New York Latino English

An ethno-cultural dialect of the English language, primarily spoken by Hispanic Americans on the East Coast of the United States, demonstrates considerable influence from New York City English and African American Vernacular English, with certain additional features borrowed from the Spanish language.[1][2] The academic literature has recently labelled the language variety New York Latino English, referring to its city of nineteenth-century origin, or, more inclusively, East Coast Latino English.[3] In the 1970s scholarship, the variety was more narrowly called (New York City) Puerto Rican English[4] or Nuyorican English. Other terms have also occasionally been employed, such as Latin American Vernacular English.[5] The dialect originated with the Puerto Rican immigration to New York City after World War II and particularly the subsequent generations born in the New York dialect region who were native speakers of both English and Spanish. However, it is now the customary dialect of many Hispanic Americans of diverse national heritages, not simply Puerto Ricans, in the New York metropolitan area and beyond on the East Coast.

According to linguist William Labov, "A thorough and accurate study of geographic differences in the English of Latinos from the Caribbean and various countries of Central and South America is beyond the scope of the current work," largely because "consistent dialect patterns are still in the process of formation."[2] Importantly, this East Coast Latino ethnolect is a native variety of English and not a form of Spanglish, broken English, or interlanguage; it is not spoken by all Latinos in this region nor necessarily spoken only by Latinos.[1] It is sometimes spoken by people who know little or no Spanish.

Phonology

Subcultural variations

Slomanson & Nemwan (2004) found that differences in subcultural (or peer group) participation and identification amongst young Hispanic Americans in New York City has an effect on their speech patterns. The study differentiated between the influential NYC youth groups/subcultures of hip hop (involving rap music, turntablism, graffiti art, etc.), skater/BMX (involving bicycling and skateboarding tricks), and geek (involving video game culture, computers, and other technological interests). The findings located young Latinos mostly in the first two categories (with hip hop culture being influenced significantly by African American Vernacular English and NYC skater/BMX culture by NYC European-American Vernacular English and General American English). Latinos also largely fell into a third, non-peer-based grouping: family-oriented, whose members show the strongest pride and self-identification with their ethno-cultural heritage. Slomanson & Nemwan admittedly did not examine gang (or "thug") culture, which minimally affected their population sample.[6]

The study found that the gliding vowel /aɪ/ ( listen) becomes a "glideless" [aː] ( listen), so that, for example, the word ride approaches the sound of rod, in Latino members of hip hop culture; a middling degree of this was found with the family-oriented group and the least degree of it with the skater/BMX group.[7] Just over 50% of all speakers showed /uː/ ( listen) to be backed ( listen) before coronal consonants (e.g. in words like dude, lose, soon, etc.) with little variation based on peer groups.[8] For the gliding vowel /eɪ/ ( listen), just over 50% of speakers show no gliding ( listen), except in the skater/BMX group, where this drops to just over 30% of speakers. For the gliding vowel /oʊ/ ( listen), just over 70% of speakers show no gliding ( listen), except in the skater/BMX group, where this drops to less than 50% of speakers.[9] These instances of glide deletion are indicators of the dialect's contact with Spanish.[10]

General phonology

It is possible to differentiate this variety from an interlanguage spoken by second language speakers in that this ethnolect does not generally display the following features:

Notable lifelong native speakers

References

  1. 1 2 Newman, Michael. "The New York Latino English Project Page." Queens College. Accessed 2015.
  2. 1 2 Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, p. 24.
  3. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:214)
  4. ↑ Wolfram, Walt (1974) Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics ISBN 0-87281-034-8
  5. ↑ Zacarian, Debbie (2012). Mastering Academic Language: A Framework for Supporting Student Achievement. Corwin Press p. 16.
  6. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:202)
  7. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:205)
  8. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:211)
  9. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:211)
  10. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:211)
  11. ↑ Slomanson & Newman (2004:213)

External links

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