Rating: 
Summary: Purists beware
Review: The author compares Spanglish -- the hybrid "language" part way between Spanish and English -- with Yiddish, a mixture of Hebrew and German that evolved into the mother language for Jews in Eastern Europe. But I see it closer to Ebonics, an effort to put an acceptable face on something that should not be acceptable, an excuse for speaking badly.Now, that is not a criticism of the book as much as it is of the concept (or the phenomenon) the book is based on. But to the extent that author Ilan Stavans promotes this lowering of the language bar, I cannot help but take issue with this slim volume. Spanglish (the book, not the "language") is much more a reference resource than it is something one would read from cover to cover, with most of the pages taken up by a 4500-word Spanglish dictionary (just writing that phrase made my heart sink). But the introductory essay -- called the "Jerga Loca," or Crazy Slang -- gives Mr. Stavans' take on the issue of Spanglish, which he seems to see as a fully mature idiom. This is something that may or may not be true, but which gives me heartburn just to think about. Take, for example, the wonderful opening line of Don Quixote: "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme...." (In English: "In a certain corner of la Mancha, the name of which I do not choose to remember ...."). Mr. Stavans cheapens it to: "In un placete de la Mancha, of which the nombre no quiero remembrearme...." It makes my skin crawl. I cannot deny Mr. Stavans' point that language is dynamic and evolving. Simply comparing the writings of William Shakespeare with those of Charles Dickens with those of John Updike is enough to prove that. Glance even at Miguel Cervantes, who spelled the same of his protagonist "Don Quijote" in the original. But this is a process that happens naturally and without encouragement, and it is certainly not served by lowering expectations to the lowest common denominator. I do not give the book a lower rating simply because it must be judged -- at least for the most part -- for what it is, and on those terms I find it well researched and effectively written. It might even serve as an effective primer for "gringos" unfamiliar with Latin American culture and who want to learn to understand certain unfortunate Hispanic Americans. But I select three stars while holding my nose, because while the spread of Spanglish cannot be denied, I think that anything that promotes it just stinks.
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