These new settlers generally did merge the two sounds, and dialect leveling resulted in later generations of New Mexicans consistently merging / ʎ/ and / ʝ/. After the Pueblo Revolt, New Mexico was re-settled with many new settlers coming in from central Mexico, in addition to returning New Mexican colonists. For example, New Mexican Spanish speakers born before the Pueblo Revolt were generally not yeístas that is, they pronounced the ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ sounds differently.

Many of the changes that occurred in older New Mexican Spanish are reflected in writing. As a result the Traditional New Mexican Spanish of the 20th and 21st centuries is not identical to the Spanish of the early colonial period. Like most languages, New Mexican Spanish gradually evolved.

In the meantime, some Spanish colonists co-existed with and intermarried with Puebloan peoples and Navajos, also enemies of the Comanche. ĭuring that time, contact with the rest of Spanish America was limited because of the Comancheria, and New Mexican Spanish developed closer trading links to the Comanche than to the rest of New Spain. This linguistic isolation facilitated New Mexican Spanish's preservation of older vocabulary as well as its own innovations. Colonial New Mexico was very isolated and had widespread illiteracy, resulting in most New Mexicans of the time having little to no exposure to 'standard' Spanish. Likely as a result of these historical origins and connections, Traditional New Mexican Spanish shares many morphological features with the rural Spanish of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, and other parts of Mexico. The Spanish-speaking areas with which New Mexico had the greatest contact were Chihuahua and Sonora. Following the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, New Mexico was resettled again starting in 1692, primarily by refugees from the Pueblo Revolt and others born in northern New Spain. Almost half the early settlers were from Spain, including many from New Spain, with most of the rest from various parts of Latin America, the Canary Islands, and Portugal. The Spanish language first arrived in present-day New Mexico with Juan de Oñate's colonization expedition in 1598, which brought 600-700 settlers. The traditional dialect has increasingly mixed with contemporary varieties, resulting in a new dialect sometimes called Renovador. ĭespite surviving centuries of political and social change, including campaigns of suppression in the early 20th century, Traditional New Mexican Spanish is threatened with extinction over the next few decades causes include rural flight from the isolated communities that preserved it, the growing influence of Mexican Spanish, and intermarriage and interaction between Hispanos and Mexican immigrants.

Īmong the distinctive features of New Mexican Spanish are the preservation of archaic forms and vocabulary from colonial-era Spanish (such as haiga instead of haya or Yo seigo, instead of Yo soy) the borrowing of words from Puebloan languages, in addition to the Nahuatl loanwords brought by some colonists (such as chimayó, or 'obsidian flake', from Tewa and cíbolo, or buffalo, from Zuni) independent lexical and morphological innovations and a large proportion of English loanwords, particularly for technology (such as bos, troca, and telefón). This dialect is sometimes called Traditional New Mexican Spanish, or the Spanish Dialect of the Upper Rio Grande Region, to distinguish it from the relatively more recent Mexican variety spoken in the south of the state and among more recent Spanish-speaking immigrants. It includes a traditional dialect spoken generally by Hispanos-descendants primarily from pre-18th century Spanish-speaking settlers, who live mostly in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado-and a border dialect spoken in southern New Mexico and more reflective of Mexican Spanish.ĭue to New Mexico's unique political history and over 400 years of relative geographic isolation, New Mexican Spanish is unique within Hispanic America, with the closest similarities found only in certain rural areas of northern Mexico and Texas it has been described as unlike any form of Spanish in the world. New Mexican Spanish ( Spanish: español nuevomexicano) refers to the varieties of Spanish spoken in the United States in New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Ar verb endings in spanish preterite