New York Latino English
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New York Latino English, sometimes called Nuyorican English, is a form of New York dialect. It originated with the post war Puerto Rican immigration to New York City 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 in the New York metropolitan area United States, including Sephardic Jews. Therefore, terms like Nuyorican English and the related term Puerto Rican English are now misnomers.
The dialect shows influence of New York European American English and African American Vernacular English and contact with Spanish. Importantly, this is a native variety of English, not learner English or interlanguage. It is sometimes spoken by people who know little or no Spanish. A few characteristics include:
- The rhythm tends to be syllable-timed, meaning syllables take up roughly the same amount of time with roughly the same amount of stress. Standard American English is stress-timed, meaning that only stressed syllables are evenly timed. Most Romance languages (of which Spanish is a member) are syllable-timed.
- /t/ and /d/ is realized as dental stops [t̪] and [d̪] rather than the standard American and AAVE alveolars [t] and [d]. Dentalization is also common in New York European American dialect.
- Devoicing of voiced obstruent codas (e.g., characterize may be realized with a final [s])
- Consonant cluster simplifications such as the loss of dental stops after nasals (e.g., bent) and fricatives, (e.g., left, test). this leads to a characteristic plural, in which words like tests are pronounced [t̪ɛst̪ɪs], sometimes written as testes. This feature is shared by African American Vernacular English.
- /l/ onsets are clear, unlike those of most other New Yorkers, but, curiously, similar to those in some European American dialects in other parts of the US such as Philadelphia.
- lack of inversion or do support particularly in first and second person questions (I can go to the bathroom?)
- Calques and direct translations of Spanish expressions and words (e.g., owned by the devil, instead of possessed by the devil, closed meaning locked.
- /u/ after coronals is not fronted as in New York European American varieties.
- Pronunciation is predominantly non-rhotic. The vernacular tends to be non-rhotic, and cultivated forms rhotic, as in AAVE and some European American varieties.
- Because Sephardic Jews speak a different variety of NYLE, many Ladino words are blended into this dialect.
It is possible to differentiate this variety from an interlanguage spoken by second language speakers in that NYLE does not contain:
- There are no confusions of tense and lax vowels, outside contexts where other native speakers often vary usage. So sheep is never confused with ship, although really and ceiling may be pronounced with lax vowels, as in African American Vernacular English.
- There is no addition of /ɛ/ before initial consonant clusters with /s/.
- Speakers do not confuse of /dʒ/ with /j/, (e.g., Yale with jail).
Chicano English also shares some of the above features.
In some movies American street thugs, including non-Latino ones, may use NYLE features or other features of other Latino English varieties. As result, some people may inaccurately associate NYLE with delinquent street culture.
[edit] References
- Slomanson, Peter & Michael Newman (2004) “Peer Group Identification and Variation in New York Latino English Laterals” English World-Wide, 25 (2) pp. 199-216 (http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=EWW)
- 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
- Wolfram, Walt & Natalie Schilling Estes (2005) American English 2nd edition Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-1265-4
- Wolfram, Walt & Ben Ward (2005) American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast Blackwell ISBN 1-4051-2109-2
[edit] External links
- The New York Latino English Project The site of the New York Latino English project, which studies the native English spoken by New York Latinos.
