Chicano English is a dialect of American English used by Chicanos. One major variation of Chicano English is Tejano English, used mainly in south Texas. It is mistakenly referred to as Spanglish, which is not a recognized dialect of English but rather a mixing of the Spanish and English languages.
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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 U.S. (Santa Ana, 1991). The Hispanic population is one of the largest and fastest-growing ethnic groups in America. In the Los Angeles area alone, they form 40% of the population (roughly 1.4 out of 3.5 million, in the 1990 Census). The result of this migration, and the segregated social conditions the immigrants found in California, is an ethnic community that is only partly assimilated to the matrix Anglo (that is, European American) community. It retains symbolic links with Hispanic culture (as well as real links through continuing immigration), but linguistically is mostly an English-speaking rather than a Spanish-speaking community, though its members have a distinctive accent.
The phonological inventory appears to be identical to that of the local Anglo community. For example, the long and short vowels are clearly distinguished, as are the relatively rare English vowel classes /æ/. Speculatively, it seems that the main differences between the Chicano accent and the local Anglo accent are first, that the Chicanos are not participating in the ongoing phonetic changes in the Anglo communities (the raising of /æ/).
The contact of Chicanos with Anglos, who are somewhat influenced by the speech of (immigrating) Southerners (as are many Californians) who have a fronted, monophthongized /y/, might be responsible for the acquisition of a fronting rule for this phoneme, but this is mere speculation. Still, a phonetic fronting rule is necessary to reconcile the basic hypothesis that the nucleus of /y/ is phonologically identical with the nuclei of the other vowels.[1]
Chicano English has many features, especially in the phonology, that show the influence of Spanish. Vocabulary includes words like simon meaning "yes", firme meaning "good", flika meaning "picture", vato meaning "guy", and feria meaning "money".
Only certain consonants occur at the end of words. All other single consonants in English would thus be unfamiliar to Chicano English speakers in this environment.
Most becomes [moʊs]; Felt becomes [fɛl], Start becomes [stɑr].
Most American dialects do not distinguish the word classes NORTH and FORCE (though Southern dialects like that of Anniston, Alabama, do keep them separate). Like other American Englishes, the Chicano accent is a flat-BATH dialect. That is, it classes the BATH set with the TRAP set rather than with the PALM set.
Because of phonetic similarity and complementary distribution, stressed and unstressed /e/ (NURSE, LETTER) are the same phonological class. Similarly, stressed and unstressed high-front-peripheral vowels (FLEECE, HAPPY) are classified together as /iː/ (unlike in older RP (cultivated Southern British), where HAPPY ends with the vowel in KIT).[2]
The non-high front vowels before intervocalic /r/ are presumably merged in this dialect (as in the local Anglo dialect and in Chicago, but not in Philadelphia, and various Eastern dialects). That is, Mary, merry, marry are pronounced identically. This phonological collapse has two simplifying effects. First, it eliminates a rather tenuous distinction based on syllable structure rather than segmental features: Mary and merry are elsewhere distinguished phonologically as /meː.ri/ and /mer.i/.
Since /æ/ does not exist in Spanish, the fall of /l/ cannot be attributed to Spanish influence. On the contrary, the fall of /l/ seems to be a purely English sound change that happens to occur in this particular ethnic group. /uː/ is somewhat front, as in most American and many British dialects. Anglo speech in Southern California shows even greater fronting of /uː/, to such an extent that /uː/ and /ʊ/ overlap with /iː/ and /ɪ/ in formant space.
Some realizations of /iː/, /eː/, /oː/ and other long vowels were transcribed as monophthongs. This may be an effect of Spanish, though other American dialects (Minnesota, and Wisconsin, for example) also show monophthongization of these vowels, which are most commonly diphthongs in English. Also, these vowels are underlyingly long monophthongs, so the general effect here is to simplify the system of phonetic implementation, as compared with the /ij, ej, ow, uw/ of many other English dialects.[3]
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