Chicano English
Introduction
Learn more about a variety of English spoken by members of the Mexican-American community.
Background
Chicano English refers to a variety of English used in the Mexican-American community that is characterized by many Spanish features. While some of the features of Chicano English may be present in other Latino varieties, the specific combination of some of the following listed features makes this variety unique. Additionally, while Spanish may influence some of the features of the variety, this does not indicate a speaker's lack of familiarity with English—but
rather reflects their fluency in a different variety of language entirely. In fact, there may, “be little or no clear connection between a speaker’s heritage language and the linguistic features he or she
uses,” and Chicano English speakers may not even speak Spanish.
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Chicano English exists on a continuum that is influenced by Mexican-American culture and heritage. Most of the research on Chicano English comes from the Los Angeles area. However, anywhere that a vibrant Mexican-American or Latino population exerts cultural influence, Chicano English is likely also present.
For SLPs to effectively treat speakers of Chicano English, a few myths may be addressed to aid in understanding what constitutes disordered versus different speech. The following misconception corrections are taken from selections of Carmen Fought’s research in Chicano English in Context.
Misconceptions of Chicano English
Chicano English is not simply English spoken by native Spanish speakers who are learning English—it is not a building block on the way to English language fluency, but instead its own language entirely.
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Chicano English is not the same as Spanglish. Spanglish is a “separate phenomenon” defined by codeswitching and is therefore distinct from Chicano English. Spanglish involves the mixing of Spanish and English features, whereas Chicano English (while influenced by Spanish) is decidedly an English variety and does not necessarily include this mixing. Another distinction between the two varieties is the act of codeswitching to indicate identity; Chicano English can be used to indicate Mexican Heritage of US born individuals, while Spanglish can be used to indicate individuals born and raised in Mexico.
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Chicano English is not spoken only by gang members, but rather by individuals “who come from a “very wide range of socioeconomic, educational, and occupational backgrounds.” Chicano English is therefore too widespread in the Mexican-American community to be attributed to one specific, and often negative, stereotype.
Pronunciation
This section will outline the key prosodic and phonological features
(where applicable) that characterize Chicano English to assist SLPs in their diagnostic criteria for determining disordered versus different speech.
Prosodic Variations
Because many of the features of Chicano English come from Spanish, some understanding of Spanish phonology is helpful in understanding Chicano features. For example, in Spanish, stressed and unstressed syllables tend to be of similar length, yet in English, stressed syllables are longer and unstressed syllables are shorter. Additionally, in English, stress is often enunciated and used in ambiguous sentences to disambiguate or imply different meanings. In Spanish, however, speakers tend to use tone or pitch to disambiguate meaning. Finally, in Spanish, vowels in unstressed syllables are not reduced to a schwa as they are in English. These specific Spanish prosodic features all carry over into Chicano English and lead Chicano English speakers to have different stress patterns, pitch, and stress-based vowel quality changes than Standard American English speakers.
Chicano English syllables are not stress times like Standard American English, but rather each syllable is of equal length. As such, the rhythm of Chicano English is different than Standard American English.
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Because pitch is more heavily associated with meaning than stress in both Spanish and Chicano English, utterances often have different pitch than typical Standard American English. Chicano English speakers may use up-talk, where the ends of even non-interrogatory sentences end in a higher pitch.
Additionally, the syllable-stress timing leads to some vowels of typically unstressed syllables to be produced as a vowel of the FLEECE class rather than as the schwa found in typical Standard American English speech.
Recording
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(3:12)
The word “something” in the sentence “Something I am passionate about” is pronounced as [sÉ™mθin], as seen in this recording. This speaker’s pronunciation features a clear, unreduced FLEECE vowel.
Many Chicano English speakers also use vocal fry, or creaky voice, as a syntactic feature marking the end of an utterance. Additionally, the speech of many Chicano-speaking teenagers who are more gang or street-oriented tends to have heavy use of vocal fry as an identity marker, particularly in young Chicano-speaking women. In their speech, creaky voice is not a disorder but a syntactic or pragmatic feature.
Recording
Consonantal Variations
Vowel Variation
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(4:45-4:55)
Vocal fry can be clearly heard at the end of utterances in this recording.
Chicano English tends to have many consonants frequently associated with Spanish phonology. Most noticeably, this variety uses th-stopping, wherein dental voiced and voiceless fricatives are instead pronounced as plosives.
Recording
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(1:16-1:20)
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The word “this” in “this made her feel sorry for the beautiful bird” [ðɪs] →[dɪs]
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The word “the” in “this made her feel sorry for the beautiful bird” [ði] → [di]
Chicano English also features consonant cluster reduction, especially on past-tense verbs with the “ed” morpheme. As such, many of the consonant clusters of Standard American English are reduced to a single consonant.
Recording
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(3:12)
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The word “something” in the sentence “Something I am passionate about” [sÉ™mθing] or [sÉ™mθiÅ‹]→[sÉ™mθin]
Chicano English shares some vocalic features with Spanish. The KIT vowel is sometimes merged with the FLEECE vowel, as most Spanish varieties do not have a KIT vowel. Additionally, the ash vowel, /æ/, may be lower in some cases, more similar to /a/; /a/ exists in most Spanish varieties, while /æ/ does not.
Recording
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(3:29-4:01)
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KIT vowel:
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Issue pronounced as [iʃiu] instead of [ɪʃiu] (3:29).
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Ethnic pronounced as [É›θnik] instead of [É›θnɪk] (4:01).
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Ash vowel:
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Lower vowel in as, more similar to [as] instead of [æs] (3:54).
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However, specific regions where Chicano speakers live may display varying vowel sounds. Chicano English speakers in the West have some features in common with Western American English, including the LOT-THOUGHT merger. They may also exhibit a fronted SPOON vowel.
Recording
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(0:42-2:31)
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LOT-THOUGHT merger:
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Compare vowels in the words off (1:35), cloth (1:36), and thought (2:31); each of these words uses the /É‘/ vowel.
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SPOON vowel:
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Fronted in the word goose (0:42).
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Chicano English tends to reduce diphthongs, including the FACE vowel, which tends toward /ɛ/ instead of /ɛi/. On the other hand, Chicano tends to avoid reducing solo vowels to schwas; for example, /a/ might be used instead of /ə/ in words like drugs or money.
Recording
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(0:59-4:32)
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FACE vowel:
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Monophthong in the word day, more similar to [dɛ:] than [dɛi] (4:32).
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Avoiding vowel reduction:
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The pronounced as [θi] instead of [θÉ™] (0:59).
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Grammar
Chicano English is notoriously stereotyped as a lesser version of “standard English” that uses incorrect grammar. The reality is that Chicano is its own, valid language with a unique lexicon and grammar structures. It has influence from the languages around it, including some features of California English, African-American English, and Spanish.
We will run through a few basic features, including multiple specific examples, some complete with a voice sample of native speech.
Examples
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Discourse Markers: Chicano speakers use discourse markers as a way to organize their speech. Examples include like, be all, and be like. The recording below shows a great example of heavy use of discourse markers in everyday speech.
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(4:50-5:00)
“You only get one present. So, you know, I guess like…. Like yeah”
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Negative Concord: This is a feature typical of both Chicano and African-American English. Negative concord allows for the use of more than two negations in a sentence. These negations do not cancel each other out but instead add negative emphasis.
An example of this could be, “I didn’t have no confidence.” This translates to,“I had very little confidence.”
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Habitual Be: Habitual be means the insertion of the be verb in a sentence to convey something that occurs frequently or habitually.
For example, “The news be showing it too much.” This sentence means that the news is repeatedly showing something more than the speaker would like it to.
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It as an empty subject pronoun: Let’s start with an example.
“It’s four of us, there’s two of them.”
The grammatical feature here is the treatment of it. Instead of referencing a specific pronoun, the it is simply a filler. It has no lexical meaning.
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Nonstandard Prepositions: Chicano speakers are known for using prepositions more widely and freely than other varieties of English. What may sound non-standard to a Southern English or Western English speaker is entirely acceptable in this context.
One example is saying “on June” instead of “in June.” Here are two recordings that will serve as an example of this feature.
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“Im learned from her on how to treat a woman.” (2:42-2:46)
“Im blessed for them helping me so much.” (2:21-2:25)
Lexical Variation
Here are a few brief lexical variations common in Chicano English.
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Tell in place of ask
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Barely to mean ‘just recently’
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Brothers for both brothers and sisters
References
1. Thomas, E. R., & Hofwegen, J. V. (2021). Chapter 3: Consonantal Variables Correlated With Ethnicity. In Mexican American English: Substrate influence and the birth of an ethnolect. (pp. 62–62). Essay, Cambridge University Press.
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2. Fought, C. (2003). Chicano English in Context. Palgrave Macmillan.
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3. Fought, 2003.
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4. Fought, 2003.
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5. Fought, 2003.
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6. Fenton, E. S. (2022). Prosody and the Production of Ambiguous Relative Clauses in English and Spanish (Order No. 29162929). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2747036715). Retrieved from https://byu.idm.oclc.org/login/?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/prosody-production-ambiguous-relative-clauses/docview/2747036715/se-2​
7. Portland State University (2022). Chicano English: MultiCSD. https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/multicsd/global-languages/chicano-english?authuser=0
8. Portland State University, 2022.
9. Mendoza-Denton, N. (2011). The Semiotic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Creaky Voice: Circulation and Gendered Hardcore in a Chicana/o Gang Persona. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 21(2), 261–280. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1395.2011.01110.x
10. Mendoza-Denton, 2011.
11. Do You Speak American. PBS, https://www.pbs.org/speak/education/curriculum/college/spanish/
12. Portland State University, 2022.
13. Portland State University, 2022.
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14. Brumbaugh, S. (2017). Anglo and Hispanic Vowel Variation in New Mexican English. Linguistics ETDs, https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/54
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15. Penfield, J., & Ornstein-Galicia, J. L. (1985). Chicano English: An ethnic contact dialect. John Benjamins.
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16. Thomas, E. R. (2018). What a Swarm of Variables Tells Us About the Formation of Mexican American English. In J. Reaser, E. Wilbanks, K. Wojcik, & W. Wolfram (Eds.), Language variety in the new south: Contemporary perspectives on change and variation (pp. 274–288). University of North Carolina Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469638829_reaser.17
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17. Tseng, A. (2015). Vowel Variation, Style, and Identity Construction in the English of Latinos in Washington, D.C. (Order No. 3740308) [Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University]. Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA). (1749852840). https://byu.idm.oclc.org/login/?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/vowelvariation-style-identity-construction/docview/1749852840/se-2
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18. Thomas, 2018, p. 281.
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19. Thomas, 2018, p. 281.
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20. Penfield & Ornstein-Galicia, 1985, p. 36.
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21. Penfield & Ornstein-Galicia, 1985, p. 36.
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22. Garcia, R. L. (1974). Toward a Grammar of Chicano English. The English Journal, 63(3), 34–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/813844
23. Kompara, L. (2015). Dialect Influence on California. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=plas
24. Kompara, 2015.
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25. Fought, 2003.
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26. Kompara, 2015.
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27. Fought, 2003.
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Recordings
Arizona 1 | IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive. (2010, June 15). https://www.dialectsarchive.com/arizona-1
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Iowa 6 | IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive. (2018). https://www.dialectsarchive.com/iowa-6
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Jalisco 1 | IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive. (2012). https://www.dialectsarchive.com/jalisco-1
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Texas 3 | IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive. (2012, September 26). https://www.dialectsarchive.com/texas-3