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Chicano English

In the “Do You Speak American?” series by PBS, Chicano English is discussed in terms of its origins, influences, and features. The site provides links to discussions, quizzes, and interviews on what makes Chicano English distinctive.

Distinctive

  
Chicano English’s usage of multiple languages – namely, varieties of Spanish and English – represents the blending of cultures in which it appears. Chicano English includes varieties that blend Spanish and English to varying degrees and that vary regionally as well. It typically represents language users with Mexican origins, though they may or may not speak fluent Spanish themselves, and it is often used as an identifier for specific ethnic or cultural groups.

Los Angeles Unified School District provides a teacher’s guide detailing the characteristics of Chicano English student speech and writing. It enumerates its particular phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as the ways in which it commonly regularizes mainstream or “Standard” English usages.

Linguistic

  

“Toward a Grammar of Chicano English” by Ricardo L. Garcia, as published in The English Journal in 1974, considers the complex blending of languages and cultures that created Chicano English and the linguistic validity of this variety that is so often overlooked when it is considered a “lesser” or only partially-learned English. He argues that Chicano English users do not have the low IQs that tests suggest but that they simply use different syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology than those assumed for “Standard” English.

This article by Dawn Duchnowski, featured on a class website for Western Connecticut State University’s Virtual International Classroom on Language Varieties, considers the variation within Chicano English as well as the language variety’s strong ties to identity and use as a group identifier. It also examines some common features of Chicano English that distinguish it from mainstream or “Standard” English.

Studied

  

The University of Duisberg-Essen features a page on English varieties that situates Chicano English as a key American variety. The page considers demographics, self-perception, linguistic features, and literature on Chicano English.

For more information, check out Carmen Fought's book Chicano English in Context in which she delves deeply into the culture and the ever-changing reality of this fascinating variety of English.

Continue exploring common language varieties

Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of Myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate.

--- Gloria Anzaldúa, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

The comedian Bill Santiago finds the humor in situations where English and Spanish intersect.
"Yo Googleo"
"Porque Because"
"Chancla"
"Cojones"
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