Yucatecan Spanish

The Yucatan peninsula is a region in which the Spanish and Maya language are still spoken in almost all the region. So the rate of bilingualism in this area is the highest in all México. In fact Yucatán and the other states in the Yucatán peninsula share special-shaped features in speaking, the words that they use and expressions used in daily life. There were different reasons for the Spanish language was developed in those regions differently as the rest of the country, for instance: The language was influenced by the settlements of the Maya civilization; the most important trace was the mayan language. Moreover, during a long period of time the state of Yucatán developed a life style different to the rest of the country.

According to Alfredo Barrera Vásquez “the Maya language has influenced the use of the Spanish language in Yucatán in many ways because it has been settled for 400 years” The first contact between both languages was during the Conquest of Yucatán, so with the arrival of the conquerors to México, they looked for a translator whose can speak to the tribes and settlements. The arrival of Francisco de Montejo to Yucatán carried some changes in the state, for example: Monks were brought with the purpose of evangelize the natives, that is the reason why the conquerors needed to speak the native tongue, in this case the Maya, so they created and wrote books about grammar, vocabulary and dictionaries with the purpose of extend the religion throughout the region. Besides, the expansion of the Spanish continued through the peninsula and there were so many changes in the language itself, tough. For instance, many words were borrowed from Maya, as last names, cities and animal’s names.

The XIX century is considered as the scenario which caused the spread of Spanish in the Yucatán. During this period the Maya language was widely used by either mayan speakers and no mayan speakers. Even though everybody has their native language, the citizen had to speak both languages Spanish and Maya.

Nowadays those changes which the Spanish in Yucatán has been through during the ages are still alive. Whereas, the loanwords in the Spanish are still used by the yucatecan citizen.For example: in the word order or the use of “hibridísmos” (a component of each language to form a Word as in wixar or puruxito) as well as many semantic calques.