Language in the USA Part 5 ppsx

Spanish in the Northeast 193 great bulk of the vocabulary of the Caribbean, however, is shared with the entire Spanish-speaking world. The frequency with which Caribbean vocabulary items are heard throughout the Northeast has led to some lexical leveling. In New York City, for example, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Colombians maintain their regional dialect, especially for in-group conversations, but almost everyone has picked up words from one or more of the other dialects (Zentella 1990a). Those that are not easily forgotten are learned the hard way, as a result of embarrassing moments caused when a common term, like the words for “insect” or “papaya,” turn out to have a taboo meaning in another dialect. Words that are not taboo, but are very common, become popular in almost everyone’s Spanish. If you want to find a local busorgrocery, ask about la guagua and la bodega;ifyou are offered a china, expect an orange – not a Chinese female; and if you hear ch ´ evere, something is ‘terrific.’ A few Caribbean words become generalized, but Caribbean Spanish speakers often make an effort to avoid or translate regionalisms that Latinos from other regions may not understand, and the same courtesy is extended to them. Ultimately, the Spanish vocabulary that is heard in the Northeast descends from the Ta´ıno–African–Spanish mix that took place five hundred years ago in the Caribbean, which is now mixing with dialects from other parts of the Spanish-speaking world. This inter-dialectal mix is further enriched by words that are borrowed from English, as when the competing ways of saying “kite” in at least four dialects of Spanish are neutralized by the widespread adoption of kite (Zentella 1990). The regional origin of Spanish speakers is given away by intonation patterns and pronunciation, even before they are identified by lexical items. The way each group canta ‘sings’ – referring to the customary rise and fall of voices in declarative sentences, or questions, or exclamations, and so on – is distinctive. Both the specific “songs,” or intonation contours, and the consonants and vowels of the Spanish of an area, are rooted in the indigenous languages of the original inhabitants, the dialect(s) from Spain spoken by those who settled the area, and the slaves’ African languages. Little is known about Ta´ıno and other Indian languages of the Caribbean because the native peoples of that region were vir- tually exterminated by the middle of the sixteenth century. As a result, scholars believe that the impact of Indian languages on the Spanish of the area was limited. To replace the Indians, Africans were enslaved in large numbers to carry on with the work, especially in the cane fields of lowland areas. Reportedly, the Africans learned Spanish and accommodated quickly to their European mas- ters’ culture (Rosario 1970: 13), but stigmatized pronunciations are often falsely assumed to have originated with them. Lipski (1994: 96) maintains that speakers of west African languages, particularly KiKongo, Kimbundu/Umbundu, Yoruba, Efik, Igbo, Ewe/Fon, and Akan, accelerated or reinforced Spanish pronunciations that corresponded to their own, but they originated very few features, which are now rare. As for the origin of the Spaniards who settled the Caribbean colonies, immigration figures point to southern Spain (Andalusia), as do the characteristics 194 ana celia zentella of present day Andalusian Spanish. The colonists and sailors who came from Andalusia had a greater impact on Spanish in the Caribbean and ports all along the coasts of Central and South America than did speakers of Castilian, the principal dialect of north central Spain (Canfield 1981, Cotton and Sharp 1988). The Castilian-speaking clerics and administrators sent by the crown to the predominantly inland seats of power left their mark on the Spanish of those cities – Mexico, Lima, and Cuzco, for example – as did the principal Indian languages and cultures that were not exterminated. In any case, as is true of the dialects of Latin America and Spain today, Andalusian and Castilian varieties of Spanish were enough alike during colonization that “few Castilians or Andalusians had to significantly modify their speech in order to communicate with one another” (Lipski 1994: 46). The regular and extended contact of Andalusian Spanish with African languages and with the remnants of Indian languages and cultures in Latin Amer- ica’s ports during the colonial era explains why dialects in very distant countries, for example, Guayaquil, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, resemble each other today. “Coastal/lowland dialects show a homogeneity over vast geographi- cal expanses . . . ,” and “the phonetic similarities between coastal Latin American Spanish and Andalusian Spanish are striking ”(Lipski 1994: 8). The expanse referred to includes Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Mexico, Central America’s Pacific coast, Venezuela, and the Pacific coast of South America from Colombia to northern Chile. The phonetic similarities that speakers from this region share in their informal, popular Spanish, and that distinguish them from speakers raised in the interior highlands of Mexico, Central and South America, are few and primarily affect consonants. The principal phonetic markers, which are heard every day in the Northeast, are the following: (1) /s/ (which may be written with an <s> or <z>) may be aspirated (pronounced like the /h/ in her)ordeleted altogether when it is at the end of a syllable or a word: andaluz /andaluh/ or /andalu/ ‘Andalusian’ estos coste ˜ nos /ehtoh kohteñoh/ or /eto koteño/ ‘these coastal people’ (2) the letters <g> (before <e>, <i>), and <j> are aspirated, not pronounced as a fricative, as in the German pronunciation of “Bach”: gente joven /hente hoven/ ‘young people’ (3) /-n/ at the end of words sounds like the final sound in “sing” /si ŋ/. It may be deleted and the vowel that remains becomes nasalized: sin ton ni son /si ŋ toŋ ni soŋ/or/s˜ıtõnisõ/ ‘without rhyme or reason’ (4) syllable-final and word-final /l/ and /r/ are often difficult to distinguish, particularly in the speech of the least educated. (Many Asians who speak English as a second language also neutralize /l/ and /r/, but Spanish in the Northeast 195 in Spanish this occurs in final position only.) Sometimes final /l/ is realized as [r] but, more frequently, syllable final /r/ is realized as [l], for example: delantal /delantar/ ‘apron’; reportar /repoltal/ ‘to report’ (5) /d/ between vowels is deleted: almidonado /almionao/ ‘starched’. Of these variations, the deletion or aspiration of syllable-final or word-final /-s/ (see (1), hereafter referred to as “final /s/”) is most commented on, and the debate reveals contrasting cultural attitudes toward the pronunciation of /s/. Spanish speakers who are not from the coastal areas of Latin America criticize the aspiration or loss of /s/ so mercilessly that I refer to the phenomenon as “the tyranny of –s.” Their insistence that “the best Spanish” is one that pronounces every word as it is written is their basis for arguing that Colombia deserves that honor. Ignorant of the Andalusian origin and African strengthening of the aspirated or deleted final /s/ in Caribbean Spanish – or perhaps because of it – and of the Castil- ian and Indian roots of its maintenance in Bogotá and other highland dialects, they view deletion or aspiration as the sloppy habits of low-status speakers. In fact, the widespread instability of final /s/ throughout the coastal areas and, in particular, the high rates of aspiration among Cubans and Puerto Ricans and of deletion among Dominicans (Terrell 1982a, b) are maintained as a consequence of negative attitudes towards the stressing of final /s/, especially in informal speech. In formal settings, like judicial proceedings or poetry readings, educated speakers in the Caribbean tend to pronounce final /s/. But otherwise, rapid fire pronunciations of final /s/ communicate vanity, self-importance, or – in males – effeminacy (Rosario 1970: 81, Nuñez Cedeño 1980). Dominicans, in particular, ridicule compatriots who emphasize final /-s/, accusing them of “hablando fiSno,” (‘talking fine,’ with an intrusive /s/ in fino)orof“comiendoeSpaguettiS” (‘eating spaghetti,’ said stressing each /s/). In the Northeast, then, the Caribbean preference for the aspiration or deletion of final /s/, which has meaningful cultural implications for them, is stigmatized by speakers from Colombia and the interior regions of South America. Since many of the critics enjoy higher academic, racial, and socioeconomic status than those they criticize, speakers of Caribbean Spanish suffer heightened feelings of linguistic insecurity, which encourage the loss of Spanish and exacerbate their social and educational problems (Zentella 1990a). The irony is that while the aspiration or deletion of final /s/ is discredited, the aspiration of /s/ at the beginning of a syllable or between vowels (hereafter referred to as “initial /s/”), which occurs in the central highlands of Colombia but not in the Caribbean, is ignored. Even highly educated cachacos (Colombians from the central highlands) say /pahamos/ instead of /pasamos/ for pasamos ‘we pass,’ and aspirate the first /s/ in words with more than one, for example, asesino /ahesino/ ‘assassin.’ In fact, “. . . central Colombia is unique in the Spanish-speaking world in reducing /s/ more frequently in syllable-initial than in syllable-final position” (Lipski 1994: 209). Nor is Colombia free of final /s/ aspiration or deletion, both 196 ana celia zentella of which are common in the coste ˜ no ‘coastal’ Spanish spoken in Cartagena and Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast, and along the Pacific coast. The details about consonants and vowels in Spanish dialects are important because they prove that judgments concerning linguistic correctness are actually social judgments, that is, they are not based on linguistic facts but on group fears, involving class and racial prejudices. An educated Latino elite can attack pronunciations of the poor that deviate from the written standard, but ignore their owndeviations conveniently. It is not the aspiration or deletion of /s/ in itself that is “good” or “bad,” but the way it is evaluated by those in authority. The /r/ after vowels suffers a similar fate in Northeast English. Pronouncing hunter or New York without the /r/, for example, is stereotyped as working-class “New Yawkese” and looked down upon. But /r/ after vowels is also deleted in the “King’s English” in England, which enjoys high prestige, and in New England the Kennedys and other wealthy families are proud to be alumni of Ha:vad. The fact that the same feature can be a source of humiliation in one community and a source of pride in another proves that rules about how to speak “correctly” always favor the more powerful. When Latinos are asked to imitate members of their own or other Spanish- speaking groups, they produce the same few items consistently. The stereotypical markers that identify Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Mexicans sometimes incite feelings of linguistic incompetence, but most continue to be popular because they communicate the uniqueness of each group. The velar R in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS): arrastrar la doble rr In PRS, the pairs corro ‘I run’ and cojo ‘I take,’ Ram ´ on (man’s name) and jam ´ on ‘ham’ can sound similar. The Spanish trilled r, which is written as a single <r> at the beginning of words and as a double <rr> in the middle of words, sounds like a drum roll in most varieties of Spanish. Speakers of PRS sometimes have a velar R instead, akin to the raspy German ch in Bach, which some refer to as arrastrar la doble rr ‘to drag the double <rr>.’ Sometimes it can be less raspy and sound closer to the English <h> as in ‘her,’ in which case the distinction between <rr> or initial <r> and <j> may be lost, as in corro and cojo, Ram ´ on and jam ´ on. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the velar R was more prevalent in the northwest and southeast of the island, and among the lower working class. By the 1960s it had spread to about half the population in all municipalities and social classes (Navarro Tomás 1948, Rosario 1970); urban sprawl since then has undoubtedly extended its domain. Velar R is often regarded as unique to PRS, but Canfield (1981: 44) cites it for the extreme southeast of the Dominican Republic, and Varela (1992: 54) assures us that it is “un h ´ abito ling ¨ u ´ ıstico general”‘ageneral linguistic habit’ in Cuban Spanish. Negative attitudes toward velar R in Spanish run high and contribute to its users’ feelings of linguistic insecurity, but that is not the case in other languages that have a similar R, for example, French and Brazilian Portuguese. It may be that the trilled /r/ in Spanish is in the process of Spanish in the Northeast 197 becoming more like the velar R of other Romance languages, with Puerto Ricans and other Caribbean Spanish speakers in the vanguard of that change. Syllable final /r/ and /1/ in Dominican Spanish: hablar con la i El Cibao, the impoverished agricultural region of the Dominican Republic that was home to the bulk of Dominicans now in the USA, is stereotyped as replac- ing the /r/ in syllable final position with /i/, for example, cantar> cantai ‘to sing,’ cuarto> cuaito ‘room,’ ‘money’ (this is called “vocalization”). Because, as explained earlier, final /r/ and /l/ can be neutralized in Caribbean Spanish – or /r/ can be realized as /l/ – some working-class speakers extend the vocalization of /r/ to words with an /l/ at the end of a syllable, for example, maldito > maid- ito ‘damned,’ capital > capitai ‘capital city.’ These pronunciations, which were heard throughout the Caribbean up to the nineteenth century, are archaisms that remain in the north central Cibao region, particularly in the speech of its older, less educated, and more rural inhabitants (Jorge Morel 1974). Since many poor immigrants came from that economically hard hit area, hablar con la i ‘to talk with the i’ is an expression mistakenly used to stereotype all Dominicans. Syllable- final /r/ and /l/ are unstable in much of the Caribbean, but they undergo different changes in different regions of the Dominican Republic. The word carne ‘meat,’ for example, can be pronounced four different ways in the Dominican Repub- lic: North /kaine/, Capital area in South /kalne/, Southeast /kanne/, Southwest /karne/ (Canfield 1981: 44). Educated speakers in all areas maintain the traditional Spanish pronunciation, the one favored in the Southwest. Cuban Spanish gemination Cubans are known for dropping syllable final /l/ and /r/ and doubling the following consonant (a process called gemination), for example, porque > /po kke/ (where  indicates a long vowel), Alberto > /abbetto/. The island’s regional and class variations are not represented fully in the USA because the early post-revolution immigrants were predominantly middle class, and because Cubans have not had regular contact with the dialects of their island for forty years as a result of hostile US–Cuba relations. No communities in the Northeast can match Dade County – where Miami is – in size, power, or the viability of its Spanish. But many of the darker skinned Cubans who left Cuba beginning in 1980 did not feel welcome in Miami, and some chose to join the Cubans in New Jersey and New York. As a result, “the majority of Cuban nonwhites live in the northeastern Unites States, where the reputation for racial tolerance is better than in the South” (Boswell and Curtis 1984: 103). The Spanish of the late twentieth-century arrivals revealed recent innovations in Cuban Spanish, especially in the speech of males of “low socioeconomic extraction.” Guitart (1992) claims that these Cheos (a nickname like “Mac”), round the front vowels /i/ and /e/ and lower their pitch, and that these features represent a “defiant Macho talk” that separates its speakers from 198 ana celia zentella middle-class Cubans. In contrast, Varela (1992) maintains that exiles from all regions of Cuba and all three immigration waves do not differ markedly in their pronunciation, except for the influence of English on those born in the USA. But Varela’s study is limited to residents of Miami and New Orleans, and it does not specify the socioeconomic strata included. Varela believes that Miami Cuban Spanish in general differs in fluency, pronunciation, and vocabulary from that spoken by Cubans in New York and other states, but those differences have yet to be studied. Mixtecan Mexican Spanish vowels The majority of Mexicans who live in the Northeast come from the Mixteca region of Mexico, specifically the states of Puebla, Oaxaca, and Guerrero (Valdés de Montano and Smith 1994). Whereas coastal Mexican Spanish deletes final /–s/, as occurs in the Caribbean, the Mixteca conserves final consonants. Instead, all of central Mexico is known for frequently reducing unstressed vowels, so that pues ‘well then’ is rendered as /ps/, and I have heard /skrets/ for secretos ‘secrets.’ The reduction of vowels before /–s/ serves to make their /–s/ even more prominent. Another feature that distinguishes the Mixtecans in the Northeast are the lexical items that come from Nahuatl, for example, chamaco ‘young boy,’ cacahuate ‘peanut.’ The migration consists primarily of young men under twenty-five – so many in fact that their hometowns have become “nurseries and nursing homes” that survive on remittances from workers in the Northeast (Valdés de Montano and Smith 1994: 4). In order to help their families back home as much as possible, they may work long hours and share crowded living spaces with compatriots, which affords them few opportunities to learn formal English and little time to socialize with other Spanish speakers. Those who work in the northern New England states have contact with fewer varieties of Spanish than those in New York or New Jersey, and are more likely to be influenced by the Portuguese or French of co- workers. Isolation from families, compatriots, other Spanish speakers, or English speakers has an impact on immigrants’ social well being and acclimation to the USA, as well as on their language development. Linguistically, much depends on whether this predominantly young population marries Mexicans, Anglos, Spanish speakers from the Caribbean or other countries, or members of non-Latino ethnic and racial groups who share their workplaces and neighborhoods. When my Mexican father married my Puerto Rican mother in 1929, the Latino community in New York City was so small that its members were compelled to learn about, and from, each other. Nowadays it is easier to stay in communication with your family in Latin America, and to remain insulated within your group in the USA. On the other hand, the sheer numbers of, and proximity to, speakers of diverse varieties of Spanish in the populous cities of the Northeast occasion a great deal of inter- dialectal communication and accommodation. Nowhere are the repercussions of Spanish in the Northeast 199 this inter-Latino contact more evident than in the Spanish of members of the second generation. “Nuyoricans,” “Dominican Yorks,” and “Spanglish” The expression “hyphenated Americans” refers to members of ethnic groups who identify themselves as Americans with roots in another country, such as German-Americans and Italian-Americans. Often, they are monolingual in English, socially assimilated, and structurally incorporated. Some Latinos who know English identify themselves in similar ways, for example as Mexican- Americans or Cuban-Americans, but most prefer to be identified as “Mexicans,” “Cubans,” and so on (de la Garza et al. 1992). In communities with significant numbers of US-born or US-raised youth, however, new terms that reflect a more integrated dual identity have appeared, such as Nuyoricans, Rochesteri- cans, Dominican Yorks. These young people usually are English-dominant, and the Spanish they speak reflects that reality. Despite having been made to feel ashamed of their Spanish by critics who deride it as “Spanglish,” many are rehabil- itating the labels that “diss” their languages and identities. Engaging in a process of semantic inversion that recalls African Americans’ success in turning “Black” from a negative to a positive description in the 1960s, some Latino youth embrace “Spanglish,” “Nuyorican,” “Dominican York,” and so on, as proud emblems of their hybrid identities and ways of speaking. While poets formed the vanguard of this affirmative movement (see Algar´ın and Piñero 1975), linguists contributed by analyzing the complex grammatical rules that bilinguals must know in order to be effective code-switchers – the linguistic term for talking in two languages or dialects, sometimes in the same sentence. Many studies have proven that Spanish–English code-switchers usually switch complete sentences, or insert nouns or short phrases from one language into another (details in chapters 5 and 6 of Zentella 1997a). Bilinguals code switch to accomplish meaningful communicative strategies with other bilinguals, and to express their participation in two worlds graphically. But the stereotypical view is that only people who don’t know Spanish or English well speak Spanglish, and that they have created a new pidgin or creole (see chapter 8). Words that Spanish speakers have borrowed from English (anglicisms) are offered as proof of the new language, although the latest compilation of (Miami) Spanglish words includes fewer than 100 loans (Cruz and Teck 1998). Most of the Spanglish vocabulary in the Northeast reflects life in urban centers, and even Spanish monolinguals pick up words like bildin ‘building,’ par-taim ‘part-time,’ frizando ‘freezing,’ boila ‘boiler,’ biper ‘beeper,’ trobol ‘trouble.’ They have become part of the region’s Spanish vocabulary. The English origin of these loans is obvious and direct, but it is less direct in words like librer ´ ıa, aplicaci ´ on, soportar, papel, regresar – Spanish words that have taken on new meanings because they sound similar to, or overlap 200 ana celia zentella semantically with, words in English (cf. Otheguy 1993). In addition to their original meanings (‘book store,’ ‘application’ as in ‘a coat of paint,’ ‘to bear,’ ‘paper/stationery,’ ‘to return/go back’), they are acquiring definitions that are influenced by English. Librer ´ ıa is used for ‘library’ instead of biblioteca, aplicaci ´ on for a job application instead of solicitud, soportar for ‘to support someone financially’ instead of mantener, papel for newspaper instead of peri ´ odico, and regresar for ‘return an item’ instead of devolver. The loans and calques of US Latinos constitute an additional inventory in the Spanish vocabulary that newcomers learn, along with the unfamiliar words of other Spanish-speaking countries. Newcomers follow the principle that all speakers use when they encounter new words in new settings: “I guess that’s the way they say it here.” Earlier I explained that most working-class Latinos are undergoing language loss; the process of attrition is most obvious in the limited range of Spanish tenses and moods commanded by the US born. Tenses beyond the present, preterit, and imperfect are the last to be learned and the first to be lost, as documented by Silva-Corvalán (1994) in Los Angeles and reaffirmed (except for the West Coast changes in ser/estar ‘to be’) by Zentella (1997a) for East Harlem. Communication among generations is still possible because speakers have learned to accommo- date to each other, but a grasp of formal oral and written Spanish eludes most of the poor in every generation. Loss is accelerated for those who have little contact with Spanish speakers, while those who work or live with newcomers may rein- vigorate their language skills. The process is rarely predictable on an individual level because changes in relationships, schools, jobs, residence, language poli- cies and general attitudes cause changes in language skills. But the overall shift to English is accelerating among those born in the USA, and they constitute the majority of Latinos in the country. Even “younger immigrants anglicize [switch to English] very rapidly and subsequently give birth to children of English mother tongue” (Veltman 1990: 120). Sadly, the loss of Spanish does not translate into academic success. In 1996, US-born Latinos of US-born parents, a generation that is overwhelmingly monolingual in English, had higher drop out rates than US-born Latinos with immigrant parents (Waggoner 1999). The Latinocentury? The 1980s and the 1990s were both hailed as the “decade of the Hispanics” because of increased Latino immigration, but Latino concerns never became a vital part of the national agenda. As we enter a new century, analyses of domestic problems continue to be polarized along black/white lines, with little room for class, ethnic, multiracial or multilingual views. Many Latinos support Black civil rights struggles because they themselves are viewed as non-whites and have experienced similar oppression. As evidence, young Latinos in the Northeast – of dark and light complexions – often speak English like African Americans, and a(very) few African Americans have learned some Spanish. But the diversity of Latinos is seldom acknowledged, and little is known about the issues that separate Spanish in the Northeast 201 specific groups, like abortion or the death penalty, or positions that are defended by the majority, like support for bilingual education and the repudiation of English- Only laws (Zentella 1990b). When Latinos are portrayed as a monolithic horde of “illegal aliens” that threatens the future of English and the American way of life (see also Crawford 1992, Zentella 1997b), it fuels fears that erupt into anti-Latino, anti-Spanish violence, even murder. The Latino Coalition of Racial Justice was formed to denounce the escalation of bias incidents in New York City, including the 1994 murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant who was beaten to death by a gang that was “yelling obscene epithets about Mexicans” (Steinhauer 1994). Respect for new Americans of diverse Latino backgrounds must be rooted in respect for their distinct ways of speaking Spanish, which symbolize their connection to their homeland, and for the pan-Latino varieties of English and Spanish that reflect their new allegiances. But notions of linguistic correctness that are based on class, regional, and racial prejudices foster invidious inter-group and intra-group comparisons by, for example, imposing the tyranny of syllable final –s, dismissing loans as “barbarisms,” and accusing “Spanglish” speakers of linguicide. The resulting feelings of insecurity and inferiority contribute to educational failure and social alienation. Moreover, the imposition of a standard English-Only ideology (see chapters 15 and 17) creates a cruel no-win situation, because Latinos who abandon Spanish in the hope of being accepted uncondi- tionally are largely unaware that any vestiges of Spanish in their English are interpreted as being lower class and disorderly (Urciuoli 1996). Unfortunately, so many Americans fear that English is in danger from Spanish that analysts attempt to allay those fears by emphasizing the projected demise of Spanish (Veltman 1990), instead of educating the public about the benefits – for all – of bilingualism. Finally, the fervor and success of the English-Only movement make it difficult for proponents of multilingualism to be heard, and vocal defenders of Spanish are branded as opponents of a lingua franca, or proponents of separatism. It is time for a “language conscious” citizenry that appreciates the complexity of our linguistic heritage and welcomes its new configurations by learning other languages and dialects, to help the USA become linguistically competent and culturally sensitive. Latinos in the Northeast are doing their part by learning the varieties of English and Spanish spoken by their co-workers, just as they are learning to dance to cumbia, merengue, son, plena, corridos, hip hop, swing; and to eat arepas, mang ´ u, boliche, pasteles, tacos, pizza, hot dogs, and bagels. What is not clear is whether they will continue to cross racial, cultural, and linguistic boundaries alone, and be forced to relinquish their native language in the process. That is up to many of you. Suggestions for further reading and exploration The continued arrival of diverse groups of Latinos to the Northeast is documented in the 2000 Census http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html. Hispanics accounted for 27 percent of the population of New York City (approximately 202 ana celia zentella 2 million out of 8 million), and Dominicans will soon outnumber Puerto Ricans there and in other cities. But the study of language in the Northeast is in its infancy, and to date most of it focuses on Puerto Ricans. The Language Policy Task Force of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, at Hunter College (City University of New York), conducted the earliest research in El Barrio beginning in the 1970s, and their reports are available in the Centro library. Those efforts resulted in significant publications by Pedraza, Attinasi, and Hoffman (1980), Poplack (1980), and Pousada and Poplack (1982), challenging the applicability of diglossia, and negative views of Puerto Rican Spanish grammar and bilingual code switching. Alvarez (1991) analyzes the code switching in Spanish and English narratives of the same community. Beyond the city, the discourse of Puerto Ricans living on Long Island is the subject of a book by Torres (1997), while Ram´ırez (2000) compares the language attitudes of Puerto Ricans in the Bronx and upstate New York with those of Cubans and Mexicans in other states. Little attention has been paid to the distinctive English dialect of Puerto Ricans, but Urciuoli (1996) includes many samples and analyzes the role of accent in the construction of identities. Research on language in Dominican and other Spanish-speaking communities is limited. Toribio (2000) explores the language and race links that Dominicans forge in their homeland and adapt to US circumstances, and Bailey (2000) investi- gates language, race, and identity among bilingual and multidialectal Dominican high school students in Providence, Rhode Island. Some comparative studies include Dominican Spanish. Zentella (1990a) is among the first to compare sev- eral Spanish-speaking communities in New York City; the emphasis is on lexical leveling among Cubans, Colombians, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans. Garc´ıa et al. (1988) reports on language attitudes in two communities, the Dominican upper West Side of Manhattan and a neighborhood in Queens that is home to Dominicans and Colombians. Otheguy, Garc´ıa, and Fernández (1989), an inter- generational study of loans and calques, is devoted to Cuban Spanish in the Northeast. Research currently underway by Otheguy and Zentella on subject pro- nouns in Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadorian, Mexican, and Puerto Rican Spanish in New York promises further insight into Spanish in the Northeast. References Algar´ın, Miguel and Miguel Piñero, eds. 1975. Nuyorican Poetry.New York: William Morrow. Alvarez, Celia. 1991. “Code Switching in Narrative Performance: Social, Structural and Prag- matic Functions in the Puerto Rican Speech Community of East Harlem.” In Sociolin- guistics of the Spanish-Speaking World: Iberia, Latin America, the United States, eds. Carol Klee and Leticia Ramos-Garc´ıa. Tempe AZ: Bilingual Press. Pp. 271–98. Bailey, Benjamin. 2000. “Language and negotiation of ethnic/racial identity among Dominican Americans.” Language and Society 29: 555–82. Baker, Colin. 1996. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multi- lingual Matters. Berger, Joseph. 1999. “Detective’s Kindness Helps Awaken a City.” New York Times, Jan. 7. Boswell, Thomas D. and James R. Curtis. 1984. The Cuban-American Experience: Culture, Images, and Perspectives. Totowa NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. [...]... of maintenance or shift of a minority language: (1) variation in the total number of individuals who claim speaking the minority language at home (“raw count”); (2) variation in the proportion of these individuals in the total population (“density”); (3) variation in their proportion in the corresponding ethnic group ( language loyalty”); (4) variation in the rate of transmission of the minority language. .. impact of the Spanish -language media in creating a more positive image and in promoting the Spanish language should not be disregarded either The 1990s have seen the growth of Spanish -language communications, most notably represented by three national television networks The first Spanish -language television station in the USA began broadcasting in San Antonio in 1 955 Galavisi´ n o began broadcasting in 1979... from Mexico increased in the 1980s so did the number of individuals declaring Spanish as a home language in the 1990 Census The poorer and less well-educated counties include higher densities of Spanish speakers and higher retention (Hudson et al 19 95) , while the higher the educational and income status, the lower the index of language loyalty These results support the proposition that, in the Southwest... be located at various points along this continuum depending on their level of dominance in one or another language, but in principle individuals can move or be moving toward (hence “dynamic” level) one or the other end of the continuum at any given stage of life These continua and their characteristic linguistic features have been identified in Mexican-American communities in the Southwest, but no systematic... 2,9 85, 824 4 ,55 4,331 440,701 339,717 57 9,224 4,339,9 05 7 ,55 7 ,55 0 688,338 424,302 21 45 66 56 25 352 ,488 2,484,188 3,132,690 331,038 179,607 398,186 3,443,106 5, 478,712 478,234 203,896 13 39 75 44 14 TOTAL 8,787,7 95 13 ,58 9,319 55 6,668,011 10,002,134 50 Source: Based on 1980 and 1990 Census data, US Bureau of the Census (1982, 1993) versus 66 percent) Texas and Arizona do not show a much lower increase in. .. Texas in 18 45 and California in 1 850 were welcomed as states of the Union, followed by Colorado in 1876 English was immediately declared the only language of instruction in public schools, the language to be used in the courts and in public administration in the newly constituted states Arizona and New Mexico had to wait until 1912 to be admitted into the Union, perhaps because the majority of the population... explored by Spaniards starting as early as 153 6 Spanish extended to the new lands as the Southwest became part of the Spanish colonies, and many native Indians became bilingual in their tribal language and the language of the conquerors The first permanent settlements were established in New Mexico in 159 8 (near Santa Fe) and in Texas in 1 659 (near El Paso), followed by the establishment of a mission and presidio... businesses which, despite political efforts to suppress the use of Spanish (and other immigrant languages) in public contexts, support advertising in Spanish in the written and audio-visual media, publish instructional manuals and fliers in Spanish, and offer services in Spanish The importance of the “Latino market” and of the Spanish language is stressed in a Los Angeles Times article, Spanish in the. .. colleges have instituted courses that emphasize the development of advanced reading and writing skills, which tend to be weak in a home-only language Spanish in the Southwest Linguistic aspects of Southwest Spanish The continuous arrival of numerous people from other Spanish-speaking countries has resulted in a considerable increase in the use of different dialects of Spanish in the Southwest If to these... politics In turn, Spanish borrowed abundantly from Indian languages, especially Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs (e.g., coyote, chocolate, mesquite, aguacate ‘avocado,’ tomate ‘tomato,’ guajolote ‘turkey,’ elote ‘fresh corn’) The in uence of the Spanish and English languages on each other in the Southwest, on the other hand, is a continuous reality, although the direction of the in uence has changed: in . speakers in total population USA 248,709,873 22, 354 , 059 8.9 11,117,606 4 .5 New Mexico 1 ,51 5,069 57 9,224 38.2 398,186 26.3 Texas 16,986 ,51 0 4,339,9 05 25. 5 3,443,106 20.3 California 29,760,021 7 ,55 7 ,55 0. configurations by learning other languages and dialects, to help the USA become linguistically competent and culturally sensitive. Latinos in the Northeast are doing their part by learning the varieties. ‘fresh corn’). The in uence of the Spanish and English languages on each other in the Southwest, on the other hand, is a continuous reality, although the direction of the in uence has changed: in the early

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