New Mexico is losing a form of Spanish spoken nowhere else

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/us/new-mexico-spanish.html

by webmaven • 3 years ago

108 73 3 years ago

nytimes.com

webmaven• 3 years ago

https://archive.md/zXyg2

anthk4• 3 years ago

Nowhere else... just the whole South of Spain. At least the aspiration.

dghughes2• 3 years ago

words drawn from English and languages indigenous to North America.
thought to be Tlaxcalan Indians, who spoke Náhuatl, the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire.

Why would a dialect of Spanish in southern Spain have indigenous native American words?

anthk4• 3 years ago

Because "imports" of foreign goods. All of them, from the Pyrenees to Patagonia. From chocolate to cacahuete to who knows how many more kinds of food.

el-salvador• 3 years ago

It is the exception, rather than the rule, but there are two Nahuatl words that have been borrowed widely to other languages.

They can be found in a recognizable form even as far away as Finnish, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese and Emoji.

Chocolate from Xocolatl

Tomato from Tomatl

salomon812• 3 years ago

This is my family. Sadly, the language dies with my generation. My father speaks this dialect of Spanish... or at least, he used to. We moved to Northern California when I was very little. But, if we had stayed in New Mexico, my cousins don't speak it either. I asked Dad why he didn't teach me. "What would I do? Speak it to myself?" I took Spanish in high school. My father really couldn't help me, some of the basic phrases were different. As more immigrants moved into our area, Dad connected with them and started to learned the more modern Spanish to communicate with them.

I mean, this dialect formed because Northern New Mexico was so isolated. The Manhattan Project changed a lot of that. Suddenly, Los Alamos labs and Sandia labs connected New Mexico with the rest of the world. It wasn't as isolated anymore.

People have told me I could learn it, but I've tried. It's hard when I talk with my family, I'd rather have an adult conversation now rather than basically a preschool level one to learn the language. They say to really learn it, you have to immerse yourself. I lived with my grandmother for several months once while working at Sandia Labs. She insisted on speaking English with me, she was stubborn about it, and I was having a hard enough time understanding her in English.

Let me leave you with a funny story. My uncle had hired a contractor to help with his house. The contractor spoke common Spanish. And he angrily confronted my uncle in Spanish: "You stole my belt!" or at least that's what my uncle heard. "[You stole] mi cinta!" However, in New Mexico "cinta" means belt, but in Mexico it's short for "cinta métrica" or tape measure. (or so I'm told, I don't speak Spanish!) My uncle assured him he did not steal it and went ahead and gave him one of his own.

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

My father speaks this dialect of Spanish... or at least, he used to. We moved to Northern California when I was very little. But, if we had stayed in New Mexico, my cousins don't speak it either. I asked Dad why he didn't teach me. "What would I do? Speak it to myself?"

I have the same reasoning. I speak a language that is not necessary anymore even in the place my parents came from, since the national language and English are what official business is done in.

My grandparents taught me the language, but none of my cousins have a similar grasp of the language. I still speak it with the older generations in my family, but they do not live near me to interact often enough with my kids, so I would effectively be teaching them a language they will have no use for by the time they are adults.

mgarfias• 3 years ago

While we probably lost the New Mexican Spanish after the civil war when the family moved to arizona fr nm, I have the same thing going on.

Dad wouldn’t talk to me in Spanish when I was little - I only heard him speaking it when talking to family on the phone.

Add that to the fact that until I was 9 we were away from the family and I don’t have much

At least my grandparents would talk to me in Spanish so what’s in there is all because of them.

And same experience with HS Spanish - they talk funny this doesn’t sound like anything I know.

kodah• 3 years ago

Really cool story to be a part of. Reminds me of how Creole formed.

thequadehunter3• 3 years ago

Sadly all too common even with popular languages. I ask my dad why he never taught me Spanish and he just "didn't really think about it". Such a wasted opportunity for free goods.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 3 years ago

I was having a related discussion with my wife about why our nephews weren’t taught Spanish as a first language (we live in Texas, their dad is bilingual). Frankly, having English as your first language gives you a much higher advantage in life in the current zeitgeist. There’s no incentive to learn RandomLanguage first, but there is every incentive to learn English first.

marc_abonce• 3 years ago

Disclaimer: I only learned about the New Mexico Spanish variant today and my experience is limited to OP's article plus 2 YouTube videos. That being said:

I think that if you want to, you could learn "standard" Spanish and still have an understandable conversation with you family. At least for me (I'm Mexican) the people in those videos were easier to understand compared to the average Cuban Spanish, for example, which is one of hardest variants for me.

And the differences in vocabulary is something you'd have to face regardless of the language variant. For example, I usually call a belt "cinturón" except for martial arts belts which I always call "cinta", but right now I just searched for "cinta negra" images and all the results were black adhesive tapes and black ribbons.

But yeah, doing so would take many years of "talking like a preschooler", there's no escape from that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkEq9OhbbDQ

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdAGJz4NvAg

jjav• 3 years ago

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkEq9OhbbDQ
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdAGJz4NvAg

As a native spanish speaker these are completely understandable, I wouldn't even call them a "different form of Spanish". Sure, they occasionally use a word or structure I wouldn't, but it's all very clear. No more different to my ears than variations in the language from country to country.

average Cuban Spanish, for example, which is one of hardest variants for me

Interesting. Do you have some sample videos of what's difficult? I don't find Cuban Spanish at all different, but I did have a few Cuban friends growing up so perhaps my ear is used to it from that.

elboru• 3 years ago

This Spanish has similarities with the one used in some areas of Chihuahua Mexico (south of New Mexico) specially at the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. It makes sense since many original Hispanic New Mexican families have consanguinity with old Chihuahua families.

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

New Mexico Hispanic culture is quite different from a lot of the rest of the US. And the rural areas were very isolated for a long time. So it has some other interesting historical Spanish cultural variants. A couple:

The Penitentes, an ascetic Catholic group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penitentes_(New_Mexico)

The Crypto-Jews, usually thought to be a hundreds-years-old vestige of Judaism fleeing the Inquisition. The truth is probably more complicated. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/mistake...

New Mexico is also home to a bunch of different Native American languages and cultures, many of which did not have the trauma of being forced to move to new land and thus have a different relationship with their history.

(This post feels clumsy of me, apologies if as an outsider I mis-characterized something.)

sdrothrock2• 3 years ago

Just a heads up: "crypto Jew" is also an antisemitic buzz word, which is why I suspect the linked article says "hidden" instead.

LudwigNagasena• 3 years ago

That is getting so tiring. How are normal people supposed to navigate in this world where normal words[1] and expressions are constantly being re-analyzed as fascist dogwhistles?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-Judaism

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

ugh thanks for the warning, I'd forgotten about the hate speech. No doubt they use "hidden Jew" hatefully too.

Bjorkbat2• 3 years ago

We also have Genizaros (a kind of Spanish corruption of the word Janissary). They're descended from Native American slaves who were freed by the Spanish in exchange for settling on frontier outposts.

New Mexico's a strange place. Technically "New" Mexico is older than regular Mexico by over two centuries in that New Mexico earned its name as early as 1563.

VeninVidiaVicii• 3 years ago

This is my dialect! We’ve always attracted linguists because of our unique mix of cultures. For instance, we have lots of words for turkey - guíjalo/guajalote (and various combinations of the two), pavo, ganso real, cócono, and yes, even torque.

nortonham3• 3 years ago

guajalote is common with everyone I've meet from mexico and parts of central america, so is pavo

nortonham3• 3 years ago

and to add to that, pavo is often used just to refer to the food, the cooked meat, and guajalote to the animal.

Same for pigs (Cerdo, chancho) and pork (puerco).

davidw• 3 years ago

Huh... "pavone" is peacock in Italian.

ansraliant• 3 years ago

in Argentina pavo also is used to refer to someone that is not very intelligent.

anthk4• 3 years ago

In Spanish from Spain, both being a clown or just a random dude. (No seas pavo, don't be a clown), and "oye, pavo, ¿dónde vas?" (Hey, dude, where're you going to)?

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

This reminds me of the bog people I met who live on a lake in floating mud huts. They’re all complaining that their children move away to go to school and live in cities etc.

Is the bog life really worth preserving? You basically just want to preserve these weird cultures for the sake of it, not because anyone benefits from it. Obviously children want electricity or to speak an actually used language rather than follow the meme culture. Why should we force them to suffer just to preserve that suffering?

iancmceachern• 3 years ago

I think you have the wrong take.

Preserving the culture and language doesn't lead to the things you are describing. Those results are separate.

Examples you should look to are how French has been preserved and protected in Montreal, Creole in the South, Catalan in Spain, on and on. Those places have managed to preserve their language and culture while also improving their standard and quality of life on par with modern western standards.

trgn• 3 years ago

preserve these weird cultures for the sake of it, not because anyone benefits from it

If the world ever turns into grey goo, it won't be because of an out of control AI, it will be because actual people have willed it into the world.

UncleEntity• 3 years ago

My stepdad’s parents moved from New Mexico to California but never taught their kids Spanish because they didn’t want them to have an accent. Was a thing in the 50s, I guess.

I’ve always found it amusing they grew up six miles from each other but met in California.

n8henrie• 3 years ago

Interesting. I've lived in NM -- mostly northern -- for over 20 years now. I minored in Spanish and continue to strive to improve my mediocre fluency. I take multiple trips to the Sangre de Cristo area every year for camping and fishing.

And yet I don't recall ever having heard of a discrete NM dialect.

TIL!

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

I don’t feel that this is a bad thing. Not being able to speak and understand each other’s languages just helps increase conflict due to less empathy. While there are cons to less spoken languages, overall the world would be better off with less spoken languages.

Bjorkbat2• 3 years ago

Language is pretty foundational to culture. When you lose a language you lose more than a way of speaking, but also the subtleties and emotions behind the "shape" of certain words, not to mention those words that reflect something so unique to that culture that you can't really translate them. The death of a language is the death of a world.

Saying there should be fewer spoken languages is frankly a very unempathetic thing to say.

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

Saying there should be more different languages shows an ignorance to both history and psychology.

Having less major cultures has the same effect on potential conflict

scoofy• 3 years ago

not to mention those words that reflect something so unique to that culture that you can't really translate them

You've inverted the role of language. Language is what we use to communicate the things we feel, we gain essentially nothing from the words themselves. Even when you think you're communicating something very specific with the words you are using, there's little reason to believe that the person on the other end of the conversation really gets what you're trying to communicate. In a practical sense, you can easily communicate, but these deep, almost mystical, meanings you're implying... it's just not really something that can be known.

The is the point of the indeterminacy of translation illustrated by W.V. Quine.

midoridensha2• 3 years ago

How many dying languages/dialects have you personally learned and worked to keep alive?

arthurofbabylon2• 3 years ago

A language is a map to reality. More languages means more maps, more conceptual models, more strategies of existence.

Consider this: each additional language improves humanity's capacity to evolve and shift, a particularly valuable trait considering the pace of environmental and socioeconomic change. More languages increases the likelihood that humanity will continue to survive and maybe even thrive. (Reality one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand years from now will each demand different models or languages.)

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

That only applies imo if the same individual learns multiple languages; not even half the world is bilingual. The cons that come with increased conflict outweigh the benefits imo. It is way too easy to “other” strangers if you don’t share the same language and general culture. It’s already bad enough when people do share the same language and main culture.

guywithahat3• 3 years ago

It's always sad to see dialects die, however unless you're trying to decrease migration between neighboring countries (such as Israel speaking Hebrew) it seems like a good thing. In the case of New Mexico, it's a US state and I don't see an advantage in keeping it around.

ars4• 3 years ago

unless you're trying to decrease migration between neighboring countries (such as Israel speaking Hebrew)

Say what now? Israelis don't speak Hebrew to "decrease migration", they speak Hebrew because it's their ancestral language with a greater than 3,000 year history.

guywithahat3• 3 years ago

Although I agree in that there's certainly room for debate, it's a fact Israel has strict immigration laws, many of these laws are focused around keeping local Muslim populations out while bringing global Jewish populations in, and when Israel was founded millions of Jewish people from the neighboring countries (namely Egypt and Saudi Arabia) moved to Israel. They could have spoken a local language or even a European one, but they decided to learn the (at the time extinct) language Hebrew was because it was unique to Jews, and this was a Zionist country and movement.

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

It's sad, but how many languages have we lost over the centuries? How many variations of Italian or French have we lost due to migration?

As a Deaf person, this is readily apparent in local flavors of ASL. I noticed this with deaf people I came into contact with at RIT as a student there. There were many slight variations. You could tell who were new to the school, or those who's been there for a while. The ones new to the school were still doing it the way they learned at home, and the ones who has been there for 2-3 years were signing in a similar style. It was interesting to see.

Language is a living, constantly evolving, thing - you can't 'preserve' it any more than you would preserve a living tree in a book.

midoridensha2• 3 years ago

It's sad, but how many languages have we lost over the centuries?

I don't know about languages, but for dialects, I think the answer is the same as the number of people who have died over the centuries.

No one speaks a language exactly like anyone else, so ultimately, every person has a slightly different dialect. There's no way to preserve them all. Your analogy about preserving living trees in a book is apt.

MisterBastahrd• 3 years ago

Reminds me a bit of Louisiana French (technically two closely related dialects of Cajun French and Louisiana Creole). French was the dominant household language in the state until the 1920s when it was banned from being the primary language in public schools by the state government. This ultimately started the first in a slew of segregational choices by parents with regards to their kids' schools: some were incensed that they were being stripped of their heritage and sent their kids to French speaking Catholic schools. People were urged to "speak White," which was code for "speak proper English." In turn, the Catholic schools stopped teaching the local dialect in favor of Standard French. When the state also demanded that the Catholic schools teach English, students couldn't understand their teachers and were often beaten for failing to make progress in class. The state ended up with half a generation of children who could barely understand what they were being taught. As a result, parents stopped teaching their kids to speak their native language, which was replaced with English. Today, most of us from the area speak English but will mix in language from the old Cajun / Creole dialects of the past.

Did you know that the X-Men's Gambit has pronounced the word "cher" incorrectly every single time he's ever used it in mass media? From Shreveport to Grand Isle, we pronounce it "sha." Usually used as a term of endearment for a male to a female, we also use it when we agree with anyone with the phrase "Mais yeah, cher!"

decafninja2• 3 years ago

Traveling to Europe for the first time last year, my eyes were opened to how many languages there were that you don’t typically hear about in the mainstream. It surprised me to learn there were other languages in Spain other than Spanish (and that the Latin American dialect had key differences to the European one). Likewise that “Italian” is not the main language spoken by many people in Italy, which apparently has at least a few related but different languages (Neapolitan, Veneto, etc.) in use.

Closer to home, I see my Asian American friends who never grasped the language of their original culture being frustrated that they cannot pass down the language to their kids. A couple we are close with is a Taiwanese husband and Korean wife. The husband knows virtually no Chinese and the wife knows virtually no Korean. They want to teach their son both, but can’t.

I suppose this is the start of the process of how we ended up with the current generations of say, Italian Americans or German Americans or Irish Americans who mostly lost the ability to speak the language of their ancestors several generations ago.

veqq• 3 years ago

They want to teach their son both, but can’t.

Yes, they can. It is very easy.

Each parent only speaks to the child in their own language. That is all.

----------------

The children of immigrants lose languages because their parents are ignorant of basic pedagogy (in most cases the parents just raise the kids in English, then get mad they don't magically know the language they were barely exposed to.)

Presumably, they think they should have full conversations with each other in Korean and Chinese to expose the kid - however as a baby understands that they speak all 3 languages, the baby would default to the most common one (English).

The key here is to establish boundaries of language use e.g.: "I speak Chinese to dad. I speak Korean to mom." The parents should not respond to the child in English - they have to preserve the boundary to encourage the kid to use the other languages.

If one of them uses English with the child, it will greatly weaken or ruin the effect. Adding cartoons, other speakers etc. for these languages helps but isn't as fundamentally necessary as this. You can even add multiple nannies which only speak their own language to the child. (There is some amount of regular exposure needed, but that's not an issue for 2 parents.) The child will pick up English from other children and tv.

decafninja2• 3 years ago

As I said, the husband cannot speak Chinese. The wife cannot speak Korean. They both speak only English. They’ve already lost the languages in their generation, thus cannot pass it down to the next.

If the grandparents lived close, that could sort of be an option, but apparently they do not.

New Mexico is losing a form of Spanish spoken nowhere else

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