglish
spoken in New York is very different from that in Los Angeles. It is heavily
criticised by purists, led, naturally, by the Spanish Royal Academy of
Language (founded in 1713). Stavans produced a dictionary of Spanglish terms
and a Spanglish version of the first chapter of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which
7. See Spanglish, The Making of a New American Language, by Ilan Stavans (HarperCollins, 2003).