2023-04-25 08:40:04
known as New Mexico Spanishthis dialect comes from the first Spanish settlers who arrived in the region more than 400 years ago (1598), long before the first English settlement was established in what is now the state of Virginia (1607).
According to Professor Damián Vergara Wilson, who learned it from his parents and grandparents, some people say that New Mexican Spanish reflects the Spanish of Spain’s “golden age.”
However, the expert from the University of New Mexico stresses to EFE that although there are certain lexical retentions from that time, he rather believes that “currently what we have is a combination of Spanish from colonial times with Spanish from from Mexico”.
This linguistic form includes words like it poisons (attire) or phrases like I saw you (I saw) yesterday y ancina (that’s how it is).
A feature is also the substitution of the letter s by j: I don’t know where I am (I do not know where I am).
The Spanish of New Mexico is still maintained, especially in rural areas in the communities and towns of the north of the state where it is common to hear it among its residents, in the streets, restaurants and parties.
Vergara, coordinator of the Sabine Ulibarri-Spanish as a Heritage Language Program, points out that currently New Mexican Spanish is a mixture of colonial-era Spanish, that from Mexico and mixtures of words of indigenous origin.
This is because the first colonizers included the Spanish and Portuguese, but also Mexicans and indigenous groups from the south who spoke Nahuatl.
From this peculiar mixture, words such as flying mouseto refer to a bat, or hen of the sierrareferring to the turkey.
While original words of indigenous languages are maintained, such as tewareferring to the obsidian stone and feed itto the buffalo.
The educator believes that the isolation of rural communities in New Mexico allowed the survival of this form of Spanish.
“To get here, the colonists had to walk the path known as the colony of the dead, an extremely difficult route, where they could be ambushed by the Indians, die of hunger or thirst. That’s why there wasn’t much contact,” Vergara said.
As a result, while Spanish changed in Spain, in Mexico, and in other places such as the territories of California and Texas that were also part of the Mexican territory, the Spanish of New Mexico remained practically intact.
Currently, although there are people who believe that New Mexico Spanish is dying due to the lack of interest of the new generations to maintain it, others think that it is evolving.
Researchers like Len Nils Beké, who recently completed a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of New Mexico, believe that this form of Spanish lives on in rural communities as it evolves.
Beké told EFE that many people in rural communities continue to maintain the language, particularly the names of places such as towns, mountains, lakes.
But they have also incorporated English. Hence words like chrismas (Christmas) referring to christmas.
“It’s very interesting to see how the language is constantly reinventing itself, incorporating new components, as if they were a new ingredient,” said Beké, who toured several of these rural communities as part of her PhD research.
He assured that there is great pride among the communities in continuing to maintain the Spanish of New Mexico, which they associate with their direct descendants from the first Spanish settlers.
Other new words that he assures are being integrated are those of our times, such as facebuquiando referring to the use of Facebook.
New Mexico Spanish has survived several changes in the region, such as independence from the Spanish colony, becoming part of the territory of Mexico, and later becoming part of the United States in 1848.
However, there is no official record of how many people speak it, since the census only collects the percentage of Spanish-speaking people, but not the type of Spanish they speak.
There are groups that are fighting to keep their record and keep it, some of them promote it through social networks through music and others have summer camps where children can learn it.
Some researchers consider that another threat is the arrival of new migrants from Central American countries who speak a different form of Spanish.
For Beké, the Spanish of New Mexico “will survive and in the end there will be new words adapted to the language.”
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