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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish
Question:
Hello,

I am very curious about a language construct I observed when studying Spanish in Spain. I noticed similarities between the grammatical constructs of British English and Spanish Spanish and similarities between American English and Mexican Spanish. I am an American with a British father, and I lived near the Mexican border for quite some time before going to Spain, so I have experience listening to both kinds of English and Spanish.

Here is an example of the similarities I've noticed. In England and in Spain, if you are talking about something in the recent past, the form used is as follows:

I've gone to the park today.
He ido al parque hoy.

In Mexican Spanish and American English we would generally say:

I went to the park today
Fui al parque hoy.

Any knowledge about why these grammatical similarities exist across shared geography but different languages? I find it fascinating.

Thanks!

Reply:
Interesting observations. It's not impossible because we know that neighboring
languages can converge together in terms of grammatical constructions. These
are called areal features when this happens.

A famous case is East Asia where a set of languages (e.g. Chinese, Vietnamese,
Thai) all tend to have tone even though they are not related. The same thing can
be seen in Western Europe (e.g. English plural -s is probably the default now
because that was the form used in Norman French).

What's interesting here is the time scale. English and Spanish have been in
contact in the Americas for about 400 years, and we know that both languages
have developed features different from the European versions. I would say that
it's clear that English and Spanish in the Americas have affected each other quite
a bit, especially at the border. There are lots of loan words of course and I think
an enhanced acceptance of Spanish phonological patterns in American English
within Spanish loan words.

The more interesting case is UK English and Castiallian (Spanish of Spain). Both
are in Western Europe, but the UK and Spain are not in as much contact as the
U.S. and Mexico/Latin America are. On the other hand, British English was and is
a very dominant language (although today it competes a bit with U.S. English).
The dominance of English in Europe could be a factor. There may also be some
conservatisms or pan Western European grammatical features in play.

I wish I could comment specifically on your examples, but I really don't know
enough.

Reply From: Elizabeth J Pyatt    click here to access email
Date: Aug-14-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish Joseph F Foster    (Aug-14-2009)
  2. Re: British English & Spanish Spanish vs. American English & Mexican Spanish Anthea Fraser Gupta    (Aug-15-2009)
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