- This variety of Spanish is considered the Spanish variety with the most number of speakers in the world (Terborg et al., 2006).
- Lope Blanch (2004 [1996]) points out that in Mexican Spanish, as well as in the other varieties of American Spanish, there is a total seseo; which means that the phoneme [Ɵ] becomes [s]. For example, zoológico (‘zoo’) is pronounced [‘solohico’] instead of [‘tholohico’].
- Lope Blanch argues that there is a strong consonantism in educated Mexican Spanish; for instance, the phonemes [kst] and [nst] in words like texto (‘text’) and construir (‘to build’) respectively are maintained so the production of these words as [‘testo’] and [‘costruir’] is regarded as ‘poor’ Spanish.
- In some regions in the coast there is deletion or aspiration of [s]; for instance después (‘after’) is pronounced [de’pue’].
- Similar to other American varieties, Mexican Spanish has substituted the use of the Castilian pronominal second person plural vosotros for ustedes (plural ‘you’); in the verbal forms (e.g. coméis for comen (‘you’ [plural] eat’) as well as in the possessive pronouns (e.g. vuestro for suyo or de ustedes).
- In general, Lope Blanch argues that the Mexican variety of Spanish is very proximate to la norma hispánica ideal (‘the ideal Hispanic norm’) that any educated speaker from any Hispanic region attempts to practice (2004: 8).
- Although there is still no definitive description of the dialect areas of Mexican Spanish (Martín Brutragueño, 2011, 2014), there are different proposals in the literature. Henriquez Ureña (1921) mentions that there are six dialectal areas (the South West of USA, North, Central High Plain, Tierras Calientes [the coasts], Yucantan Peninsula, and Chiapas as part of Central America), whereas Lope Blanch (1996) identifies ten (Nuevo León and Tamauilipas, Northern High Plain, The Northwest, Coasts of Oaxaca and Guerrero, Central High Plain, Oaxaca High Plain, Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Yucatan Peninsula). Most recently, Moreno Fernández (2009) indicates that there are five dialectal areas which are shown in the figure below.
Figure 1. Dialect areas of Mexican Spanish, reconstructed from Moreno Fernández (2009: 270) - Perhaps one of the most notable characteristics of Mexican Spanish is its indigenous linguistic features which mostly come from Nahuatl. The influence of this indigenous language on Mexican Spanish is mainly lexical: there are everyday words (e.g. cuate [‘friend’], petaca [‘suitcase’], tomate [‘green tomato’], cacahuate [‘peanut’], escuincle [‘boy’], etc.), names of places (e.g. Tepoztlán, Xochimilco, Toluca, etc.) and other geographic references, such as mountains (Xinantecatl, Citlatépetl, Iztaccihuatl, etc), that have Nahuatl origin.
- Terborg et al. (2006) mention that sometimes the Castilian and the Nahuatl words co-exist, for instance, cuate and amigo (‘friend’); however, there are cases in which the Nahuatl word has prevailed over the Castilian; for example, papalote replaced cometa (‘kite’).
- Phonetically, Lope Blanch (2004) points out that the Nahuatl phoneme [š] is particular of Mexican Spanish in words like mixiote, (a dish), nixtamal (processed corn), xoloitzcuintle (a native dog of Mexico), etc. Furthermore, Moreno de Alba (2003) suggests that the syntactic phenomenon called dequeísmo may be the result of a syntactic transfer from indigenous languages to Mexican Spanish. This phenomenon consists of the use of the preposition de (‘of’) before the preposition que (‘that’) when it is not required in standard Spanish; for example, te decía de que... (‘I was telling you that…’).
- Terborg et al. argue that Mexican Spanish is “one of the least purist variants of the [Spanish] language[s] on an international level” since “Mexican Spanish is much more open to borrowing from the English language” (2006: 126); for instance checar, (to check), hobby, folder, overall, computadora (‘computer’), sandwich, etc. Most recently, one can hear people saying buliar when referring to ‘bulling’ or aplicar instead of solicitar (‘to apply’) when talking about applying for a job.
References
Henriquez Ureña, P. (1921). Observaciones sobre el español de América. Revista de Filología Española, 8, 357-390.
Lope Blanch, J. M. (2004). Cuestiones de filología mexicana. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Lope Blanch, J. M. (1996). México. In Manual de dialectología hispánica: el español de América, ed. by Manuel Alvar. Barcelona: Ariel Lingüística, 81-9.
Martín Butragueño, P. (2011). Dialectología de nuevos mundos. una lectura variacionista del Atlas Lingüístico de México. In Selected Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium,ed. by Luis A. Ortiz-López. Somerville: Cascadilla, 17-32.
Martín Butragueño, P. (2014). La división dialectal del español mexicano. In Historia sociolingüística de México, Vol. 3: Espacio, contacto y discurso político, ed. by R. Barriga Villanueva, and P. Martín Butragueño: Colegio de México.
Moreno de Alba, J. G. (2003). La lengua española en México. México D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Moreno Fernández, F. (2009). La lengua española en su geografía. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Terborg, Roland, L. García Landa, and Pauline Moore (2006). The Language Situation in Mexico. Current Issues in Language Planning, 7 (4), 415-518.
