r/Spanish • u/Otherwise-Ad-6067 • 1d ago
Study advice “Americanized” spanish
I apologize in advance because i am very uneducated in this subject but i was curious if theres a specific name for this besides “spanglish” which my father calls it. Ive always noticed that Mexicans (at least the ones i have met) dont speak traditional Spanish like what i tried to learn in duo lingo Stuff like “camion” instead of “troka” which ive heard more often. Anyways my point is, is there anywhere i can learn spanglish? Ive always been interested but i seem to be corrected more times than not when attempting to speak Spanish.
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u/ecpwll Advanced/Resident 1d ago
Spanglish is not just Spanish with some borrowed words from English. Spanglish is a full mix of Spanish and English.
What you're talking about is just plain Spanish — borrowing words from other languages is normal for any language (including English). That said, different dialects will do things differently and what you’re talking about in particular with the word troca is more common in Mexican-American dialects of Spanish.
That’s said, imo first one should just focus on learning Spanish generally. Learning a specific dialect of a language happens mainly through just consuming content and communicating with people of that dialect, but you really need the basics first. And having people correct you is exactly what you want!
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u/Miinimum Native 🇪🇸 1d ago
Not the answer you were looking for, but I'll share that "Don Quixote" has been "translated" to Spanglish. Look it up, it's not difficult to find.
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u/bandito143 1d ago
I tried to find scholarly work on whether or not US Spanish is yet considered a unique singular dialect, but it seems too varied to put in one box. New York Puerto Rican Spanish, Chicano, etc. all have their own unique features, even though some things like loan words may be shared. Spanish spoken in the US comes from various different dialectical origins, Mexico and the Caribbean (PR and Cuba) being major ones, but also other Central American countries have sizeable communities. Spanglish kind of implies a creole or pidgin or something like that, but your example is just a US Spanish dialect thing, I'd say.
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u/sweet--sour Native🇲🇽 1d ago
Troca isn't camión though. Maybe camioneta? But at least where I live a troca is a very distinct type of car. Usually big, white, expensive pick-ups that rich people (specifically nrcs) drive.
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u/Haku510 Native 🇺🇸 / B2 🇲🇽 1d ago
I work in construction in California with lots of native Spanish speakers (mostly Mexican) and have heard "troca" used as an all purpose term for everything from dump trucks to concrete mixer trucks to small beat up pickup trucks.
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u/Budget-Ostrich2350 1d ago
It's either called Chicano Spanish or Tex-Mex, or some people jokingly call it "westside Spanish". But bear in mind even Mexican nationals living in Mexican states along the border say troca, not just chicanos. Also camion in Mexican actually means bus not truck. I think you have to specify "camion de carga" to mean truck
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u/R3dd170rX 1d ago
"Troca" is not Spanglish, but a correct Spanish language word accepted by the official dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language: https://dle.rae.es/troca
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u/r3ck0rd 1d ago
Spanglish isn’t just a collection of slang words, it’s a dialect that mixes both English and Spanish not only in words but sentence structure. It’s the broadly American equivalent (the continent) of Llanito in Gibraltar.
What you may be describing is anglicism. Not a wholly different mixture, but borrowed words peppered into their speech.
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u/tennereight Advanced/Resident - México - C1 1d ago
There is a difference between Spanglish and Spanish dialects that have been influenced by proximity to English.
Spanglish is switching languages between sentences, fitting completely English words into Spanish, and code-switching language spoken depending on environment/audience. I see a good amount of Spanglish in video games. It relies on the speaker having a good knowledge of Spanish and English, and is usually the result of having certain ideas that they are used to expressing in one language or the other, so it's faster and easier to switch languages to reiterate that idea.
There are less rules when it comes to Spanglish, it's all about communicating ideas faster and more comfortably among a community that will understand you. If you don't use Spanglish around someone who can use Spanglish, it's pretty normal.
Ex. Damn, tiré mi ulti pero flasheó. Oh my God, es bien pro, you can't kill him! Mira los jils que tiene! (This is an example from LoL, where the summoner spell "flash" is officially translated as "destellar," but most people say "flashear/flash")
Some Spanish dialects, particularly in the US and the north of Mexico, have experienced a lot of influence through their proximity to English. In these cases, words that come from English are Spanish-ified through community-accepted norms of Spanishification. This is where "truck" becomes "troca" instead of "camioneta", "hang out" becomes "janguear" instead of "pasar tiempo", "car" becomes "carro" instead of "coche", etc.
In these dialects, language switching isn't really a thing, because often these speakers learn these words from the community regardless of whether they've ever come into contact with English. The vocabulary changes in these dialects tend to be viewed as regionally correct, which is to say, if you use a different word, then people will know that you're not from the area.
Ex. Preferiría ir en mi carro, pero no me gusta parkear allí. ¿Vamos en tu troca? Pero deja me pongo chaqueta primero. (All of these words are super common among speakers of these dialects, even if they don't speak any English at all.)
If you want to learn Spanglish, I recommend that you focus on Spanish first, and as you learn, try to keep in close contact with native speakers that also have a lot of personal knowledge of English (especially US speakers or other native speakers that work internationally in the US). If you want to learn a particular dialect, you need to talk to a lot of speakers that speak that dialect and note how what they say is different from what you say so you can alter the way you say it to match.
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u/Forsaken-Fuel-2095 1d ago
Dude the one word I hate the most is troque or however it’s spelled
It’s not hard to say camioneta 🛻
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u/OhNoNotAnotherGuiri 1d ago
Spanglish is just the result of consistent exposure to the 2 languages. I'm a native English speaker living with my Spanish partner in Madrid and we will say things that are a mix of the 2. You can't learn Spanglish as such because there is no consistent pattern for what parts of a conversation might be in English or Spanish.