Dialect of English spoken in the Southwestern United States
Chicano English
, or
Mexican-American English
, is a dialect of
American English
spoken primarily by
Mexican Americans
(sometimes known as
Chicanos
), particularly in the
Southwestern United States
ranging from
Texas
to
California
,
[1]
as well as in
Chicago
.
Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with
Spanglish
, which is a mixing of
Spanish
and
English
; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of English, not a "learner English" or
interlanguage
. It is even the native dialect of some speakers who know little to no Spanish, or have no Mexican heritage.
Naming issues
[
edit
]
Many people who speak Chicano English do not themselves identify with the term "Chicano." For example, none of
Brumbaugh (2017)
's eight Hispanic participants identified with the term. Despite this, Chicano English remains the most widely used and recognized term for this language variety. Some studies on Chicano English have used terms such as "Mexican-American English", "Latino English", and "Mexican Heritage English".
History
[
edit
]
Communities of Spanish-speaking
Tejanos
,
Nuevomexicanos
,
Californios
, and
Mission Indians
have existed in the American Southwest since the area was part of
New Spain
's
Provincias Internas
. Most of the historically Hispanophone populations eventually
adopted English
as their first language, as part of their overall
Americanization
.
A high level of
Mexican
immigration
began in the 20th century, with the
exodus
of
refugees
from the
Mexican Revolution
(1910) and the linkage of Mexican railroads to the US (Santa Ana, 1991). The
Hispanic
population is one of the largest and fastest-growing
ethnic groups
in the United States. In the
Los Angeles
metropolitan area alone, they form 45% of the population (roughly 6 million out of 13.3 million in 2014). The result of the migration and the segregated social conditions of the immigrants in California made an ethnic community that is only partly assimilated to the matrix
Anglo
(
European American
) community. It retains symbolic links with Hispanic culture (as well as real links from continuing immigration), but linguistically, it is mostly an English-speaking, not a Spanish-speaking, community. However, its members have a distinctive accent.
The phonological inventory of Chicano English speakers appears to be identical to that of the local Anglo community. For example, long and short vowels are clearly distinguished, as is the English vowel
/
æ
/
. Speculatively, it seems that the main differences between the Chicano accent and the local Anglo accent are that the Chicanos are not always participating in ongoing
phonetic
changes in Anglo communities, such as the raising of
/æ/
that characterizes Anglo
Inland Northern
speakers but not necessarily Hispanic ones.
Because Spanish-speaking people migrated from other parts of the Hispanophone world to the Southwest, Chicano English is now the customary dialect of many Hispanic Americans of diverse national heritages in the Southwest. As Hispanics are of diverse racial origins, Chicano English serves as the distinction from non-Hispanic and non-Latino Americans in the Southwest.
A common stereotype about Chicano English speakers, similar to stereotypes about other racial/ethnic minorities in the United States, is that Chicano English speakers are not proficient in English and are generally uneducated. This
language ideology
is linked to negative perceptions about Chicano Americans and Hispanics in general.
[6]
Some of these stereotypes can be seen in popular films that depict the Chicano lifestyles and dialects. Most of these films take place in Southern California.
[
citation needed
]
Some of the more popular films where this can be noted are
Mi Familia
,
American Me
and
Blood In Blood Out
. These films depict speakers of the Southern California Chicano dialect and also some of the stereotypes that are associated with Chicanos.
Phonology
[
edit
]
Prosody
[
edit
]
The rhythm of Chicano English tends to have an intermediate
prosody
between a Spanish-like
syllable timing
, with syllables taking up roughly the same amount of time with roughly the same amount of stress, and
General American English
's
stress timing
, with only stressed syllables being evenly timed.
Chicano English also has a complex set of nonstandard English intonation patterns, such as pitch rises on significant words in the middle and at the end of sentences as well as initial-sentence high pitches, which are often accompanied by the lengthening of the affected syllables.
When needing extra emphasis to certain words, there is the use of rising glides. Rising glides can be used multiple times in one sentence. On compound nouns and verbs, major stress is on the second word. Rising glides can occur at any time and at either monosyllabic or polysyllabic words.
[9]
Consonants
[
edit
]
Certain Chicano English consonant pronunciations are similar to
African-American Vernacular English
.
- Chicano English often exhibits
th-stopping
. That is, /ð/ sounds may be replaced with /d/ sounds, as in "dese" and "dem" instead of "these" and "them".
[10]
- t/d deletion occurs at the end of a word when those consonants are part of a
consonant cluster
. For example, "missed" becomes "miss".
[10]
- /z/
can undergo
devoicing
in all environments:
[?isi]
for
easy
and
[w?s]
for
was
.
Certain consonants show Spanish-language influence:
- Chicano speakers may realize
/v/
bilabially, as a stop
[
b
]
or a fricative/approximant
[
β
]
, with
very
being pronounced
[?b??i]
or
[?β??i]
.
- /l/
is never
velarized
and so it is pronounced similarly to Spanish
/l/
, which also lacks velarization, in all positions.
Vowels
[
edit
]
Mexican-Americans show variable participation in local sound shifts, like the
Northern Cities Shift
of the Great Lakes or the
California Shift
in the American West.
Reduction of unstressed vowels
is less common in Chicano English than in Anglo varieties.
[10]
While a lack of pre-nasal
/æ/ raising
is often characteristic of Chicano English, in
El Paso
, /æ/ raising is found among both Anglos and Hispanics.
The
cot?caught merger
is complete, approximately to
[??]
.
[12]
For younger speakers, however, the vowel is retracted to
[
?
]
by the Californian Vowel Shift.
The
salary?celery merger
occurs, with
/æ/
and
/?/
merging before
/l/
.
[14]
This is found in Los Angeles, northern New Mexico and Albuquerque, and in El Paso.
[16]
[17]
/?ŋ/
is pronounced as
[in]
, making
showing
sound like
show-een
.
[10]
This feature has since spread to other varieties of California English.
[18]
The distinction between
/?/
and
/i/
before
liquid consonants
is often reduced in some Chicano accents, making
fill
and
feel
homophones
. That is also a feature of general California English.
[19]
/u/
is slightly fronted, as in most American and many
British
dialects, but they are less fronted than in mainstream California English.
[20]
Some realizations of
/i/
,
/e?/
,
/o?/
, and other long vowels are pronounced as
monophthongs
. That may be an effect of Spanish, but other American English dialects (
Minnesota
, and
Wisconsin
, for example) also show monophthongization of such vowels, which are more commonly
diphthongs
in English.
Also, such vowels are underlyingly long monophthongs so the general effect thus is to simplify the system of phonetic implementation, compared to the
/?i,
e?,
o?,
?u/
of many other English dialects.
[21]
Variation
[
edit
]
A fair to strong degree of variation exists in the
phonology
of Chicano English. Its precise boundaries are difficult to delineate, perhaps because of its separate origins of the dialect in the Southwest and the Midwest.
[22]
One subvariety, referenced as
Tejano
English,
is used mainly in southern
Texas
. California subvarieties are also widely studied, especially that of the
Los Angeles metropolitan area
,
[22]
such as
East Los Angeles
Chicano English, which includes elements of
African American Vernacular English
and
California English
.
[14]
New Mexico
[
edit
]
One type of Hispanic English, a sub-type under Chicano English of the American West, is specific to north-central
New Mexico
. A recent study found that native English?Spanish bilinguals in New Mexico have a lower/shorter/weaker
voice-onset time
than that typical of native monolingual English speakers.
[24]
Northern New Mexico
Hispanic English, transcending age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, has been reported as having its own vowel shift as follows:
/i/
is
[?]
before a final
/l/
(so
feel
merges to the sound of
fill
),
/u/
is
[?]
before any consonant (so
suit
merges to the sound of
soot
),
/?/
is
[æ]
before a final
/l/
(so
shell
merges to the sound
of
shall
), and
/?/
is
[??]
before any consonant (so
cup
merges to the sound of something like
cop
).
[25]
That said, a later study examining the speech of college students in Albuquerque failed to find evidence of
/u/
being laxed to
[?]
or of
/?/
becoming lowered to
[??]
.
[26]
East Los Angeles
[
edit
]
This form of Chicano English is predominantly spoken in East Los Angeles and has been influenced by the
California English
of coastal European-Americans and
African-American Vernacular English
.
Notable native speakers
[
edit
]
- Gloria Anzaldua
— "I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan American University, I and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents."
[27]
- Cesar Chavez
— "His speech was soft, sweetened by a Spanish accent"
[28]
- George Lopez
— "Chicanos are their own breed. Even though we're born in the United States, we still have accents."
[29]
- Cheech Marin
— "a hint of a Chicano accent"
[30]
— "a Spanish accent or stereotypical East Los Angeles cadence like Cheech Marin"
[31]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Newman, Michael. "
The New York Latino English Project Page
."
Queens College
. Accessed 2015. "Almost all recent research on Latino English in the US has been done in the Southwest, particularly California. NYLE [
New York Latino English
] differs in two respects from these forms."
- ^
Fought, Carmen (January 2002).
Chicano English in Context
. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
ISBN
0333986385
.
- ^
Penfield, Joyce (January 1985).
Chicano English: An Ethnic Contact Dialect
. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 48?49.
ISBN
90-272-4865-6
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Spanish & Chicano English"
.
PBS
.
- ^
Maddieson & Godinez, 1985, p. 45
- ^
a
b
Guerrero, Jr., Armando. (2014). " '
You Speak Good English for Being Mexican
[
permanent dead link
]
' East Los Angeles Chicano/a English: Language & Identity."
Voices
, 2(1). ucla_spanport_voices_22795.
- ^
Penfield, Joyce (1985).
Chicano English: an ethnic contact dialect
. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 45.
ISBN
9789027248657
.
- ^
Williams, Lance Levi (2010).
/?/ and /e/ in El Paso English
(MA). University of Texas at El Paso.
- ^
Eckert, Penelope
(March 2008).
"Where do ethnolects stop?"
.
International Journal of Bilingualism
.
12
(1?2): 25?42.
doi
:
10.1177/13670069080120010301
.
ISSN
1367-0069
.
S2CID
35623478
.
- ^
Metcalf, Allan (1979).
Chicano English
(PDF)
. Language in Education: Theory and Practice, 21. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
- ^
Maddieson & Godinez, 1985, p. 56
- ^
"Impressionistic Transcriptions"
. Archived from the original on May 14, 2006
. Retrieved
May 8,
2011
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link
)
- ^
a
b
Santa Ana & Bayley 2004
, p. 419
- ^
Balukas, Colleen; Koops, Christian (2014). "Spanish-English bilingual voice onset time in spontaneous code-switching".
International Journal of Bilingualism
.
19
(4): 423?443.
doi
:
10.1177/1367006913516035
.
ISSN
1367-0069
.
S2CID
144159300
.
- ^
Hernandez, Pilar (1993).
"Vowel shift in Northern New Mexico Chicano English"
.
Mester
.
22
(2): 227?234.
doi
:
10.5070/M3222014266
.
- ^
Brumbaugh, Susan; Koops, Christian (December 1, 2017). "Vowel Variation in Albuquerque, New Mexico".
Publication of the American Dialect Society
.
102
(1). 31-57. p. 49.
doi
:
10.1215/00031283-4295200
.
- ^
Anzaldua, Gloria.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. p. 75-76.
- ^
Chavez, Cesar (1975). "Preface."
Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa
. University of Minnesota Press. p. xxi.
- ^
Lopez, George (2004).
Why You Crying?: My Long, Hard Look at Life, Love, and Laughter
. Simon and Schuster. p. 6.
- ^
Van Matre, Lynne (1985). "
Cheech and Chong Turn A New Leaf: They're Going Straight--almost--for Video
."
Chicago Tribune
.
- ^
Vallejo, Jody (2012).
Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class
. Stanford University Press. p. 106.
Sources
[
edit
]
- Bayley, Robert; Santa Ana, Otto (2004). "Chicano English: morphology and syntax". In Kortmann, Bernd;
Schneider, Edgar W.
;
Burridge, Kate
; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.).
A handbook of varieties of English
. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 374?390.
doi
:
10.1515/9783110197181-100
.
ISBN
3-11-017532-0
.
- Briggs, Charles L. Competence in Performance: The Creativity of Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art. University of Pennsylvania Press conduct and communication series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, (1988).
- Brumbaugh, Susan (2017).
Anglo and Hispanic Vowel Variation in New Mexican English
(PhD). University of New Mexico
. Retrieved
March 15,
2022
.
- Castaneda, L. V. and Ulanoff, S. H. (2007). Examining Chicano English at school. In C. Gitsaki (Ed.).
Language and Languages: Global and Local Tensions,
(pp. 328?345). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Fought, Carmen. (2003).
Chicano English in context
. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Galindo, Letticia D. (1987). Linguistic influence and variation of the English of Chicano adolescents in Austin, Texas. (PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).
- Liu, Jennifer
Anchor dissects American English
Stanford Daily, February 23, 2005
- Maddieson, Ian, and Manuel Godinez Jr. "Vowel differences between Chicano and General Californian English."
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
1985, no. 53 (May 1985): 43-58. Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 15, 2015).
- Ornstein-Galicia, J. (1988).
Form and Function in Chicano English
. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers.
- Penfield, Joyce. Chicano English: An Ethnic Contact Dialect. Varieties of English around the world, General series; v. 7. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co., (1985).
- Sanchez, Rosaura. Chicano Discourse: Sociohistoric Perspectives. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, (1983).
- Santa Ana, Otto. (1993). Chicano English and the Chicano language setting.
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences
,
15
(1), 1-35.
- Santa Ana, Otto; Bayley, Robert (2004). "Chicano English: phonology". In Kortmann, Bernd;
Schneider, Edgar W.
;
Burridge, Kate
; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.).
A handbook of varieties of English
. Vol. 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 417?434.
doi
:
10.1515/9783110197181-030
.
ISBN
3-11-017532-0
.
- Veatch, Thomas
Los Angeles Chicano English
(2005)
- Wolfram, Walt. (1974).
Sociolinguistic aspects of assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City
. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
- A Handbook of Varieties of English
[1]
- Guerrero, Armando. “'You Speak Good English for Being Mexican' East Los Angeles Chicano/a English: Language & Identity.” Voices, 4 June 2014, escholarship.org/uc/item/94v4c08k.
- Santa Ana, Otto. “Chicano English and the Nature of the Chicano Language Setting.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 1 Feb. 1993, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07399863930151001.
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
Europe
| |
---|
Americas
| |
---|
Oceania
| |
---|
Africa
| |
---|
Asia
|
|
---|
Related
| |
---|
|
---|
|
North American
| Caribbean
| |
---|
Central American
| |
---|
|
---|
South American
| |
---|
European
| |
---|
Ethnic groups
| |
---|
Religious groups
| |
---|
By region
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|
|