Spanish in Colombia and New York City

“Rafael Orozco’s outstanding study of multiple sociolinguistic variables in Colombian Spanish in New York and Barranquilla is an important contribution to our understanding of language and dialect contact. Of particular interest is his finding that the Spanish of Colombians in New York is influenced not only by contact with English, but also by contact with Puerto Rican Spanish. This rigorous study has great relevance not only for students of Spanish, but for all who wish to understand the multiple influences that condition language variation and change in immigrant communities.”

“Spanish in Colombia and New York City is a meticulously-designed volume examining language variation and change through variationist analyses of the future, the possessive, and pronominal expression. The findings provide evidence to support the theory of interdialectal parallelism, as the same linguistic factors condition language variation in both Colombia and New York City. The language contact situation of Colombian speakers in New York shows an interesting dynamic of dialectal convergence. Specialists and students in sociolinguistics will greatly benefit from this extraordinary and most needed book, where the author illustrates how to perform comparative analyses employing the most up-to-date methods in the field.”

“En conclusión, el libro constituye un valioso aporte al estudio de la variación sociolingüística y del español costeño en Colombia y en Estados Unidos. Además de demostrar cambios en progreso y casos de convergencia dialectal, proporciona información útil acerca de los factores internos y externos que condicionan el uso de una u otra forma, distinciones sobre sus contextos de uso y apoyo estadístico a los estudios previos. Si bien este libro es especializado, resulta accesible a todos aquellos interesados en ampliar sus conocimientos sobre estos temas del español. Por su claridad metodológica y la rigurosidad en cada uno de los análisis dispuestos, que incluyen apoyo estadístico vigente, puede servir de modelo tanto a los investigadores como a los estudiantes de sociolingüística y lingüística hispánica.”

“This dynamic, thoughtful, and thought-provoking study will no doubt be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students of Spanish, Romance, and general linguistics.”