Mexican Spanish - Variation

Variation

The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish. First, the Spanish of the Yucatán Peninsula is distinct from all other forms, both in intonation and in the incorporation of Mayan words. The Spanish spoken in the areas that border Guatemala resembles the variation of Central American Spanish spoken in that country, where the voseo is used. Secondly, many Mexicans stayed in Texas after its independence from Mexico and continuously speak Spanish which remained a language widely used in Texas, where it is identified as Tex-Mex. Thirdly, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo many Mexicans remained in the territory taken by the U.S. and continued to speak Spanish within their communities in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. A Spanish linguistic variety known as Ladino (one of several uses of the term Ladino) is still spoken in parts of New Mexico (for example, in the town of La Mesilla in the south, as well as in northern areas of the state). And also, the waves of 19th and 20th century migration from Mexico to the United States (mostly to the formerly Mexican-controlled Southwest) have very much contributed to making Mexican Spanish the most widely spoken variety of Spanish in the United States, except on the East Coast, where Caribbean Spanish is most common (e.g. Miami, where there is an important Cuban community, and the Northeastern U.S., where there are many significant Puerto Rican communities). The Spanish spoken in the Gulf coastal areas of Veracruz and Tabasco and in the states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo, is also distinctive—at least at the level of vernacular speech—as the Spanish spoken there exhibits more Caribbean phonetic traits than that spoken in the rest of Mexico, Cuban Americans and Puerto Rican Americans who live with Mexican Americans with origins from those areas hear a Spanish dialect from Mexican Americans similar to theirs.

Regarding the evolution of the Spanish spoken in Mexico, the Swedish linguist Bertil Malmberg points out that in Mexican Spanish, unlike most variations of the other Spanish-speaking countries, the vowels lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. Malmberg explains this by the influence of the consonant-complex Nahuatl language through bilingual speakers and place names. However, there are currently more than 50 native Mexican languages spoken throughout the country and they all contribute to the diversity of accents found all over Mexico. For instance, the tonal or "sing song" quality of some forms of Mexican Spanish derives from some of the indigenous languages such as Zapotec which, like Chinese, include tonality in their standard form; the tonal sound of some forms of Mexican Spanish are also spoken by mestizos who speak one of native Mexican languages as their first language and Spanish as second language. The strength of the consonants in Mexican Spanish is thus not necessarily from native Mexican influence, especially since other Romance languages, most notably Italian (which is replete with double consonants), also have strengthened consonants, and Mexican Spanish dates from the 17th century.