Latin American Spanish (Longman Linguistics Library) [Paperback]

John M. Lipski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1994 | ISBN-10: 0582087600 | ISBN-13: 978-0582087606

In this book, John Lipski describes the immense richness of the varieties of a language which is spoken from the US-Canadian border to Antartica. The first part of the book presents a linguistic analysis of Latin American Spanish and places it in a broad historical context. The author examines the phonology and morphology of the language, its syntactic and lexical variation and social differentiation, its past and present contacts with other languages and also explores the socio-historical factors which have shaped the various Latin American Spanish dialects. He provides the reader with a detailed account of the influence of African and Native American languages and populations, and assesses the contribution made by Peninsular Spanish. This includes the geographical and social origins of the original Spanish settlers, the effects of dialect levelling and nautical language and subsequent migratory patterns. There are also in-depth evaluations of dialect classification schemes. The second section of the book gives a detailed country-by-country account of Latin American Spanish, with key historical facts for each country as well as details on pronunciation, morphosyntax and the lexicon.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...the most readable and balanced survey of Latin American Spanish in any language...an extremely well-informed and stimulating survey of American Spanish that successfully states the major questions posed by Latin American dialectology." Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Longman Pub Group (July 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0582087600
• ISBN-13: 978-0582087606
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,168,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All serious students of Spanish should have this book!, July 15, 2005

By 

Gary Bisaga "Christian Father and Husband" (Leesburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Latin American Spanish (Longman Linguistics Library) (Paperback)

This is a very good book on the varieties of Spanish spoken in the Americas. In addition to a general description of the factors involved in differentiating the Spanish of different countries, it goes through each country with Spanish as their official language and talks about the lexical, syntactic, and other aspects of the dialects. It also mentions special characteristic vocabulary of each country.

It's marketed as a linguistics book, which it is, but I say that all serious students of Spanish should buy it because the Spanish you learn in the classroom is going to be representative of a small segment of the Spanish world in general at best. There is such a variety of Spanish spoken in Latin America and some of it, sadly, you get very little knowledge of. As long as you're only speaking in your classroom, it doesn't matter that much. But as soon as you step outside and try to start speaking with native speakers of one country or another, you become painfully aware that your general Spanish education has been missing a few things.

For example, all Spanish students learn there are three main forms of the second-person pronouns: "tú", "usted", and "ustedes." Many student also know that in Spain they use "vosotros," but not in the Americas. Well, in my recent experiences I find out that sometimes (in formal speech, especially in Bible quotes) "vosotros" is used in the Americas (I went to Costa Rica), and that there is yet another second- person pronoun, "vos", that has its own rules; conversely, in some countries (Costa Rica, Argentina, and some others), "tú" is used very rarely, at least among native speakers. On the other hand, they will readily use "tú" with foreigners like me. This explains why central American speakers immediately use "tú" with me, yet they may use "usted" or "vos" among themselves.

I give my "vos" example to point out where this book really shines. It explains in great detail the tendancies of people to either use or refrain from using "vos" and how it stacks up against "tú" and even "usted", country-by-country. It describes the class stigmas and norms associated with each form in each country. This is information that you just can't get in a Spanish class. Even if there was time, you may not get it: I asked a friend who is a Spanish teacher, and she doesn't even know about "vos". Her teachers may not have either.

This book does not cover the Spanish of Spain to any great extent (obviously), nor does it spend much space on Spanish of the United States. The latter would be interesting and would further one's main purpose in reading this book. The only coverage I've found of US Spanish is related to Mexican Spanish, which shows a bit of a western US bias. Here in the east, we have more Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and (in my area of Washington, D.C.) Salvadorans and Peruvians than Mexicans. To see how these various native language forms interact with English would be interesting and add to the value of the book. It also does not cover other countries whose language is not officially Spanish yet have large Spanish-speaking populations, such as Brazil and the Phillipines. On the other hand, the book would have to be frightfully long to cover all this.

My other little problem with the book is that it's written a bit from what I would call an "anti-snob-snobbery" view: that the ideas of language standards are antiquated and that people should never strive to change the way they speak to fit what they term "prestige norms." This is, I take it, the same idea behind Ebonics: the way people is speak is just fine, no matter how it is; and that any attempt to change your linguistic habits to conform to norms (of any type) is ill-advised and comes only under pressure from the man. I don't agree with this idea, at least not in full. I would agree that no form of language is (objectively, and based solely on linguistic criteria) "better" than any other. Thus, with the author, I don't believe it's true that the closer the spoken Spanish matches the written Spanish, the "better" it is from some grand, almost moral, point of view. Similarly, in another realm, English is no "better" than American Sign Language; for that matter, English is no "better" than Spanish (and, which is often forgotten, vice-versa).

But it's not a matter of "better" in some moral sense: it's a matter of ease of communication, of being able to work together effectively toward a common goal, of feeling comfortable with other people, and making them feel comfortable with you. People naturally want greater ease and comfort of communication: I see nothing wrong with letting them get it. If they want to change their linguistic habits (our way of speaking is, after all, simply a habit: it might have been different), it's their affair, and I don't blame them at all. Or let's turn it around: why should I bother learning to imitate a particular accent in speaking Spanish? Why not just speak Spanish like the gringo that I am? "Yaou taingouw much-uh ham-bree." (Gringo-ese for "Yo tengo mucha hambre.") Answer: because I want to fit in with people and make them at ease with me.

Finally, I should mention that since it is a linguistics book, it assumes knowledge of things like the IPA alphabet, the difference between a fricative and a velar, etc. If you're not a linguistics student you'll probably have to do a little outside reading to catch up.

However, I urge you to look past (possible) philosophical disagreements and linguistics impediments and buy this book. It'll do wonders for your Spanish and give you great insights into the minds of Latin Americans.