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81-436: "Zacateco" is a Mexican Spanish derivation from the original Nahuatl Zacatecatl , pluralized in early Mexican Spanish as Zacatecas , the name given to the state and city. The name was given by the Aztecs to the people inhabiting a region in which a grass they called the zacatl was abundant. The region was thus called Zacatlan by the Aztecs. ( Mexica ) The Zacateco united militarily with other Chichimeca nations to form

162-551: A Nahuatl substratum , as part of a broader cultural phenomenon that preserves aspects of indigenous culture through place names of Nahuatl origin, statues that commemorate Aztec rulers, etc. The Mexican linguist Juan M. Lope Blanch , however, finds similar weakening of vowels in regions of several other Spanish-speaking countries; he also finds no similarity between the vowel behavior of Nahuatl and that of Central Mexican Spanish; and thirdly, he finds Nahuatl syllable structure no more complex than that of Spanish. Furthermore, Nahuatl

243-547: A linguistic substrate . Particularly significant has been the influence of Nahuatl , especially in the lexicon . However, while in the vocabulary its influence is undeniable, it is hardly felt in the grammar field. In the lexicon, in addition to the words that originated from Mexico with which the Spanish language has been enriched, such as tomate "tomato", hule "rubber", tiza "chalk", chocolate "chocolate", coyote "coyote", petaca "flask", et cetera;

324-497: A pause it is instead realized as an affricate [ ɟʝ ] . In the north and in rural Michoacan, /ʝ/ is consistently rendered as an approximant and may even be elided when between vowels and in contact with /i/ or /e/ , as in gallina 'hen', silla 'chair', and sella 'seal'. As in all American dialects of Spanish, Mexican Spanish has seseo , so /θ/ is not distinguished from /s/ . Thus, casa 'house' and caza 'hunt' are homophones. Present in most of

405-736: A Mexican Spanish "macro-dialect". The small amount of Philippine Spanish has traditionally been influenced by Mexican Spanish, as the colony was initially administered from Mexico City before being administered directly from Madrid . Chavacano , a Spanish-based creole language in the Philippines, is based on Mexican Spanish. To outsiders, the accents of nearby Spanish-speaking countries in northern Central America, such as El Salvador and Guatemala , might sound similar to those spoken in Mexico, especially in central and southern Mexico. The Spanish of Mexico has had various indigenous languages as

486-401: A bacterial relative of syphilis . According to study lead researcher Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, "It really looks as if this woman had a very hard time and an extremely unhappy end of her life. Obviously, this is speculative, but given the traumas and the pathological deformations on her skull, it appears a likely scenario that she may have been expelled from her group and was killed in the cave, or

567-628: A certain settlement and the response in Yucatec Mayan was "I don't understand", which sounded like yucatán to the Spaniards. There are many possibilities of what the natives could have actually said, among which " mathan cauyi athán ", " tectecán ", " ma'anaatik ka t'ann " and " ci u t'ann ". This origin story was first told by Hernán Cortés in his letters to Charles V . Later 16th century historians Motolinia and Francisco López de Gómara also repeat this version. In some versions

648-460: A female with large feet ( patas ). It is common to replace /s/ with /tʃ/ to form diminutives, e.g. I sabel → Chabela , Jo sé Ma ría → Chema , Ce r ve za ("beer") → Chela / Cheve , Conc epción → Conchita , Sin Muela s ("without molars") → Chimuela ("toothless"). This is common in, but not exclusive to, Mexican Spanish. Typical of Mexican Spanish

729-537: A merger of -ir and -er verb conjugations such that 'we live' is vivemos instead of vivimos , verb roots other than haiga (instead of haya ) with non-standard /g/ such as creigo 'I believe' for creo , an accent shift in the first person plural subjunctive forms váyamos instead of vayamos 'we go', and a shift from -mos to -nos in proparoxytonic third person singular verb forms ( cantaríanos instead of cantaríamos 'we sing'). These same verb forms are also found in

810-424: A phonetic feature also typical of southwestern Andalusian Spanish dialects. All varieties of Mexican Spanish are characterized by yeísmo : the letters ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ correspond to the same phoneme, /ʝ/ . That phoneme, in most variants of Mexican Spanish, is pronounced as either a palatal fricative [ ʝ ] or an approximant [ ʝ˕ ] in most cases, although after

891-502: A woman approximately 30 years of age who lived at least 9,900 years ago. According to craniometric measurements, the skull is believed to conform to the mesocephalic pattern, like the other three skulls found in Tulum caves. Three different scars on the skull of the woman showed that she was hit with something hard and her skull bones were broken. Her skull also had crater-like deformations and tissue deformities that appeared to be caused by

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972-401: Is a defective dative clitic; instead of working as an indirect object pronoun, it modifies the verb. An effect of the modification is the intransitive of the transitive verbs that appear with this -le defective (ex. moverle "to move" it is not mover algo para alguien "to move something for someone" but hacer la acción de mover "to make the action of moving"). This intensifier use

1053-585: Is a large peninsula in southeast Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala . The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west of the peninsula from the Caribbean Sea to the east. The Yucatán Channel , between the northeastern corner of the peninsula and Cuba , connects the two bodies of water. The peninsula is approximately 181,000 km (70,000 sq mi) in area. It has low relief and

1134-535: Is a particular grammatical feature of the Mexican Spanish variant. In any case, it should not be confused the use of -le as verbal modifier, with the different uses of the pronouns of indirect object (dative) in the classical Spanish, as these are thoroughly used to indicate in particular the case genitive and the ethical dative. In what is considered one of the founding documents of the Spanish language,

1215-739: Is almost entirely composed of porous limestone . The peninsula lies east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec , the narrowest point in Mexico separating the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, from the Pacific Ocean. Some consider the isthmus to be the geographic boundary between Central America and the rest of North America , placing the peninsula in Central America. Politically, all of Mexico, including

1296-732: Is also used, as in other Spanish-speaking countries); papalote "kite" < Nahuatl pāpālōtl [paːˈpaːloːt͡ɬ] "butterfly"; and jitomate "tomato" < Nahuatl xītomatl [ʃiːˈtomat͡ɬ] . For a more complete list see List of Spanish words of Nahuatl origin . Other expressions that are common in colloquial Mexican Spanish include: Most of the words above are considered informal (e.g. chavo(a) , padre , güero , etc.), rude ( güey , naco , ¿cómo (la) ves? , etc.) or vulgar (e.g. chingadera , pinche , pedo ) and are limited to slang use among friends or in informal settings; foreigners need to exercise caution in their use. In 2009, at an audience for

1377-427: Is an ellipsis of the negative particle no in a main clause introduced by an adverbial clause with hasta que : In this kind of construction, the main verb is implicitly understood as being negated. Mexico shares with many other areas of Spanish America the use of interrogative qué in conjunction with the quantifier tan(to) : It has been suggested that there is influence of indigenous languages on

1458-427: Is common to all varieties of Spanish. In many Nahuatl words in which ⟨x⟩ originally represented [ʃ] , the pronunciation has changed to [x] (or [h] )—e.g. Jalapa/Xalapa [xaˈlapa] . Regarding the pronunciation of the phoneme /x/ , the articulation in most of Mexico is velar [x] , as in caja [ˈkaxa] ('box'). However, in some (but not all) dialects of southern Mexico,

1539-542: Is commonly found in words of Nahuatl or Mayan origin, such as Xola [ˈʃola] (a station in the Mexico City Metro ). The spelling ⟨x⟩ can additionally represent the phoneme /x/ (also mostly in place names), as in México itself ( /ˈmexiko/ ); or /s/ , as in the place name Xochimilco —as well as the /ks/ sequence (in words of Greco-Latin origin, such as anexar /anekˈsar/ ), which

1620-529: Is no Spanish word; mezquite "mesquite", zapote "sapota", jícama "jicama", ixtle "ixtle", cenzontle "mockingbird", tuza "husk", pozole , tamales , huacal "crate", comal "hotplate", huipil "embroidered blouse", metate "stone for grinding", etc. The strength of the Nahuatl substrate influence is felt less each day, since there are no new contributions. The influence of Nahuatl on phonology seems restricted to

1701-466: Is not a real pronoun of indirect object, since it is still used in non-verbal constructions, such as hijo "son" -> híjo le "damn", ahora "now" -> óra le "wow"," ¿que hubo? " "what's up?" -> quihúbo le "how's it going?", etc. Although the suffix -le hypothesis as influence of Nahuatl has been widely questioned; Navarro Ibarra (2009) finds another explanation about -le intensifying character. The author warns that it

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1782-465: Is not alone as a possible influence, as there are currently more than 90 native languages spoken in Mexico. Due to influence from indigenous languages , such as Nahuatl , Mexican Spanish has incorporated many words containing the sequences ⟨tz⟩ and ⟨tl⟩ , corresponding to the voiceless alveolar affricate [t͡s] and the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ] , present in many indigenous languages of Mexico, as in

1863-510: Is often assimilated to /w/ . Speakers from the Yucatán, especially men or those who are older, often pronounce the voiceless stops /p, t, k/ with aspiration . Like most Spanish dialects and varieties, Mexican Spanish has five vowels: close unrounded front /i/ , close rounded back /u/ , mid unrounded front /e/ , mid rounded back /o/ , and open unrounded /a/ . A striking feature of Mexican Spanish, particularly that of central Mexico,

1944-401: Is the high rate of reduction , which can involve shortening and centralization , devoicing , or both, and even elision of unstressed vowels, as in [ˈtɾasts] ( trastes , 'cooking utensils'). This process is most frequent when a vowel is in contact with the phoneme /s/ , so that /s/ + vowel + /s/ is the construction when the vowel is most frequently affected. It can be the case that

2025-586: Is the site of the Chicxulub crater impact, which was created 66 million years ago by an asteroid of about 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) in diameter at the end of the Cretaceous Period . In 2020, an underwater archaeological expedition led by Jerónimo Avilés excavated Chan Hol cave, near the Tulum archaeological site in the state of Quintana Roo on the peninsula, and revealed the skeleton of

2106-589: Is used. Meanwhile, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo led to a large number of Mexicans residing in what had become US territory, and many of their descendants have continued to speak Spanish. In addition, the waves of 19th- and 20th-century migration from Mexico to the United States , have contributed greatly to making Mexican Spanish the most widely spoken variety of Spanish in the United States. Finally,

2187-409: The /t/ would form part of the previous syllable's coda, and be subject to weakening, as in [aðˈlantiko] , [aðˈleta] . Some claim that in Mexican Spanish, the sequence /tl/ is really a single phoneme , the same as the lateral affricate of Nahuatl. On the other hand, José Ignacio Hualde and Patricio Carrasco argue that /tl/ is best analyzed as an onset cluster on the basis that Mexicans take

2268-786: The Cerro de la Bufa . They also extended down to what is now Los Altos Jalisco and overlapped territory with the Caxcanes . Most Zacatecos were nomadic, although a few groups were essentially sedentary. Both men and women wore their hair down to their waist. Some Chichimeca tribes wore their head braided, but it is unspecified if any Zacatec tribes did so. They used body paint and tattoos to distinguish themselves from other tribes. Zacatecos were known to wear skin coverings below their knees and skin headbands on their foreheads. Occasionally they wore leather-soled sandals. They were "graceful, strong, robust and beardless". Juan Bautista de Pomar commented, "In

2349-489: The poem of Mio Cid written around the year 1200, you can already find various examples of dative possessive or ethical. Mexico has a border of more than 2,500 kilometers with the United States , and receives major influxes of American and Canadian tourists every year. More than 63% of the 57 million Latinos in the United States are assumed as of Mexican origin. English is the most studied foreign language in Mexico , and

2430-551: The polite personal pronoun usted in the majority of social situations, especially in Northern Mexico . In the north, children even address their parents with usted . In rural areas of Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Tlaxcala, many people use a number of distinct non-standard morphological forms: 2nd person preterite verb forms ending in -ates, ites , imperfect forms such as traiba, creiba instead of traía, creía 'brought, believed',

2511-506: The subjunctive , as indicated by a study finding that, among residents of Reynosa , greater contact with the American side correlated with lower use of the subjunctive. This parallels a greater reduction in the use of the subjunctive among Mexican-Americans. The center of Hispanic Linguistics of UNAM carried out a number of surveys in the project of coordinated study of the cultured linguistic norms of major cities of Ibero-America and of

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2592-651: The Chichimeca Confederation to defeat the Spaniards during the Chichimeca War (1550-90). See Chichimeca War . The Zacatecos as a culture have vanished or faded, due to assimilation and mestizaje of the Mexican people. However, many of their direct descendants still live in large concentrations in central Mexico. Taking all this into account, it is extremely difficult to even approximate

2673-716: The Iberian Peninsula. The total number of anglicisms was about 4% among Mexican speakers of urban norms. However, this figure includes anglicisms that permeated general Spanish long ago and which are not particular to Mexico, such as buffete, náilon "nylon", dólar "dollar", hockey, rimel , ron "rum", vagón "railroad car", búfer "buffer", and others. Yucat%C3%A1n Peninsula The Yucatán Peninsula ( / ˌ j uː k ə ˈ t ɑː n , - ˈ t æ n / YOO -kə- TA(H)N , UK also / ˌ j ʊ k -/ YUU - ; Spanish : Península de Yucatán [peˈninsula ðe ʝukaˈtan] )

2754-604: The Maya ruins of Tulum and Coba . The population of the Yucatán Peninsula is very different throughout each part of the Peninsula. Population density and ethnic composition are two factors that play into the total population. The most populated area is Mérida in Yucatán state and the surrounding region, contrasted by the state of Quintana Roo, the least populated part of the peninsula. In terms of ethnic composition,

2835-478: The Spanish of Mexico has many Nahuatlismos that confer a lexical personality of its own. It can happen that the Nahuatl word coexists with the Spanish word, as in the cases of cuate "buddy" and amigo "friend", guajolote "turkey" and pavo "turkey", chamaco "kid" and niño "boy", mecate "rope" and reata "rope", etc. On other occasions, the indigenous word differs slightly from

2916-526: The Spanish spoken in coastal areas often exhibits certain phonetic traits in common with the Caribbean rather than with that of central Mexico, and the Spanish of the Yucatán Peninsula is quite distinct from other varieties. It should also be noted that there is great variation in intonation patterns from region to region within Mexico. For instance, the Spanish of northern Mexico, including

2997-501: The Spanish, as in the case of huarache , which is another type of sandal; tlapalería , hardware store, molcajete , a stone mortar, etc. Other times, the Nahuatl word has almost completely displaced the Spanish, tecolote "owl", atole "cornflour drink", popote "straw", milpa "cornfield", ejote "green bean", jacal "shack", papalote "kite", etc. There are many indigenismos "words of indigenous origin" who designate Mexican realities for which there

3078-520: The Yucatán Peninsula any time of year. Although these storms pummel the area with heavy rains and high winds, they tend to be short-lived, clearing after about an hour. The average percentage of days with rain per month ranges from a monthly low of 7% in April to a high of 25% in October. Breezes can have a cooling effect, humidity is generally high, particularly in the remaining rainforest areas. Due to

3159-664: The Yucatán Peninsula is an unconfined flat lying karst landscape. Sinkholes, known locally as cenotes , are widespread in the northern lowlands. According to the Alvarez hypothesis , the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs at the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene Period, the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), 66 million years ago was caused by an asteroid impact somewhere in

3240-470: The Yucatán Peninsula was largely a cattle ranching, logging, chicle and henequen production area. Since the 1970s, the Yucatán Peninsula has reoriented its economy towards tourism, especially in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Aside from tourism, another source of income that is important in the Peninsula is logging as well as chicle industries specifically in Belize. Oil was also found in certain parts of

3321-465: The Yucatán peninsula. In all these regions, /s/ -weakening acts as a sociolinguistic marker, being more prevalent in rural areas and among the lower classes. The prevalence of a weakened syllable-final /s/ in so many peripheral areas of Mexico suggests that such weakening was at one point more prevalent in peripheral areas, but that the influence of Mexico City has led to the diffusion of a style of pronunciation without /s/ -weakening, especially among

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3402-411: The Yucatán, bringing in more economic opportunities. Once a small fishing village, Cancún in the northeast of the peninsula has grown into a thriving city. The Riviera Maya , which stretches along the east coast of the peninsula between Cancún and Tulum , houses over 50,000 beds. The best-known locations are the former fishing town of Playa del Carmen , the ecological parks Xcaret and Xel-Há and

3483-408: The Yucatán, is generally considered part of North America, while Guatemala and Belize are considered part of Central America. The proper derivation of the word Yucatán is widely debated. 17th-century Franciscan historian Diego López de Cogolludo offers two theories in particular. In the first one, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba , having first arrived to the peninsula in 1517, inquired the name of

3564-450: The aforementioned "Ring of Cenotes", as well as the presence of impact debris such as shocked quartz and tektites , a type of glass formed during meteorite impacts . The Arrowsmith Bank is a submerged bank located off the northeastern end of the peninsula. The peninsula has a tropical climate, which ranges from semi-arid in the northwest to humid in the south. Average annual rainfall ranges from less than 800 mm (30 inches) in

3645-457: The coastal margins. The thousands of sinkholes known as cenotes throughout the region provide access to the groundwater system. The cenotes have long been relied on by ancient and contemporary Maya people. The vegetation and plant communities of the peninsula vary from north to south. The Yucatán dry forests occupy the dry northwestern peninsula, and include dry forests and scrublands and cactus scrub. The Yucatán moist forests occur across

3726-571: The diminutive does not necessarily denote small size, but rather often implies an affectionate attitude; thus one may speak of " una casita grande " ('a nice, big house'). When the diminutive suffix is applied to an adjective, often a near-equivalent idea can be expressed in English by "nice and [adjective]". So, for example, a mattress ( Spanish : un colchón ) described as blandito might be "nice and soft", while calling it blando might be heard to mean "too soft". In some regions of Mexico,

3807-403: The diminutive is found across all socioeconomic classes, but its "excessive" use is commonly associated with lower-class speech. The augmentative suffix -(z)ote is typically used in Mexico to make nouns larger, more powerful, etc. For example, the word camión , in Mexico, means bus ; the suffixed form camionzote means "big or long bus". It can be repeated just as in the case of

3888-535: The diminutive suffix -ito is also used to form affectives to express politeness or submission ( cafecito , literally "little coffee"; cabecita , literally "little head"; chavito "little boy"), and is attached to names ( Marquitos , from Marcos ; Juanito , from Juan —cf. Eng. Johnny ) denoting affection. In the northern parts of the country, the suffix -ito is often replaced in informal situations by -illo ( cafecillo , cabecilla , morrillo , Juanillo ). Frequent use of

3969-708: The driest parts of the northwest up to 2,000 mm (80 inches) in the Petén Basin to the south. Rainfall varies seasonally, with August and September generally the wettest months. Like much of the Caribbean , the peninsula lies within the Atlantic Hurricane Belt, and with its almost uniformly flat terrain it is vulnerable to these large storms coming from the east, and the area has been devastated by many hurricanes, such as Hurricane Gilbert , Hurricane Emily , Hurricane Wilma , and Hurricane Dean . Strong storms called nortes can quickly descend on

4050-531: The east along the Caribbean Sea. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System is an immense coral barrier reef which stretches over 1,100 km (700 miles) along the eastern coast of the peninsula. The peninsula comprises the Mexican states of Yucatán , Campeche , and Quintana Roo , as well as Guatemala 's Petén Department and almost all of Belize . In the late historic and early modern eras,

4131-549: The existence of at least two morphologically diverse groups of people living separately in Mexico during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene . The Yucatán Peninsula constitutes a significant proportion of the ancient Maya lowlands and was the central location of the Maya Civilization. The Maya culture also extended south of the Yucatán Peninsula into Guatemala , Honduras , and the highlands of Chiapas . There are many Maya archaeological sites throughout

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4212-569: The expedition is not the one captained by Córdoba but instead the one a year later captained by Juan de Grijalva . The second major theory is that the name is in some way related to the yuca crop, as written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo . Others theories claim that it is a derivative of Chontal Tabascan word yokat'an meaning speaker of the Yoko ochoco language, or an incorrect Nahuatl term yokatlan as supposedly "place of richness" ( yohcāuh cannot be paired with tlán ). The Yucatán Peninsula

4293-419: The extreme karst nature of the whole peninsula, the northern half is devoid of aboveground rivers. Where lakes and swamps are present, the water is marshy and generally unpotable. Due to its coastal location, the whole of the peninsula is underlain by an extensive contiguous density stratified coastal aquifer , where a fresh water lens formed from meteoric water floats on top of intruding saline water from

4374-443: The familiar Mexican proverb " Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente " (A sleeping shrimp is carried away by the tide), without realizing the vulgarity associated with the word in Mexico. The prince, also unaware of the differences, proceeded to say the word, to the bemusement and offense of some of the attendees. New Mexico Spanish has many similarities with an older version of Mexican Spanish, and can be considered part of

4455-586: The familiar second person singular). The traditional familiar second person plural pronoun vosotros —in colloquial use only in Spain—is found in Mexico only in certain archaic texts and ceremonial language. However, since it is used in many Spanish-language Bibles throughout the country, most Mexicans are familiar with the form and understand it. An instance of it is found in the national anthem , which all Mexicans learn to sing: Mexicanos, al grito de guerra / el acero aprestad y el bridón . Mexicans tend to use

4536-533: The general lack of s-aspiration in the center of the country, /s/ is often elided before /r/ or /l/ , and the phrase buenas noches is often pronounced without the first /s/ . There is a set of voiced obstruents — /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ , and sometimes /ʝ/ —which alternate between approximant and plosive allophones depending on the environment. /bw/ often becomes /gw/ , especially in more rural speech, such that abuelo and bueno may be pronounced as agüelo and güeno . In addition, /gw/

4617-424: The greater Caribbean Basin . The deeply buried Chicxulub crater is centered off the north coast of the peninsula near the town of Chicxulub . The now-famous "Ring of Cenotes," a geologic structure composed of sinkholes arranged in a semi-circle, outlines one of the shock-waves from this impact event in the approximately 66-million-year-old rock. The existence of the crater has been supported by evidence including

4698-540: The interior of Mexico is the preservation, or absence of debuccalization , of syllable-final /s/ . The fact that the areas with the strongest preservation of final /s/ are also those with the most frequent unstressed vowel reduction gives the sibilant /s/ a special prominence in these dialects. On the other hand, /s/ -weakening is very frequent on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, and is also fairly frequent in northern and northwestern Mexico, and in parts of Oaxaca and

4779-732: The largest continuous tracts of tropical rainforest in Central America . However, these forests are suffering extensive deforestation . Mangroves occur along the coast, with the Usumacinta mangroves around the Laguna de Términos in the southwest, the Petenes mangroves along the west coast, Ría Lagartos mangroves along the northern shore of the peninsula, and the Mayan Corridor mangroves and Belizean Coast mangroves to

4860-538: The middle and east of the peninsula, and are characterized by semi-deciduous forests where 25 to 50% of the trees lose their leaves during the summer dry season. The Belizian pine forests are found in several enclaves across central Belize. The southernmost portion of the peninsula is in the Petén–Veracruz moist forests ecoregion, an evergreen rain forest. Northern Guatemala ( El Petén ), Mexico ( Campeche and Quintana Roo ), and western Belize are still occupied by

4941-501: The monosyllabic pronunciation of digraphs -tz- and -tl- (Mexico: [aˈt͡ɬantiko] / Spain : [aðˈlantiko] ), and to the various pronunciations of the letter -x- , coming to represent the sounds [ks] , [gz] , [s] , [x] and [ʃ] . In the grammar, one can cite as influence of Nahuatl the extensive use of diminutives: The most common Spanish diminutive suffix is -ito/-ita . English examples are –y in doggy or -let in booklet. It can also be cited as influence of Nahuatl

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5022-683: The normal articulation is glottal [ h ] (as it is in most dialects of the Caribbean, the Pacific Coast, the Canary Islands , and most of Andalusia and Extremadura in Spain). Thus, in these dialects, México, Jalapa , and caja are respectively pronounced [ˈmehiko] , [haˈlapa] , and [ˈkaha] . In northwestern Mexico and rural Michoacan, [tʃ] , represented by ⟨ch⟩ , tends to be deaffricated to [ʃ] ,

5103-548: The opinion of men experienced in foreign lands, the Zacatecos are the best archers in the world." The Zacatecos were a nomadic tribe and others were sedentary which means they lived in one area. Some tribes did in fact have temples dedicated to some kind of worship in the southwestern part of the state of Zacatecas. In a town called El Teul Gonzalez De Ortega there is a hill called El Cerro del Sombrero. And upon this hill there are temples ball courts and also ancient channels where

5184-493: The peninsula; some of the better-known are Chichen Itza , Coba , Tulum , and Uxmal . Indigenous Maya and Mestizos of partial Maya descent make up a sizable portion of the region's population, and Mayan languages are widely spoken there. The peninsula is the exposed portion of the larger Yucatán Platform , all of which is composed of carbonate and soluble rocks, being mostly limestone although dolomite and evaporites are also present at various depths. The whole of

5265-693: The population of their descendants. It is equally hard to elaborate on their culture, language, art, and traditions. To the east and north they overlapped lands with the Guachichiles . They extended to border the Tepehuanes to the west near Durango. To the north their land bordered that of the Irritilas or Laguna tribes, up to were Cuencamé and Parras are located. Their principal population centers were in Malpaís, around Peñón Blanco , and around

5346-424: The population, being the mother tongue of 93.8%, and the second language of 5.4%. The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish, since linguistic boundaries rarely coincide with political ones. The Spanish spoken in the southernmost state of Chiapas , bordering Guatemala , resembles the variety of Central American Spanish spoken in that country, where voseo

5427-495: The same amount of time to pronounce /tl/ as they do to pronounce /pl/ and /kl/ . They predicted that if /tl/ were a single segment, it would have been pronounced quicker than the other clusters. In addition to the usual voiceless fricatives of other American Spanish dialects ( /f/ , /s/ , /x/ ), Mexican Spanish also has the palatal sibilant /ʃ/ , mostly in words from indigenous languages—especially place names. The /ʃ/ , represented orthographically as ⟨x⟩ ,

5508-461: The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Mexico and the Netherlands, the then Crown Prince of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander , made a statement to the audience with a word that, in Mexican Spanish, is considered very vulgar. Evidently oblivious to the word's different connotations in different countries, the prince's Argentine interpreter used the word chingada as the ending to

5589-896: The speech of central Mexico, having its apparent origin in the State of Mexico , is the use of negation in an unmarked yes/no question . Thus, in place of " ¿Quieres...? " (Would you like...?), there is a tendency to ask " ¿No quieres...? " (Wouldn't you like...?). Mexican Spanish retains a number of words that are considered archaic in Spain. Also, there are a number of words widely used in Mexico which have Nahuatl, Mayan or other native origins, in particular names for flora, fauna and toponyms . Some of these words are used in most, or all, Spanish-speaking countries, like chocolate and aguacate ("avocado"), and some are only used in Mexico. The latter include guajolote "turkey" < Nahuatl huaxōlōtl [waˈʃoːloːt͡ɬ] (although pavo

5670-433: The suffixes -ito and -ísimo ; therefore camionzotototote means very, very, very big bus . The suffix -uco or -ucho and its feminine counterparts -uca and -ucha respectively, are used as a disparaging form of a noun; for example, the word casa , meaning "house", can be modified with that suffix ( casucha ) to change the word's meaning to make it disparaging, and sometimes offensive; so

5751-609: The syntax of Mexican Spanish (as well as that of other areas in the Americas), manifested, for example, in the redundant use of verbal clitics , particularly lo . This is more common among bilinguals or in isolated rural areas. Mucho muy can be used colloquially in place of the superlative -ísimo , as in: Mexican Spanish, like that of many other parts of the Americas, prefers the preposition por in expressions of time spans, as in A more or less recent phenomenon in

5832-810: The third most spoken after Spanish and the native languages taken together. Given these circumstances, anglicisms in Mexican Spanish are continuously increasing (as they are also in the rest of the Americas and Spain), including filmar "to film", béisbol "baseball", club "club", coctel "cocktail", líder "leader", cheque "check", sándwich "sandwich", etc. Mexican Spanish also uses other anglicisms that are not used in all Spanish-speaking countries, including bye , ok , nice , cool , checar "to check", fólder "folder", overol "overalls", réferi "referee", lonchera "lunch bag", clóset "closet", maple "maple syrup", baby shower , etc. English influence, at least in border cities, may result in lower use of

5913-529: The traditional Spanish of New Mexico, is characterized by its own distinct set of intonation patterns. Regarding the evolution of the Spanish spoken in Mexico, the Swedish linguist Bertil Malmberg points out that in Central Mexican Spanish—unlike most varieties in the other Spanish-speaking countries—the vowels lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. Malmberg attributes this to

5994-411: The traditional Spanish of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Central Mexico is noted for the frequent use of diminutive suffixes with many nouns, adverbs, and adjectives, even where no semantic diminution of size or intensity is implied. Most frequent is the -ito/ita suffix, which replaces the final vowel on words that have one. Words ending with -n use the suffix -cito/cita . Use of

6075-489: The tribe extracted fresh water from the hill. Mexican Spanish This is an accepted version of this page Mexican Spanish ( Spanish : español mexicano ) is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in the United Mexican States . Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, more than double any other country in the world. Spanish is spoken by over 99% of

6156-469: The urban middle classes. /s/ -weakening on both the Pacific and the Gulf Coast was strengthened by influences from Andalusian , Canarian , and Caribbean Spanish dialects. Also, the dialects spoken in rural Chihuahua , Sonora , and Sinaloa , like that of New Mexico , have developed aspiration of syllable-initial /s/ , as in words like pasar 'to pass' and señor 'sir'. Despite

6237-481: The use of the suffix -Le to give an emphatic character to the imperative . For example: brinca "jump" -> brínca le "jump", come "eat" -> cóme le "eat", pasa "go/proceed" -> pása le "go/proceed", etc. This suffix is considered to be a crossover of the Spanish indirect object pronoun -le with the Nahua excitable interjections, such as cuele "strain." However, this suffix

6318-428: The word casucha often refers to a shanty, hut or hovel. The word madera ("wood") can take the suffix -uca ( maderuca ) to mean "rotten, ugly wood". Other suffixes include, but are not limited to: -azo as in carrazo , which refers to a very impressive car ( carro ) such as a Ferrari or Mercedes-Benz; -ón , for example narizón , meaning "big-nosed" ( nariz = "nose"), or patona ,

6399-417: The words pesos , pesas , and peces are pronounced the same [ˈpesəs] . The vowels are slightly less frequently reduced or eliminated in the constructions /t, p, k, d/ + vowel + /s/ , so that the words pastas , pastes , and pastos may also be pronounced the same [ˈpasts] . Mexican Spanish is a tuteante form of the language (i.e. using tú and its traditional verb forms for

6480-673: The words tlapalería [t͡ɬapaleˈɾia] ('hardware store') and coatzacoalquense [koat͡sakoalˈkense] ('from [the city of] Coatzacoalcos '). Mexican Spanish always pronounces the /t/ and /l/ in such a sequence in the same syllable, a trait shared with the Spanish of the rest of Latin America, that of the Canary Islands, and the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, including Bilbao and Galicia. This includes words of Greek and Latin origin with ⟨tl⟩ such as Atlántico and atleta . In contrast, in most of Spain,

6561-541: Was left in the cave to die there”. The newly discovered skeleton was 140 meters away from the Chan Hol 2 site. Although archaeologists assumed the divers had found the remains of the missing Chan Hol 2, the analysis soon proved that these assumptions were erroneous. Stinnesbeck compared the new bones to old photographs of Chan Hol 2 and showed that the two skeletons represent different individuals. Due to their distinctive features, study co-researcher Samuel Rennie suggest

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