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VARIATION There are significant differences between Castillian Spanish and Mexican Spanish. The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish. In the first place, the Spanish of the Yucatán Peninsula is distinct from all other forms, both in intonation and incorporation of Maya n words. The Spanish spoken in the areas that border Guatemala is closer to Central American Spanish , where the ''voseo'' is common, (the southern state of Chiapas , for example, was originally part of the Audiencia of Guatemala and only became part of Mexico after the wars of colonial independence). Secondly, the waves of 19th and 20th century migration from Mexico to the United States have caused Mexican Spanish to become the most widely spoken variety of Spanish throughout the USA. The Caribbean coastal areas of Veracruz and Tabasco are 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 remainder of Mexico. Historically, the evolution of Mexican Spanish coincides in a number of respects with the development of Peruvian Spanish. Like Lima, Mexico City was for centuries the hub of one of the great viceroyalties of colonial America, one which stretched from the middle of what is now the United States in the north to Panama in the south. As a natural result of Mexico City's prominent role in the colonial administration north of the equator, the population of the city included relatively large numbers of speakers from the centre of the Spanish Empire , Castilla in Central Spain . Consequently, like Lima within the Audiencia of Lima and the adjacent territories, Mexico City tended historically to exercise a standardizing effect within its own sphere of linguistic influence, a state of affairs that is reflected in the praise showered upon Mexican speech patterns by 17th and 18th century commentators. Regarding the evolution of the Spanish spoken in Mexico, the Swedish Hispanist Bertil Malmberg points out that in Mexican Spanish, unlike in other Spanish-speaking countries, it is vowels which lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. Malmberg explains this by the influence of the consonant-complex Nahuatl Language through bilingual speakers and placenames. 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. Others have pointed out that Mexican Spanish is tending towards Stress Timing and concomitant Vowel Reduction , and that this is likely to be caused by the influence of geographically close US English . PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY A striking feature of Mexican Spanish, in the interior of the country at least, is the high rate of unstressed Vowel Reduction and Elision , as in 'trastes' (cooking utensils/dishes). This process is most frequent when a vowel is in contact with , and is the vowel that is most frequently affected. In the same regions – most of the interior of Mexico – syllable-final is rarely weakened; this fact, combined with frequent unstressed vowel reduction, gives the sibilant a special prominence. (Note that this situation contrasts with the situation in the coastal areas, on both the Pacific and the Caribbean sides, where syllable-final weakening is a sociolinguistic marker, reflecting the tension between the Mexico City norm and the historical tendency towards consonantal weakening that is so characteristic of coastal areas in Spanish America .) Mexican Spanish speakers are likely to have shifted the stress of some verbs that end in -iar:
However, this trait is becoming less common, as the literacy rate continues to increase, and many Mexicans will say "negocio", "diferencia" and "financia". Taps and trills and are routinely Assibilated throughout central and southern Mexico, as while in the northern states the tap and trill predominate. Nasals Standard Spanish speakers pronounce final , , and as despite spelling that has the many modern Spanish words that end in 'm' (''UNAM'', ''.com''). Many other dialects also pronounce all three final nasals exactly the same, whether that be as , or as . In Mexico, final and are realized as different sounds. Final is always pronounced as , and final ' as in ''smoking'' (tuxedo) is also pronounced as . Fricatives In Mexican Spanish, 'sh' is treated as an additional digraph. It is pronounced as , in words like ''sushi''. The sound that is used to pronounce it is associated with 's' in Northern Spain, and 'll' in Argentina. In most of Central America and the Andes the digraph is used, but its pronunciation is the same as that of 'ch'. In terms of the variable, the articulation in inland Mexico is usually , as in 'caja' (box). On the coasts the normal articulation is , as in most Caribbean and Pacific coast dialects throughout Latin America. MORPHOLOGY Mexican Spanish is a ''tuteante'' form of the Spanish language, ''voseo'' being confined to some parts of the state of Chiapas , where the local Spanish rather belongs to the Central American region. In Chiapas, the verb forms corresponding to ''vos'' are the same as in Guatemala. In other words, in the ''voseo'', only used in some parts of the state of Chiapas, the present indicative and subjunctive have oxytone forms with monopthongal endings (cantás/-és, comés/-ás, subís/-ás), the imperative has no final /d/, there is sociolinguistic variation in the future between forms in -ás and forms in -és/-ís (the latter being the less prestigious of the alternants), and the remaining ''vos'' forms are identical to those that go with ''tú'' in standard Spanish . ''Vosotros'' (second person plural = you all - heard only in Spain) is almost unknown although it is still taught in school. Mexicans from all over the country use ''ustedes'' instead since ''vosotros'' sounds archaic and pedantic even to very educated Mexican ears. SYNTAX Several syntactic patterns that sound very 'non-standard' to the Peninsular ear are routine in Mexican Spanish. First and foremost is the more or less conventionalized ellipsis of the negative particle "no" in clauses containing the preposition "hasta" (until):
In each case, the sentence has the sense indicated by the English translation only if the main verb is ''implicitly'' understood as being negated. A second departure from Peninsular usage involves using interrogative "qué" in conjunction with the quantifier "tan(to)":
Thirdly, some verbs in Mexican Spanish have partly lost their original meaning, and have adopted the English meaning of their cognates:
These anglicisms are characteristic of the Mexican Spanish: these verbs in South American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish have not lost their original meaning. Note that phenomena relating to bilingualism are likely to be encountered among Bilingual s whose primary language is not Spanish or in isolated rural regions where the syntactic influence of Indigenous languages has been important historically. One of the most discussed of these phenomena is the redundant use of verbal clitics, particularly "lo", a tendency that is encountered in language contact areas throughout Latin America . LEXICON Mexican Spanish retains a number of words that are considered archaisms in Spain. Obviously, they are not seen as archaisms by the speakers of this version of the language, who make up 25% of all native Spanish speakers. Examples of these terms would be, in requesting repetition of something not understood, the most common response in Central Mexico would be, "¿Mande?" (from ''mandar'' 'to order'). Another example is "alcancía" instead of "hucha". Other commonly heard Mexicanisms include the following: ''chamaco'' a small child, ''chingadera'' any unspecified object (considered vulgar), '' Chingar '' (to screw/to ruin) (vulgar), ''güero'' someone with light hair and/or light skin, '' Naco '' a boorish, uneducated person (usually has strong anti- Indian racist undertones), ''¿Qué pedo?'' What's going on?/What's up? (vulgar),''órale'' OK/All right, ''popote'' straw, ''ya mero'' almost, and the replacement of ''necesitar'' (to need) with ''ocupar'' (to occupy) in especially in Guadalajara . In Mexico, the common word for a cold is ''gripa'' instead of ''gripe''. ''El radio'' refers to a Radio Receiver while ''la radio'' refers to the means of communication; e.g. ''Ayer pasaron la noticia por la radio'' vs ''enchufó el radio'' (he plugged the radio in). A swimming pool is an ''alberca'' instead of ''piscina'' (used in Spain) or ''pileta'' (used in South America). DIALECT S Due to the size of the country, it is natural that a variety of Mexican dialects has emerged. Some of them are clearly distinct from the other varieties (the speech of Mexico City, Yucatán , Nuevo León , Jalisco , Veracruz and Chiapas , for example, are easy to tell apart from each other). Differences in usage and vocabulary among the regions are common and, although standard Mexican Spanish is understood by all, sometimes the differences can lead to misunderstandings. Dialects also vary depending on the education, social level and ethnic background of the speaker. DIMINUTIVES In Mexico, the ''it'' style diminutive infix is the only one that is generally used to form one's own words (''cafecito'', ''cervecita'', ''chavito''), and attach to names (''Marquitos'', ''Juanito''). The ''ill'' style infix is used for words with fixed definitions. ''mantequilla'' means butter, while ''manteca'' means lard. But unlike some other places, it is not generally used to form one's own words. The ''in'' infix is also rarely used to form one's own words. And when a girl's name contains it, it is considered a separate name, rather than a diminutive of the same name. For example, ''Paulina'' is an entirely different name from ''Paula''. Using the ''in'' infix to form nicknames is seldom heard in Mexico. The infix is also repeated quite often in Mexico as in ''chiquitita''. MISCELLANEOUS
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