‘Don Quijote’ en Spanglish. Fotografía del archivo de EFE

A graphic and “Spanglish” version of “Don Quixote de la Mancha” shows the growing presence and relevance of this mixture of English and Spanish in the daily life of the United States, where about 40 million people speak this “third language” .

“In un placete de La Mancha of which nombre no quiero remembrearme, vivía, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny caballo y un grayhound para el chase…”.

Thus starts the particular translation of “El Quijote” by Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin Culture at Amherst College, Massachusetts.

Stavans, who in the past already translated universal titles at Spanglish such as “The Little Prince” by French Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and “Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” was encouraged by the fact that the “Spanglish” as language is irreversible. “

“It isn´t a force that exists for a dream, but for a necessity,” says the professor, whose comic version of Cervantes’ masterpiece will go on sale next year with illustrations by Venezuelan Roberto Weil and will be in charge of the PSUP (Pennsylvania State University Press) editorial.

And he is not alone. This Mexican-American explains to Efe that there are many American publishers like Haper Collins “launching to publish” in that “enchanting language” that is the Spanglish.

In contrast, linguist Andrew Lynch, a professor at the University of Miami (UM), where he has been working since 1999 and directing the Hispanic Language Heritage Program, says that the Spanglish isn´t “a language as such.”

“It´s, he says, an alternation of codes, loans, or rubbings that them are also found in other societies where two languages ​​coexist.” And he gives as an example the “chinglish”, which starts with the Chinese in contact with English, in San Francisco, or “Quechuañol” in Peru.

What it seems unquestionable is that the growing Hispanic community in the US, with about 60 million people, has strongly pushed Spanish idiom in the country.

However, while first-generation immigrants communicate mostly in Spanish, their children are bilingual and the third generation has serious problems expressing themselves in Spanish, and from there the increasingly relevant role of Spanglish (August 31, 2017 , EFE / Practica Español)