Word mixture in real life

Although it is easy to accept word mixture that happened in times long past, when we see it happening in our lifetimes, it often occasions discomfort, out of a sense that purity is compromised. But we are simply watching a time-honored process taking place.

A. Spanglish. When a Latino immigrant in the United States says brecas for “brakes,” instead of the original Spanish frenos; or carpeta to refer to a rug rather than, as in original Spanish, a folder; or Voy a manejar mi troca a la marketa for “I’m going to drive my truck to the market,” instead of Voy a manejar mi camión al mercado, speakers of Spanish in Spain, Mexico, and other Latin countries often see this as “polluted” Spanish. But this is as natural, and inevitable, a process as the influx of French words into English under the Norman occupation.

B. English in the days of yore. When the new French words were still processible as “new,” there were even English speakers who decried them as “wrong.” Man of letters John Cheke instructed in 1561 that “Our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangeled with borrowing of other tunges,” following this with substituting mooned for lunatic and similar usages. (Interesting that both pure and mangled came from French!)