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Chicano English Dialect

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Chicano English is a fully formed English dialect spoken by Mexican Americans in California (Penfield). It is a contact dialect and is usually acquired by second or third generation Latinos during their language acquisition stage. Chicano English (CE) is not “learner English” or Spanglish, and it is the native language of most speakers. Chicano English has a distinct sound, people who are not familiar with it can mistake it for being an accent or thinking that Spanish is their first language. However, Chicano English speakers are mostly monolingual, and know little Spanish. There are misconceptions that educators can have about the CE community. For example, thinking that those who speak CE lack proficiency in English, believing that their …show more content…
It is its own dialect, separate from other dialects like: African-American English, Louisiana Creole, and American English. One well known myth According to Carmen Fought (2003), is that CE is spoken by people whose first language is Spanish. Many believe that because they have an accent that they have a hard time learning English; but what they are mistaking for an English learner is a CE speaker. Fought gives an example of her playing the movie “Mi Vida Loca” and a student commented about one of the girl’s speech patterns in the movie, stating that the character has an accent because she speaks Spanish. When Fought asked how she knew the character spoke Spanish she stated that it is because how she talks. The student like many others believe that it is a non-native version of English spoken by people whose first language is Spanish. People mistake the dialect for being an accent of someone who is barely learning to speak English. Another issue is that people think that CE reflects influences of being bilingual. The problem with that is that many speakers are not bilingual, they can barely speak fluent Spanish. Instead of the educators forcing students to learn SE, what they can do is understand that they come from a different background and that depending where they live they will acquire a

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