Daniel J. Villa

The Genesis of Traditional New Mexican Spanish: The Emergence of a Unique Dialect in the Americas

Abstract The origin of New World Spanish (NWS) is often identified as an original leveled dialect that arose during the earliest moments of Spanish arrival and then spread throughout the Americas. One common denominator in the available accounts of dialect contact and koinéization in NWS is the fact that such studies usually attempt to encompass its evolution as a single process. Perhaps as a consequence of such analytical approaches, little or no reference is commonly made to the possibility that some areas may have followed highly idiosyncratic sociohistorical paths, causing explanatory difficulties for the single leveled dialect approach. In this article we offer an analysis of the genesis of Traditional New Mexican Spanish that suggests the possibility of a variety of NWS that arose independently of others.

La nueva frontera: Spanish-Speaking Populations in Central Washington

Abstract Washington State, demographically speaking, represents the northernmost boundary, la nueva frontera, of what might now be called the Spanish speaking West. Previously, Spanish speakers in the West were concentrated mostly in the Southwest. However, in recent years the Hispanic population of the U.S. has steadily grown, with the result that it forms the largest minority group in the nation, extending into areas that traditionally have not had significant Hispanic communities, including the Pacific Northwest. Little research to date has been carried out on the Spanish-speaking Hispanic populations in that region, particularly in interior Washington. This article seeks to begin to fill that research lacuna. Analyses of U.S. Census data, as well as sociolinguistic interviews with Washington Hispanics, indicate that what used to be the Spanish-speaking Southwest can now be subsumed under the broader ‘Spanish-speaking West,’ with Washington at its northernmost border.