“Sensation refers to the process of sensing our environment through touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell.  This information is sent to our brains in raw form where perception comes into play.  Perception is the way we interpret these sensations and therefore make sense of everything around us.”

I will write about one individual who perceives something a certain way, different from how the individual perceived it not long ago. This person had a firm perception of how something is (a thoroughly researched, thought, evaluated, discussed … belief), yet perceives it differently at this moment in time.

This person, a language scholar who considered himself a “pure” Spanish speaker, denounced Spanglish. He thought of it as corrupting and endangering the “real” Spanish language. He even perceived the word “Spanglish” as a rather derogatory and patronizing word because to him it seemed like a “bastardized language”. 

After taking the time to read the history and listen to the stories from Spanglish speakers themselves (among diverse communities), this person came to perceive Spanglish to have a culture of its own. He now thinks that, just as Spanish helps individuals identify with their Spanish identity, Spanglish is slowly becoming the poignant realization of the Hispanic-American's identity within the United States of America. Meeting individuals of Hispanic descent just like him, but living in the USA, made this person understand how living in two very "different worlds" requires a new sense of cultural and lingual identity of that particular experience.

This person came to perceive that for Spanglish speakers it’s not about necessarily assimilating Spanish to English (and have it lose its purity), but that for them Spanglish is a need; it is about acculturating and accommodating. He now understands why within many Latino communities the term Spanglish is used in a positive and proud connotation by political leaders, and that it is used by Linguists promoting its use in literary writing.

 Ivonne