New Mexican Spanish is often described as a sampling of 17th century Golden Age Spanish imported directly from the Old World, and somehow meticulously safeguarded in isolation for two centuries. New Mexico losing form of Spanish spoken nowhere else:
A photo provided by Russell Lee/Farm Security Administration, via Library of Congress of farm workers threshing wheat near Questa, N.M.
Even just a few decades ago, the New Mexican dialect remained at the forefront of Spanish-language media in the United States, featured on television programs like the nationally syndicated 1960s “Val de la O” variety show. Balladeers like Al Hurricane nurtured the dialect in their songs. But such fixtures, along with the dazzling array of Spanish-language newspapers that once flourished in northern New Mexico, have largely faded.
“Our unique Spanish is at real risk of dying out,” said Rael-Vigil, 68, who traces her ancestry to a member of the 1598 expedition that claimed New Mexico as one of the Spanish empire’s most remote domains. “Once a treasure like this is lost, I don’t think we realize, it’s lost forever.”Those speaking New Mexican Spanish in Questa, a village of about 1,700 near the state line with Colorado, tend to be in their 50s or older.
Despite being born in New Mexico and spending nearly her entire life in the state, my grandmother spoke hardly any English. She is gone now, and with her and those of her generation, the region is losing a linguistic treasure trove harkening back centuries. The colonists included Europeans from Spain, Portugal and Greece, but also Mexican-born people of mixed Indigenous, European and African ancestry, as well as Indigenous people, thought to be Tlaxcalan Indians, who spoke Náhuatl, the lingua franca of the Aztec empire.
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