Spanglish: El Bad Boy de Linguistics

By Joe Ray

I’ve always spoken Spanglish. I think most bicultural, bilingual Latinos (and many non-Latinos) use Spanglish. You’re probably familiar with it. Or should be.

Why do we speak in Spanglish? Because we can.

On a personal interaction level, Spanglish is natural. It’s similar to having your own Secret Global Citizen Code. It’s a cultural thing. It’s very natural where two different languages come together on common ground. This common ground includes interaction at the personal level as well as at retail, along with the marketing messages that drive us there.

Hispanic Retail 360

This past August I had the pleasure of presenting and conducting a working session at Hispanic Retail 360 in El Lay.  Staying in line with the tone and focus of the conference, the topic of my session was titled: Spanglish: El Bad Boy de Linguistics: Layering Language in Engaging Hispanics at Retail.

This conference is the premier cross-channel event from Stagnito Media, focusing on retailing to the U.S. Latino market. It was an honor to be presenting here again

The group was evenly split with people from the agency side, as well as brand managers, advertising and MarCom folks from the client side. My feeling has always been that if Spanglish is going to be incorporated in a professional communications message, you should do it in an authentic and intelligent manner. Some important points to consider include

• Know the rules before you break them (grammar, usage, meaning, etc.).
• Break them well.
• Humor works best (I wouldn’t recommend it for funeral services).
• Keep it simple: limit use to headline, subhead, or tagline.
• Make it relevant to your specifically targeted audience.
• Don’t force it. Poorly done Spanglish just sounds/looks wrong in two languages as opposed to just one language…I call this the Pendejo Factor.

Certain words have a double entendre. One example I shared was an ad from Dasani bottled water with the headline, “Mueve Tu Water”. The literal translation is “Move Your Water”, but the word mueve has a more energetic meaning which evokes movimiento, and muevete. This meaning goes more into action, where it’s happening, etc. A cool place has some great movimiento going on.

Additionally, Taco Bell has been doing a good job with its Live Más campaign. However, I still don’t plan on eating there.

Using Spanglish Effectively

Some attendees brought up campaigns where they’ve utilized Spanglish. One participant with Farmer John mentioned their promotion of El Doyer Dog, a great hot dog for Dodgers games. Truly an All American treat para el Nuevo Millennium. Latinos + baseball: the perfect audience for this.

Another participant indicated Spanglish is an official street language. I agree. I also feel the best opportunities for advertising and marketing messages to utilize Spanglish are at the convenience store level. This makes a perfect pairing since many brands are already utilizing Spanglish and other bilingual communications. It’s displayed on beer, soft drink, and snack offerings. Exceptional opportunities exist for sports and entertainment. It’s a natural.

English vs. Spanish

A marketing manager from a home improvement chain elaborated by pointing out that there are times when using Spanish language, it may be best not to sweat it and just go with an English insertion. Drywall/sheetrock is a prime example; sort of like referring to brain freeze. Additionally, whiskey, tequila, vodka, and other spirits stay the same in either language. However, I have to say that when said aloud, cerveza sounds more fun than simply saying beer.

This working session was a positive, humorous free-form flowing and sharing of information and experiences. We agreed that the reason we’ve always spoken Spanglish is because we can.

If you’re bilingual and bicultural, you’re a Secret Global Citizen, armed with your own linguistic code.

While Spanglish may not be a good fit for all messaging, there is a time and place for it — especially if you’re targeting younger Latinos.

Just be sure to do it intelligently.

 Joe Ray is Vice President of Multicultural Marketing at E.B. Lane, a full service marketing and advertising agency with offices in Phoenix and Denver.

He can be reached at jray@eblane.com