Spanish and English Interelation

Essay by futurenatureCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2011

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

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Introduction

Nowadays, societies around the world are becoming connected and similar to each other due to globalization. That is the reason why a language in common, a lingua franca, is required to improve the communication between different cultures. Since important researches, advanced technological education, computer programming and expanding mass media are developed in First World countries -such as the USA- whose mother tongue is English; this language has turned into that lingua franca.

Although English is spoken by people all over the world, there is still an unconscious influence of one´s mother tongue on English. Linguists have studied how and to what extent the native language influences the process of second language acquisition, a concept known as transfer. Individuals tend to transfer forms, meanings and distributions of words along with its syntax, pronunciation and semantics of their native language and culture when producing or receiving a second language (in this case, English).

Transfer can be of a positive or negative kind. On the one hand, positive transfer facilitates the acquisition of a second language taking advantage of the mother tongue. On the other hand, negative transfer would mean the wrong adaptation of the given pattern into the terms of another language because of the bad influence of the mother tongue.

Throughout this essay, we will consider the influence of Spanish over English, i.e. Spanglish (as a result) in the U.S.A.; and the influence of English over Spanish, i.e. Anglisisms (as a result) in Argentina.

Spanglish

Nany countries are becoming socially and culturally integrated because of globalization, but are their languages being integrated as well? The fact is that languages are changing throughout the world and these days, the biggest change is the infiltration of English into the Spanish language.

Due to the growing use...