Politics, history, culture, and language: Puerto Rican English

         Last Wednesday, February 4, 2015 the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus hosted a conference about lexicon varieties in the English language taking as a base the countries of Puerto Rico, the United States of America (USA), Malta, and Great Britain. Said conference was led by Dr. Manfred Krug of the University of Bamberg in Germany.

            One of the main points presented by Dr. Krug on the conference's subject dealt with the issue of how the culture—I would also add history and politics (especially political history)—influences the way English is spoken across the world. To exemplify this, he explained how the English spoken and written in each of the mentioned countries relates to each other. Maltese English, for example, has more similarities with British English. However, Puerto Rican English (the more pertinent case to my journey) has more similarities to American English.

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            If you’re familiar with Puerto Rico’s current political situation, this may not come as a surprise. To those of you out there who aren’t, don’t fret; remember that part of our journey is to learn new things every day. Puerto Rico has been, since 1952, politically categorized as a Commonwealth of the United States of America. This term establishes that the island is a territory of the United States and emulates the “Mother Country” (as some Puerto Rican’s lie to refer to the USA) in form of government and, subsequently, basically everything else. Nevertheless, it has more political autonomy than an actual state of the nation would have. In addition, long before that, since the nation’s invasion of the island in 1898, the USA--and its cultural influences--has been present in Puerto Rico. In light of these facts, it’s easy to see why American English is so similar to Puerto Rico’s English. Furthermore, as also established  by Dr. Krug in his conference, Puerto Rico’s English is further influenced by the Spanish language due to the fact that, before becoming a US territory, the island was a Spanish colony with its official spoken language being Spanish. After the United States acquired possession of the land, the nation tried to change the language to English, but didn’t succeed. To this day, the main language spoken in Puerto Rico is Spanish. However, English can basically be considered a second official language.

            These political and historical events are the reasons behind the kind of English spoken on the island. Said events have instilled specific cultures and, consequently, languages in Puerto Rico. Then, as would happen in any social process, the influences of both cultures and languages are mixed to create a specific version or variety of the main languages. Therefore, without the political and historical events and cultural influences, varieties in a mother language—in this case English—wouldn’t take place naturally. Just like two fingerprints are never alike, the same language is never alike in different countries; even if they’re part of the nation that brought them the language in the first place.