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Article snippet: ALBUQUERQUE — Something about the languages we speak fascinates me. Roaming around Latin America as a correspondent for more than a decade, I wrote about Palenquero, a Creole language kept alive by descendants of runaway slaves in northern Colombia; Sranan Tongo, Suriname’s lingua franca; Papiamentu, the vibrant language of Curaçao; and even learned how to say “Mba’éichapa?” — How are you? — in Guaraní, the indigenous language that holds sway in Paraguay. When I returned to the United States in July, I wondered what it would be like to live in a country where the Spanish language is so politicized that some speakers are facing new hostility. I was puzzled as to why Spanish seemed so threatening in an English-speaking superpower. I asked myself, what does the future hold for Spanish in the United States and around the world? Absorbed by these questions, I found myself savoring my re-encounter with Spanish as I set out to write about the language of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriela Mistral and Juan Felipe Herrera. I spent the last six years in Portuguese-speaking Brazil and relish speaking Portuguese every day — my wife and kids are Brazilian — but having the opportunity to speak a lot of Spanish again has provided me with a new glimpse into how languages, and societies, evolve. I grew up speaking some New Mexican Spanish, but just enough to get by. I was envious of classmates who spoke it superbly. More than anything, though, we spoke Spanglish, the blend of Spanish... Link to the full article to read more