I recently gave a talk to my local Rotary Club about Spanish in the United States, as part of my ongoing effort to promote my book. It was fun in multiple ways. First, I didn’t know anything about the Rotary organization beforehand, so I got to learn a bit about what they do. The group included local business people, the chief of police, a judge, and other upstanding citizens. Second, I picked the topic of “Spanish in the United States” because I figured it would be of general interest, and it was — most gratifying. Third, this was the first time I’ve tried speaking to a group that knew nothing about either linguistics or Spanish, and it went fine. This bodes well for hypothetical future speaking gigs.
Here is a rough outline of my talk. Note that it was organized in reverse chronological order.
- Predicting the future
- General pattern of immigrant languages being lost (Yiddish, Italian, German, etc.)
- Researchers concur that Spanish fits the same pattern, despite large numbers of Spanish speakers
- previous waves of immigration had huge numbers, too
- Specific prediction: Spanish will be gone in a few generations unless new immigrants continue to replenish population of speakers
- anecdotal evidence from my students: “I wish my parents had insisted that I speak Spanish with them”.
- Describing the present
- Features that show loss in progress
- U.S.-born Hispanics speaking more basic form of language
- keeping fundamental parts, e.g.
- gender
- preterite/imperfect
- loss of
- sophisticated structures, e.g. complex If..then structures (‘If I hadn’t spent all my money yesterday I wouldn’t have had to borrow more this morning’)
- some verb tenses
- some irregular verbs
- keeping fundamental parts, e.g.
- English influence
- borrowing, e.g. registración for inscripción, flu for gripe
- excursus on borrowing of Spanish vocab into English (plug for Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries)
- grammar (examples from Silva-Corvalán and Lipski)
- possessives for body parts (Me pegó en mi brazo)
- superfluous subject pronouns (Yo creo)
- noun-adjective order (machucado español ‘chopped-up Spanish’)
- code switching
- borrowing, e.g. registración for inscripción, flu for gripe
- U.S.-born Hispanics speaking more basic form of language
- Most important characteristic unrelated to language loss = variety
- No such thing as “United States Spanish”; plug for Lipski’s Varieties of Spanish in the United States)
- Main concentrations are PR/DR in NE, Mexican in SW, Cuban in SE
- Interesting research on dialects in contact: linguistic accommodation, leveling
- Features that show loss in progress
- A little history
- Modern migration from other countries is second phase of Spanish in the U.S.
- First phase = Spanish colonial period
- Relics still in New Mexico and Colorado (norteños), Louisiana
- another plug for Varieties of Spanish in the United States (ch. 12)
- What kind of Spanish? Andalusian
- no th sound (cerveza)
- final -s deletion (lo libro)
- ustedes but not vosotros
- Modern migration from other countries is second phase of Spanish in the U.S.
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