It is debatable who first said it, British playwright George Bernard Shaw or Irish poet Oscar Wild but both men have been credited with essentially the same line, that ‘England and the United States were separated by a common language.’ The sentiment may also be applied to Spanish and those who speak the language, especially those who first settled the southwest and, more specifically, New Mexico and southern Colorado.
“I have proof,” said New Mexico State University linguist, Professor Mark Waltermire, “that words that are no longer used in modern Spanish have been retained” in contemporary and regional Spanish. Waltermire’s speaking about the variations in Spanish language dialects spoken in southern New Mexico and that spoken in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
For Spanish speakers, the difference is not necessarily dramatic but most assuredly noticeable, said Waltermire. Examples are many. In an interview from his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where is working while on sabbatical from NMSU, Waltermire says the word ‘nephew’ is a good example. In a current spoken regional Spanish, older speakers might say the word as ‘mijo brino,’ others might instead say, ‘sobrino.’ He calls the older words archaisms, “words that are no longer used in modern Spanish but have been retained.”
The differences between the dialects of southern New Mexico and northern New Mexico and southern Colorado—primarily the region of the San Luis Valley—are not only separated geographically but also generationally. Older speakers tend to use a language influenced by those who brought it from Mexico centuries earlier, a language that has the blend of the Spanish of the colonizers and that of indigenous peoples.
Spanish language scholars say that by the time the trek north from Mexico began into what is now New Mexico and southern Colorado, many of those making it were not even born in Spain and, in fact, born in Mexico. Expedition leader Juan Oñate, vilified as much as glorified, is perhaps the best example. While his lineage can be traced back to Spain, he was, in fact, born in Mexico. As a result, the language he and others like him spoke already had begun blending with what they had taken from Mexico’s indigenous populations.
But, slowly, said Waltermire, certain elements of the older dialect are disappearing. Language, in this case, Spanish, is a thing that is constantly evolving and moving away from its origins. Sometimes it happens glacially, other times almost meteorically, perhaps in a single generation. It happens as it is exposed to new tongues. The Spanish brought here by colonizers was exposed to the language spoken by those already here.
A conversation between two people, one using an older form of the language, the other using a more contemporary version, would still be easily understood. Context, along with the familiarity of having heard others using similar terms, would bridge any moment of doubt. There is a similar lin- guistic dynamic in the rural areas of West Virginia and Ohio, where now and then an old English word might routinely drop into a conversation.
In the tiny hamlets that dot northern New Mexico, Costilla, Questa, Chimayo and Taos, along with the out- of-the-way ones in the San Luis Valley, families lived and remained on the land on a generational basis, only rarely moving and when they did move, it was only a few miles. They sustained themselves by living off the crops they grew and the animals they kept. Their isolation, along with that of their neighbors, kept the language they spoke as pristine as it had been decades before. When they did move, and as time passed, new words would enter the language.
“Anytime you have adaptation or change, motivated by immigration or contact with English, the two forces change older forms of Spanish,” said the NMSU professor. “It’s normal for both languages.” ‘Almuerzo,’ morphed into ‘lunche,’ or lunch, Waltemire used as an example. Words like these are cognates, easily translatable in either language.
Language, said New Mexico State University Spanish professor, Dr. Daniel Villa, is always evolving. It also is not unique to the Spanish spoken in New Mexico. But the Spanish spoken west of the Mississippi derives from Mexico. “Some terms will vanish,” he said. “Some will remain.” “If you look at a text in old English,” said Villa, “some of the words are indecipherable.”
Some Spanish words that were used in the 16th century, would not be used today. Conversely, said Villa, a great writer like Cervantes ‘couldn’t talk about rifles, cars or sewing machines. The words didn’t exist!”
Interestingly, many of the words in everyday use came here from Spain centuries ago but were not Spanish. Some examples include aceite or oil derives from the Arabic alzayt, azucar comes from alsukkar which is Arabic for sugar. Of course, it was the Moors, Muslims who lived in Spain, who integrated the language with Arabic words. “We look at the language and ask, ‘where did this word come from?,” said Villa. “People left a lot of words behind.”
