Customer Reviews

A Dictionary Of New Mexico And Southern Colorado Spanish

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I recently wrote a book about the history of the towns of New Mexico's Sandia Mountains, and during that time I probably picked this book up two or three times every day.
It is invaluable--loaded with obscure words that no normal Spanish-English dictionary would ever have. It's well-structured, nicely organized, clearly printed, thorough, and as complete as you would ever need it to be.
In its way, it's a sort of linguistic and cultural history of New Mexico and southern Colorado, disguised as a dictionary. Leaf through it and glance at a few words and definitions, and you can't help but learn fascinating things about the people and the places that produced these terms.
If you are a New Mexico student or scholar or writer, you really NEED to have this book. Your work will be incomplete without it.

For years, my wife and I had heard people in northern New Mexico speaking Spanish as described in this book, and we believed they were just not educated properly in correct Spanish grammar and vocabulary. Then I found this book. All the sudden, all the odd pronunciations, verb conjugations and vocabulary made sense. This Spanish evolved almost on its own since the 1500's!

My wife, who is from Oaxaca, Mexico, constantly looks to me to interpret for her when we do business with Northern New Mexicans (who refer to themselves as "Españoles", not Hispanics)who speak this dialect of Spanish. Some time ago, we bought furniture from a sales-lady who referred to herself as an "Española". My wife was happy to be attended to in her native tongue, but when the sales lady asked for my wife's "licencia para arrear", I could tell she didn't have a clue. Thanks to this book, I was able to properly interpret it as "drivers license" (not "marriage license" as my wife was inclined to believe).

From a practical standpoint, it's probably not of much use anywhere else in the world, but if you come to northern New Mexico, and you want to converse with the native Spanish-speakers, you'd better come armed with this book!

This wonderful book covers a lot of the word usages not included in a regular dictionary, that are peculiar to this area. If you can't find the word in your regular dictionary you will likely find it here.

El castellano, o bien la lengua espanola, por hablarse en 21 paises hoy por hoy, obviamente tendra sus variaciones, y cualquier individuo de nivel cultural superior al del adicto a los aparatos electonicos tan ubicuos en nuestro mundo feliz globalizado, reconocera que "coger conchas" y "pisar afuera" pueden tener significados muy contrastados segun donde se encuentre. Dicho esto, el espanol de un individuo formado por 11-12 anos de escolarizacion en aquel idioma sera comprensible a nivel internacional, pero el espanglish o cualquier otra variante con calcos del ingles y terminos incorrectos para el uso actual (o que sencillamente brillan por su ausencia) solo provocara una mezcla de repudio, humor y asombro en el nativo medio culto y vera en dicho espanglish/espanol regional arcaico un vehiculo del todo inadecuado para la comunicacion actual, mas alla de encargar compras de comida en algun restorancito. Con algun chileno, espanol o venezolano, de paso por los pagos cubiertos por el lexico de esta nota, puedo concebirme una rapidisma transicion al ingles (por mas champurreado que lo hable el extranjero)a los efectos de agilizar la comunicacion y evitar malentendidos con los "hispanofonos" locales.

This is a great book to learn the Spanish of our culture. They don't teach us this spanish in school yet it is the way native New Mexicans speak it! Being from Espanola, finding this dictionary was refreshing, knowing that our very unique language is documented and will never be lost! To the first reviewer here, Mr. Bushman:

Man, you are so ignorant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am from Espanola New Mexico and never in my life have I heard anyone refer to us as "Espanoles". Everything you say in this review makes you sound so ignorant. Anyone from Nothern New Mexico reading this review might call you a pinche gringo! Yeah I bet you've heard that one before huh? If you knew the history of Northern NM you would know that our language is a hybrid of the Spanish from Spain and some from Mexico. I am Hispanic, not an Espanoles nor I am I Mexican. Northern NM has some of the strongest culture in the world and some of the oldest traditions. Oh and by the way, English is the pimary language of the area, not only are we Hispanic but we are American too!