Language of New Mexico

Presentation on the language of New Mexico by Mario Del Angel-Guevara

Saturday, October 8th

3 PM

Main Library

A Confluence of Dialects

Ongoing research will explore how Northern New Mexican Spanish is shaped and revived by other dialects

By William Melhado

March 15, 2022 at 4:20 pm MDT

Santa Fe Reporter

"Over a quarter of New Mexicans speak Spanish, but it starts to get complicated after that.

Speakers’ backgrounds lead to a diverse spectrum of dialects, and a lengthy history of studying Spanish in New Mexico has revealed that the language is “behaving” differently in the northern and southern parts of the state.

This diverging behavior is a direct result of the influences these regions encounter, based on proximity to the border with Mexico, explains Mario Del Angel-Guevara, a University of New Mexico Hispanic Linguistics PhD candidate and instructor of traditional medicine in Mexico and the Southwest, and he’s looking for more people to participate in his research.

Del Angel-Guevara dives into the impact Spanish spoken by immigrants has on the dialect characteristics found in Northern New Mexico.

'Here in Albuquerque, you have a more diverse community: You have people from Mexico, you have people from Cuba and you have people from Northern New Mexico. You have many languages here,” he tells SFR. “Therefore, language is affected at a faster pace or a faster rate than it would be in more isolated communities.'

Del Angel-Guevara says that while the Northern New Mexico dialect of Spanish can be found in Albuquerque, it is more pronounced in smaller communities such as Española and Taos. Yet that change is inevitable, he explains: “If there are people from different backgrounds coexisting in the same geographical space, they will influence each other no matter what.”

Del Angel-Guevara interviews Spanish speakers who have lived in Northern New Mexico for at least a decade, tracking the different words used to describe objects to assess how dialects have changed over time."  https://www.sfreporter.com/news/2022/03/15/a-confluence-of-dialects/

Mario Esteban Del Ángel Guevara, M.A. PhD Candidate
Doctoral Candidate in Hispanic Linguistics
The University of New Mexico

Mario Esteban del Ángel Guevara was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico where he obtained his bachelor's degree in Bilingual education at the “Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León”. He is a PhD candidate in Hispanic linguistics at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese where he has taught courses in Spanish as a Second Language, Heritage language, Medical Spanish and currently teaches bilingual courses on Curanderismo: Traditional Medicine of Mexico and the Southwest. Besides teaching, his work also includes translating and interpreting Spanish-English on topics related to traditional medicine and as mentor for transfer students for the CNM-UNM Mellon Transfer Initiative for the Humanities. Doctoral candidate Mario del Angel has received certificates on Legal, Business and Medical Spanish-English translation by the National Center for Interpretation at the University of Arizona. Some of his major translated publications include three books on Curanderismo and a book on finances for U.S. Latinos.