Nuyorican English is a name sometimes applied to New York Latino English, a form of New York dialect historically spoken by Puerto Rican immigrants and their follwowing generations in the New York dialect region but now by many Hispanic-Americans of diverse national heritages in the New York metropolitan area United States, including Sephardic Jews. Therefore, terms like Nuyorican English and the related term Puerto Rican English are now misnomers. The variety of the English language spoken in the New York City and North Jersey region is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English. ... Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize persons whose ancestry hails either from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, or the original settlers of the traditionally Spanish-held Southwestern United States. ... In the strictest sense, a Sephardi (ספרדי, Standard Hebrew Səfardi, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardî; plural Sephardim: ספרדים, Standard Hebrew Səfardim, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardîm) is a Jew original to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal: ספרד, Standard Hebrew Səfárad, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄áraḏ / Səp̄āraḏ), or whose ancestors were among the Jews expelled from...

The dialect shows influence of New York European American English and African American Vernacular English and contact with Spanish. Importantly, this is a native variety of English, not learner English or interlanguage. It is sometimes spoken by people who know little or no Spanish. A few characteristics include: European American is a term for an American of European descent, who are usually referred as White or Caucasian. ... African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called Black English, Black Vernacular, or Black English Vernacular (BEV), is a type of Southern American English lect (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) of the American English language. ... An interlanguage is a language that has been developed by the learners of a second language who have not fully acquired it, but only approximated to it, preserved some features of their first language in speaking or writing the target language, and created innovations. ...

• Devoicing of voiced obstruent codas (e.g., characterize may be realized with a final [s])
• Consonant cluster simplifications such as the loss of dental stops after nasals (e.g., bent) and fricatives, (e.g., left, test). this leads to a characteristic plural, in which words like tests are pronunced like testes. This feature is shared by African American Vernacular English.
• /l/ onsets are clear, unlike those of most other New Yorkers, but, curiously, similar to those in European American dialects in other parts of the US.
• lack of inversion or do support particularly in first and second person questions (I can go to the bathroom?)
• Calques and direct translations of Spanish expressions and words (e.g., owned by the devil, instead of possessed by the devil, closed meaning locked.
• /u/ after coronals is not fronted as in New York European American varieties.
• Like AAVE, working-, middle-, and lower-class New York European American English, Boston accent, and many varieties of Southern American English, the accent is non-rhotic. But, as with these other groups, upper-class Hispanics use rhotic pronunciations much of the time.
• Because Sephardic Jews speak a different variety of NYLE, many Ladino words are blended into this dialect.

It is possible to differentiate this variety from an interlanguage spoken by second language speakers in that NYLE does not contain: In linguistics, a calque (pronounced [kælk]) or loan translation (itself a calque of German Lehnübersetzung) is a phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word translation. ... The Boston accent is the dialect of English not only of the city of Boston itself, but more generally of all of eastern Massachusetts; it shares much in common with the accents of New Hampshire and upper Maine. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter r, equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ... Ladino is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew. ... An interlanguage is a language that has been developed by the learners of a second language who have not fully acquired it, but only approximated to it, preserved some features of their first language in speaking or writing the target language, and created innovations. ...

• There are no confusions of tense and lax vowels, outside contexts where other native speakers often vary usage. So sheep is never confused with ship, although really and ceiling may be pronunced with lax vowels, as in African American Vernacular English.
• There is no addition of /ɛ/ before initial consonant clusters with /s/.
• Speakers do not confuse of /dʒ/ with /j/, (e.g., Yale with jail).

Chicano English also shares some of the above features Chicano English is a dialect of American English used by Chicanos (persons of Mexican descent in America). ...

References

• Slomanson, Peter & Michael Newman (2004) “Peer Group Identification and Variation in New York Latino English Laterals” English Worldwide, 25 (2) pp. 199-216 (http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=EWW)
• Wolfram, Walt (1974) Sociolinguistic Aspects of Assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics isbn: 0872810348
• Wolfram, Walt & Nancy Schilling Estes (2005) American English 2nd edition Blackwell isbn: 1405112654
• Wolfram, Walt & Ben Ward (2005) American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast Blackwell isbn: 1405121092

External links

• The New York Latino English Project The site of the New York Latino English project, which studies the native English spoken by New York Latinos.