English Loan Words in Puerto Rico

ENGLISH in Puerto Rico, a perennial subject for debate and experimentation, has contributed many words to the Spanish customarily spoken there. A detailed account of the English influence would take up not only direct loans, but also literal translations, modifications of Spanish words both semantically and phonetically, and the larger problems of changed grammar, intonation, and stress.' Unable to make such a thorough report, I can offer a list of loan words which seems to reveal the important social and political connections of the American mainland and the island; and I can summarize the local attitude toward the English additions to Puerto Rican Spanish. The words are partly those I observed during the summer of 1952 in newspapers, in conversations, and in radio broadcasts, and partly those reported by students in a Freshman English class which I taught in Puerto Rico. The local attitude is altogether that of my students

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