English Language In Puerto Rico
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Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
schools and is the primary language for all of the U.S. federal agencies in Puerto Rico as one of the two official languages of the
Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the 15th century. Originally a phrase (the common-wealth ...
. English and Spanish were first made co-official languages by the colonial government in 1902, but Spanish remained the primary language of everyday life and local government proceedings. English was removed as an official language in 1991 after the
U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...
had attempted to make English the primary language in order for Puerto Rico to join the union as the 51st state, but it was brought back as the second official language in 1993 and has remained the co-official language of the Commonwealth since then. Spanish remains the most spoken and written language, and the vast majority of Puerto Ricans do not use English regularly other than some borrowed English words in their ordinary Spanish speech.''Translation in Puerto Rico''.
Retrieved 5 March 2013.
Various surveys have found that the majority of Puerto Ricans are not fluent in English."¿Se discrimina al usar el inglés en algunos tribunales de Puerto Rico?"
Prensa Asociada. ''New York Daily News''. 24 February 2009. Archived fro

on 8 March 2013. Retrieved 14 August 2010.
''2005–2009 Population and Housing Narrative Profile for Puerto Rico''.
U.S. Census Narrative Profile. U.S. Census. 2005–2009. Retrieved 19 May 2011.
Out of those age five and older, 76.6% of Puerto Ricans did not speak English "very well," and 94.5% spoke a language other than English at home.


History


Government

In 1902, as part of the Foraker Act, the Official Languages Act was instituted mandating that English and Spanish should be "used indiscriminately" in all official and public activities, with translation provided as necessary. Some interpret this as part of an
Americanization Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology ...
process, others as a necessity for the functioning of the Executive Council in charge of Puerto Rico at the time, of which few or none of the mainland appointees spoke Spanish. After the
Spanish–American War The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the ...
, English was the sole language used by the military government of Puerto Rico, which consisted of officials appointed by the U.S. Government. On 21 February 1902 a law was passed to use both English and Spanish as co-official languages in the government.Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, 12ma Asamblea Legislativa, 1era Sesión Ordinaria, Senado de Puerto Rico: Proyecto del Senado 1 (4 de enero de 1993) When the new political status, the Commonwealth, came into effect in 1952, the
Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...
stated nothing about the official language that would be used by the new government. In 1991, the government of Puerto Rico, under the administration of PPD's
Rafael Hernández Colón Rafael Hernández Colón (October 24, 1936 – May 2, 2019) was a Puerto Rican politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico from 1973 to 1977 and 1985 to 1993 for a total of three terms. An experienced politician, Hernández held the ...
, made Spanish its sole official language through a law that was commonly called the "Spanish-only Law." In recognition of the historical defense of the Spanish language and culture, the
Spanish Monarchy The monarchy of Spain or Spanish monarchy () is the constitutional form of government of Spain. It consists of a hereditary monarch who reigns as the head of state, being the highest office of the country. The Spanish monarchy is constitu ...
awarded Puerto Rico the Principe de Asturias' Prize that same year. However on 4 January 1993, the 12th Legislative Assembly, with the support of the newly elected PNP government of Pedro Rosselló González passed Senate Bill 1, establishing both Spanish and English as official languages of the government of Puerto Rico.


The people

In 2009, the grassroots community cultural organization ''Unidos por Nuestro Idioma'' ("United for our language"), whose goal is "defending Spanish in Puerto Rico", expressed concern that the use of English terms on official road signs reading "Welcome to Guaynabo City", and on mass transit ("City Hall" and "Downtown") as well as police cruisers ("San Juan Police Department") were evidence of the English language replacing Spanish in official use. The group advocates the defense and use of Spanish in Puerto Rico. The group states it is not against the use of English, recognizing the importance of Puerto Ricans learning it, but states that it should not displace Spanish.


Education

The same 21 February 1902 law that ordered the use of both English and Spanish as co-official languages in the government of Puerto Rico also made English the obligatory language of instruction in Puerto Rican high schools. In 1946, Vito Marcantonio introduced legislation to restore Spanish as the language of instruction in Puerto Rican schools asking President Truman to sign the bill, "in the name of the children of Puerto Rico who are being tortured by the prevailing system…to fight cultural chauvinism and to correct past errors." President Truman signed the bill. In 1948, schools were able to return to teaching in the Spanish language, but English was required in schools as a second language. In 1948, as a result of a decree by the Education Commissioner Mariano Villaronga Spanish again not became the language of instruction at schools, for all but the English course. The decree was binding on public schools."Informe Final sobre el Idioma en Puerto Rico" (''Final report about language in Puerto Rico'')
Senate of Puerto Rico, Commission of Education, Science, and Culture. 2 January 2001. Page 457. Submitted by Commission President Hon. Margarita Ostolaza Bey. Retrieved 4 February 2013.


Comparison with other Spanish-speaking territories

Puerto Rico had about a million residents at the time it was ceded by Spain to the United States in 1898. "Since 1898, the heads of the departments of education put forth "seven different language policies" for the teaching of English languages in Puerto Rico schools. By way of contrast, the Spanish-speaking settlers in the vast territories obtained from Mexico after the
Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War (Spanish language, Spanish: ''guerra de Estados Unidos-México, guerra mexicano-estadounidense''), also known in the United States as the Mexican War, and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, ...
were promptly swamped by English-speaking American settlers, which is why the state governments that emerged in those territories all primarily use English today.


Present use


Government

The
official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...
s of the executive branch of government of Puerto Rico are Spanish and English, with English being the primary language. Spanish is, and has been, the only official language of the entire Commonwealth judiciary system, even despite a 1902 English-only language law. All official business of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, however, is conducted in English.


Population at large

Spanish and English are the two official (i.e.,
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
al) languages in Puerto Rico. Spanish is the dominant language of business, education and daily life on the island, spoken by over 95% of the population. That is, Spanish predominates as the
national language '' '' A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection— de facto or de jure—with a nation. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languag ...
. Regardless of the status of English as an official language or not, Spanish continues to be by far the most widely spoken and written language by the Puerto Rican people at large, and the vast majority of Puerto Ricans do not use English regularly other than some loaned English words during their ordinary Spanish-language speech. Various surveys have found that the majority of Puerto Ricans are not fluent in English. Out of those age five and older, 76.6% of Puerto Rico did not speak English "very well", and 94.5% spoke a language other than English at home. According to a study done before 2009 by the
University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Universidad de Puerto Rico;'' often shortened to UPR) is the main List of state and territorial universities in the United States, public university system in the Commonwealth (U.S. i ...
, nine of every ten Puerto Ricans residing in Puerto Rico do not speak English at an advanced level. More recently, according to the ''2005–2009 Population and Housing Narrative Profile for Puerto Rico'', among people at least five years old living in Puerto Rico in 2005–2009, 95 percent spoke a language other than English at home. Of those speaking a language using English at home, 5.5 percent spoke Spanish and more than 99.5 percent spoke the other language; 99 percent reported that they did speak English "very well." The 2000 U.S. Census had reported that 71.9% of Puerto Rico residents spoke English less than "very well".


Education and schooling

Public school instruction in Puerto Rico is conducted entirely in Spanish. In 2012, however, there were pilot programs in about a dozen of over 1,400 public schools aimed at conducting instruction in English only. English is taught as a second language and is a compulsory subject from elementary levels to high school. In 2012, pro-U.S. statehood Governor
Luis Fortuño Luis Guillermo Fortuño Burset (born 31 October 1960) is a Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rican politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, from 2009 to 2013. Fortuño served as the first Secre ...
proposed that all courses in Puerto Rico public schools be taught in English instead of Spanish as they currently are. The proposal met with stiff opposition from the Puerto Rico Teachers Association while others, including former Education Secretary Gloria Baquero, were pessimistic about the success of the governor's plan overall for reasons that ranged from historical to cultural to political.


Linguistic influences


English on Spanish

Because of the island's current relationship with the U.S., English has a substantial presence and is seen in various media outlets including newspapers, magazines, cable TV, radio stations, and commercial signs. As a result of this exposure, Puerto Ricans often mix elements of the English language into their own Spanish language, developing new linguistic forms. This kind of incorporation of English into Puerto Rican Spanish is called
anglicism An anglicism is a word or construction borrowed from English by another language. Due to the global dominance of English in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have become widespread in other languages. Technology-related English ...
, and three prominent forms of anglicism present in Puerto Rico are total linguistic borrowing, semantic borrowing, and syntactical borrowing. Total linguistic borrowing occurs when an English word is used in Spanish with more or less the same pronunciation. A few examples in which the complete English word has been borrowed are: flash light, Girl Scout, and weekend. The standard Spanish words for these are linterna, exploradora, and fin de semana, respectively. Examples in which the English words or terms are used while pronounced according to the native rules are seen for the English word/term to park, where it is said and pronounced as parquear, instead of the South American/Caribbean-Spanish word for to park which is estacionar. Other examples of this are the English word pamphlet, said as panfleto instead of folleto, and the English word muffler, said as mofle instead of silenciador. In semantic borrowing, the meaning of a Spanish word is altered or changed because of its similarity to an English word. For example, the Spanish word romance refers to a poetic literary composition, however, it has been given the English meaning of the English word romance. The Spanish word for romance is actually idilio. Another example of this is the Spanish word bloques, which means "building blocks", but is given the English meaning of "street blocks". The actual South American/Caribbean-Spanish word that means "street blocks" is cuadras. In syntactical borrowing, Spanish words are used in an English sentence structure. For example, most Spanish dialects are
pro-drop A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite ...
, meaning personal pronoun subjects are frequently omitted. Puerto Rican Spanish tends to use pronouns: "I run" is often said as "yo corro" instead of as "corro". Another example: "He has cordially invited his friend" is often said as "Él ha cordialmente invitado a su amigo" instead of "Él ha invitado cordialmente a su amigo" or "Ha invitado cordialmente a su amigo."
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
has phonologically influenced rhotics in Puerto Rican Spanish, wherein syllable-final can be realized as , aside from , , and For example, ''"verso" (verse) becomes , aside from , , or , "''invierno''" (winter) becomes , aside from , , or , and "''parlamento''" (parliament) becomes , aside from , , or []. In word-final position, is usually: * a trill, a tap, an approximant, , or elided when followed by a consonant or a pause, as in ''amo'' ''paterno'' ('paternal love'); * a tap, an approximant, or when followed by a vowel-initial word, as in ''amo'' ''eterno'' ('eternal love').


Cultural issues


2012 Republican primary

In 2012, U.S. presidential candidate
Rick Santorum Richard John Santorum Sr. ( ; born May 10, 1958) is an American politician, attorney, author, and political commentator who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007. He was the Senate's Chairman of the United Sta ...
caused a firestorm during the runup to the Puerto Rican Republican primary by stating that if Puerto Rico opted to become a state, it would have to make English its primary language. As the ''New York Times'' reported: Santorum opponent
Mitt Romney Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and retired politician. He served as a United States Senate, United States senator from Utah from 2019 to 2025 and as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 ...
's campaign issued a statement contrasting his position on the issue with Santorum's. "Puerto Rico currently recognizes both English and Spanish as the official languages of the commonwealth," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. "Gov. Romney believes that English is the language of opportunity and supports efforts to expand English proficiency in Puerto Rico and across America. However, he would not, as a prerequisite for statehood, require that the people of Puerto Rico cease using Spanish."


See also

* Puerto Rican Spanish *
History of Puerto Rico The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the Ortoiroid people before 430 BC. At the time of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1493, the dominant indigenous culture was that of the Taíno. The Taíno people's num ...
*
English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
*
Caribbean English Caribbean English (CE, CarE) is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and most countries on the Caribbean coasts of Central America and South America. Caribbean English is influenced by, but is distinct to ...


References


Further reading

* Muniz-Arguelles, Luis
''The Status of Languages in Puerto Rico.''
University of Puerto Rico. 1986. Page 466. Retrieved 23 November 2012. * ''Pueblo v. Tribunal Superior'', 92 D.P.R. 596 (1965). Translation taken from the English text, 92 P.R.R. 580 (1965), pp. 588–589. * Lopez-Baralt, Negron. ''Pueblo v. Tribunal Superior: Espanol: Idioma del proceso judicial'', 36 Revista Juridica de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. 396 (1967). * Vientos, Gaston. "Informe del Procurador General sobre el idioma", 36 Rev. Col. Ab. (P.R.) 843 (1975).


External links


"Informe Final sobre el Idioma en Puerto Rico" (''Final report about language in Puerto Rico'')
Senate of Puerto Rico, Commission of Education, Science, and Culture, 2 January 2001, submitted by Commission President Hon. Margarita Ostolaza Bey
Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000 Census 2000 Brief
{{English dialects by continent Languages attested from the 1890s
Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...
Languages of Puerto Rico English language in the United States
Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...