New Mexican Spanish

New Mexican Spanish
español neomexicano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol ne.omexiˈkano]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Western Romance Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Castilian Spanish New Mexican Spanish
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	newm1235  New Mexican Spanish
IETF	es-u-sd-usnm
Spanish language distribution in New Mexico by county

New Mexican Spanish (Spanish: español neomexicano) refers to the varieties of Spanish spoken in the United States in New Mexico and southern Colorado. It includes a traditional dialect spoken generally by Hispanos—descendants primarily from pre-18th century Spanish-speaking settlers, who live mostly in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado—and a border dialect spoken in southern New Mexico and more reflective of Mexican Spanish.

Due to New Mexico's unique political history and over 400 years of relative geographic isolation, New Mexican Spanish is unique within Hispanic America,^[1] with the closest similarities found only in certain rural areas of northern Mexico and Texas;^[2] it has been described as unlike any form of Spanish in the world.^[3] This dialect is sometimes called Traditional New Mexican Spanish, or the Spanish Dialect of the Upper Rio Grande Region, to distinguish it from the relatively more recent Mexican variety spoken in the south of the state and among more recent Spanish-speaking immigrants.^[1]

Among the distinctive features of New Mexican Spanish are the preservation of archaic forms and vocabulary from colonial-era Spanish (such as haiga instead of haya or Yo seigo, instead of Yo soy);^[4] the borrowing of words from Puebloan languages,^[5] in addition to the Nahuatl loanwords brought by some colonists (such as chimayó, or "obsidian flake", from Tewa and cíbolo, or buffalo, from Zuni);^[6] independent lexical and morphological innovations;^[7] and a large proportion of English loanwords, particularly for technology (such as bos, troca, and telefón).^[8]

Despite surviving centuries of political and social change, including campaigns of suppression in the early 20th century, Traditional New Mexican Spanish is, as of the early 2020s, threatened with extinction over the next few decades;^[1] causes include rural flight from the isolated communities that preserved it, the growing influence of Mexican Spanish, and intermarriage and interaction between Hispanos and Mexican immigrants.^[9][10] The traditional dialect has increasingly mixed with contemporary varieties, resulting in a new dialect sometimes called Renovador.^[2]