Spanglish

One of my favorite blogger, romanika, wrote an interesting entry about the usage of Spanglish.

-Hey, where have you been? No te he visto all day.
-Ah, it's just that I was en la house de mi dad... and well, I  
 didn't come back hasta ahorita.
-Y tu dad, ¿qué te dijo? Is he coming o qué?
-No sé. Maybe sí. Le voy a decir que we should go somewhere 
 fun today.
-Yeah, tell him... porque tomorrow me voy con mi mom.

Also noted was the keen eye detecting the usage of foreign words in the grammar.

One woman was interviewed, and as she described a mix-up with a goverment agency, she stated: Los papeles no matcheaban. Then, a professional on the field, of Hispanic background, was asked a few things on the subject, and he said: Las personas vienen, siempre se introducen, son buenas... .

In the first case, we find "matcheaban" from English "to match". The frase translates to "The papers did not match". This woman here feels it's easier simply to make the verb look like Spanish on analogy with cognates in both languages, for example, as in the case of to describe and describir. The same thing occurred the man in this interview who used introducir from English to introduce instead of the usual presentarse. What he wanted to say was People come, always introduce themselves, they're good [people]. In Spanish, however, the verb introducir means to introduce but by means of putting something inside of something else. What he should have said was: Las personas vienen, siempre se presentan... .

Romanika vividly writes the cause how it is assembled during the construction of the sentence.

If I could describe Spanglish in one word, it would be spontaneous. In the same manner that someone might say Le voy a decir que we should go somewhere, he could say instead I'm going to tell him que deberíamos ir somewhere; or, porque tomorrow me voy a la house and because manaña I'm going to the house. It is the moment that dictates what is going to be said, in what language, and in which order.

Desultor

Desultor made an interesting experiment shown below:

-----------------------------   -------
string 	                        # hits
-----------------------------   -------
"if worse comes to worse" 	10,200
"if worst comes to worst" 	6,640
"if worse comes to worst" 	3,570
"if worse come to worse" 	404
"if worst comes to worse" 	404
"if worst come to worst" 	246
"if worse come to worst" 	66
"if worst come to worse" 	6

I didn't write the correct answer, might turn out a good game, though. Figure out the correct phrase.

Dilemma

Not sure how will I handle this, but it looks like there is going to be a big scheduling issue about to surface next week. Firstly, one client called up, said they wanted to change an existing feature. I told them it will require coding time which will cost them X amount of dollars. Secondly, next week I will be working for a project down in Southern California(SoCal). Lastly, next week, my favorite company wants to thrash the Learning Management System and design a new one from scratch. New money, probably coming from the Angels made them think a new and better LMS would be the way to go.

What should I do now? I don't know. Maybe I should raise my rates and see how they will react. Or, find a subcon and let them do it.