Are you a New York-based Latino? Do you speak words? Well, chances are, you say them in a funny way which makes people laugh and feel also perhaps a little bit afraid of you. A linguistic study conducted by The Graduate Center of the City University of New York almost entirely in a bodega bathroom shows that not all Latinos talk the same, although they kind of do. But they do all talk differently than normal people:

Instead of speaking in the habitual style of their countries of origin, Spanish speakers from the Caribbean and the Latin American Mainland, especially the city’s second-generation Latinos, are accommodating each other’s speech patterns as measured by the way they use pronouns.

This mutual convergence is not entirely balanced, but rather tilts in the direction of Caribbean Spanish. Further, the widespread bilingualism of Latinos born and raised in the city has resulted in a Spanish usage influenced by English.

“If pronoun use is any indication,” says the lead author of the study, Ricardo Otheguy, a linguistics professor at the Graduate Center, “Spanish in New York is being leveled. As a result, it is being differentiated from the language that Spanish speakers brought to the city.”

The “urban youth culture, in which Caribbeans play a leading role,” has encouraged the adoption of “Caribbean ways of speaking,” the study notes, which helps account for the tilt toward Caribbean pronoun usage. The authors of the study also speculate that the association of Caribbean speech with popular “cultural forms, such as Caribbean music … may have had positive social value during the formative years” of NYC-born and –raised Spanish speakers.

Other likely factors accounting for the “local prestige” of Caribbean speech include — as might be expected — the Caribbean population’s much longer residence and larger numbers than other Latino groups in the city, as well as “the higher rank of Caribbeans” in many work settings and their “greater experience with, and knowledge of, city life.”

Sometimes we don’t even use pronouns at all, we’re so prestigious and experienced. Like in this sentence!

NYC’s Spanish Speakers Go with the Flow [CUNY]