This book is the first comprehensive study of Spanish in Chicago, where it exists as a minority language alongside dominant English. It aims to describe the oral Spanish of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and MexiRicans across three generations, identifying patterns of change and their explanations. The work examines interactions among speakers of different Spanish varieties in Chicago, contributing to discussions on language or dialect contact outcomes, including linguistic convergence, dialect leveling, accommodation, and language loss. Beginning with an introduction to the histories of Puerto Rican and Mexican communities in Chicago, the book covers settlement patterns, demographic shifts, and social and linguistic attitudes. It analyzes five linguistic features: lexical familiarity, the use of "so" versus "entonces," codeswitching and English usage, subjunctive morphology in various contexts, and two phonological features: the weakening of coda /s/ and the velarization of /r/. The analysis considers proficiency and generational influences on these features. Furthermore, the book discusses factors contributing to diverse Spanish proficiency levels within Latino Chicago and suggests ways to enhance Spanish language vitality across generations. Its findings are compared to foundational studies of Spanish in the US, enriching the understanding of language dynamics in this urban setting.
