-The history of Mexican American Language (Chicano English)-

From the contact between Mexican Spanish and English, now Chicano English has been developed as an independent and systematic language that can count itself like an original language.

Chicano English as a language is the product of two major relexifications that took place in the history of Mexico over the past 500 years. In order to understand the origin of Chicano English it is important to know the history of language contact and colonization in Mexico.

The first major relexification occurred at the time of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico where a variety of Uto-Aztecan languages were spoken. The predominant language of central Mexico of these Uto-Aztecan languages was the Nahuatl. After the destruction of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish and during the time of colonial rule, Mexicans learned the Spanish language in the context of their own indigenous languages. This is a very important fact to consider as this applies to the development of Chicano English.

Mexico would have had the territory, now known as the Southwestern United States, if it had not lost the war with the United States of America. In 1848, after the war, Mexico was forced to cede almost ½ of its territory to the USA.

With the division of this territory, the contact between speakers of Mexican Spanish and American English increased.

“Mexicans would come to learn English as a second language and speak a variety of non-native English that could be characterized as a learner’s English. This learner’s English contained various patterns such as phonology, syntax, and semantics from Mexican Spanish. Within the germ of this interlanguage or learner’s English, a new language would be formed and codified by the children of these English learners. This language is known as Mexican American language” (C. Barrón & San Román, 2006).

It is important to note that Chicano English is not simply English influenced by Spanish. Speakers of Chicano English have acquired English perfectly. Chicano English therefore, is a variety of English spoken by fluent English speakers who are not English learners. Chicano English is an ethnic dialect that many children acquire as they acquire English in the barrio or other ethnic social setting during their language acquisition period.

Phonological variables on ChE

The phonology of Chicano English is distinguished from the Standard American English (SAE) because of how a Chicano speaker use some words from English, but with a different sound, a stress patterning, an intonation, and a prosody; this can happen by the influence of Mexican Spanish.

It is too normal that Chicano speakers have a similar phonology to Mexican Spanish. The real reason is because this is a native language that was produced over many years by Mexican families.

Syntactic variables on ChE

Another thing that differences the Chicano English from SAE is the Syntax. The Syntactic of the ChE shares some commonalities with the Spanish. The most regular syntactic difference is the multiple negations that they usually do, because in Spanish is very usual that a negative sentence includes a negative morpheme.

I don’t know any stories (SAE)

I don’t know no stories (ChE)