Burunat, S., Fishman, J., Garcia, O., and Gertner, M.,   (1985). Written Spanish in the United States: an analysis of the Spanish of the ethnic press.  International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 85-98.  Retrieved March 27, 2008, from Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) database.  (Document ID: 0165-2516).

The authors of this document focus on written Spanish in the United States and in monolingual countries (Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico). Using samples from dailies written in the United States and in three monolingual countries, they compare and analyze the use of written Spanish in four ways. First, they look at the degree to which English influences Spanish. They hypothesize that the influence would be the same. Second, they analyze grammatical errors made that are not due to the influence of English. Third, they look at the use of regionalisms. Lastly, they analyze the use or amount of neologisms.

For their study, they used samples from dailies written in Los Angeles (La Opinion), New York (El Diario La Prensa), and Miami (Diario Las Americas). Dailies from the monolingual countries were Excelsior (Mexico), Gramma (Cuba), and El Mundo (Puerto Rico).

Regarding English influence on written Spanish in the monolingual countries, they noted that there was a lot of difference between the three (the sample from Cuba had only .17%, whereas Puerto Rico had 1.54%). The sample from the United States revealed 1.36% English influence. From this, they drew the conclusion that one of the key factors in what determines how much English influence there is on written Spanish is the degree of contact that the United States has with that country and how often they use the language to communicate messages of that society.

The authors also looked at the use of loans and calques, for which they hypothesized that calques are the “definitive characteristic in differentiating United States Spanish from that of monolingual countries”.  However, what they discovered was that loans are more common both in the United States as well as in monolingual countries.

When analyzing the errors in written Spanish not related to English influence, the outcome was what they expected – that more errors were made in the United States sample (1.17% in the U.S. sample and a mere .12% in the monolingual sample). They refer to Klein, explaining that “predominant use of English in the United States prevents the normal learning of some structures of Spanish”.

Another somewhat expected result came when they looked at regionalisms, which they found used more in the monolingual sample. They noted that regionalisms are becoming rare in the United States, though they also mention that such is the case in various other places as well. Lastly, they found that neologisms were rare in both cases (.4% in the U.S. sample and .11% in the monolingual sample). (Reviewed by Christina Semaan)