Чикано английский: Диалект юго-западных штатов США

Dialect of English spoken in the Southwestern United States

Chicano English, or Mexican American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans (sometimes known as Chicanos), particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California, as well as in Chicago. Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with Spanglish, which is a mixing of Spanish and English; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of English, not a "learner English" or interlanguage. It is even the native dialect of some speakers who know little to no Spanish, or have no Mexican heritage.

Many people who speak Chicano English do not themselves identify with the term "Chicano." For example, none of 's eight Hispanic participants identified with the term. Despite this, Chicano English remains the most widely used and recognized term for this language variety. Some studies on Chicano English have used terms such as "Mexican American English", "Latino English", and "Mexican Heritage English".

Communities of Spanish speaking Tejanos, Nuevomexicanos, Californios, and Mission Indians have existed in the American Southwest since the area was part of New Spain's Provincias Internas. Most of the historically Hispanophone populations eventually adopted English as their first language, as part of their overall Americanization. A high level of Mexican immigration began in the 20th century, with the exodus of refugees from the Mexican Revolution (1910) and the linkage of Mexican railroads to the US (Santa Ana, 1991). The Hispanic population is one of the largest and fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, they form 45% of the population (roughly 6 million out of 13.3 million in 2014). The result of the migration and the segregated social conditions of the immigrants in California made an ethnic community that is only partly assimilated to the matrix Anglo (European American) community. It retains symbolic links with Hispanic culture (as well as real links from continuing immigration), but linguistically, it is mostly an English speaking, not a Spanish speaking, community. However, its members have a distinctive accent. The phonological inventory of Chicano English speakers appears to be identical to that of the local Anglo community. For example, long and short vowels are clearly distinguished, as is the English vowel Speculatively, it seems that the main differences between the Chicano accent and the local Anglo accent are that the Chicanos are not always participating in ongoing phonetic changes in Anglo communities, such as the raising of that characterizes Anglo Inland Northern speakers but not necessarily Hispanic ones. Because Spanish speaking people migrated from other parts of the Hispanophone world to the Southwest, Chicano English is now the customary dialect of many Hispanic Americans of diverse national heritages in the Southwest. As Hispanics are of diverse racial origins, Chicano English serves as the distinction from non Hispanic and non Latino Americans in the Southwest. A common stereotype about Chicano English speakers, similar to stereotypes about other racial/ethnic minorities in the United States, is that Chicano English speakers are not proficient in English and are generally uneducated. This language ideology is linked to negative perceptions about Chicano Americans and Hispanics in general. Some of these stereotypes can be seen in popular films that depict the Chicano lifestyles and dialects. Most of these films take place in Southern California. Some of the more popular films where this can be noted are Mi Familia, American Me and Blood In Blood Out. These films depict speakers of the Southern California Chicano dialect and also some of the stereotypes that are associated with Chicanos.

The rhythm of Chicano English tends to have an intermediate prosody between a Spanish like syllable timing, with syllables taking up roughly the same amount of time with roughly the same amount of stress, and General American English's stress timing, with only stressed syllables being evenly timed. Chicano English also has a complex set of nonstandard English intonation patterns, such as pitch rises on significant words in the middle and at the end of sentences as well as initial sentence high pitches, which are often accompanied by the lengthening of the affected syllables. When needing extra emphasis to certain words, there is the use of rising glides. Rising glides can be used multiple times in one sentence. On compound nouns and verbs, major stress is on the second word. Rising glides can occur at any time and at either monosyllabic or polysyllabic words.

Certain Chicano English consonant pronunciations are similar to African American Vernacular English. Chicano English often exhibits th stopping. That is, /ð/ sounds may be replaced with /d/ sounds, as in "dese" and "dem" instead of "these" and "them". t/d deletion occurs at the end of a word when those consonants are part of a consonant cluster. For example, "missed" becomes "miss". For younger speakers, however, the vowel is retracted to by the Californian Vowel Shift. The salary–celery merger occurs, with and merging before This is found in Los Angeles, northern New Mexico and Albuquerque, and in El Paso. is pronounced as , making showing sound like show een. The distinction between and before liquid consonants is often reduced in some Chicano accents, making fill and feel homophones. That is also a feature of general California English. is slightly fronted, as in most American and many British dialects, but they are less fronted than in mainstream California English. Some realizations of , , , and other long vowels are pronounced as monophthongs. That may be an effect of Spanish, but other American English dialects (Minnesota, and Wisconsin, for example) also show monophthongization of such vowels, which are more commonly diphthongs in English. Also, such vowels are underlyingly long monophthongs so the general effect thus is to simplify the system of phonetic implementation, compared to the of many other English dialects.

A fair to strong degree of variation exists in the phonology of Chicano English. Its precise boundaries are difficult to delineate, perhaps because of its separate origins of the dialect in the Southwest and the Midwest. One subvariety, referenced as Tejano English, is used mainly in southern Texas. California subvarieties are also widely studied, especially that of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Northern New Mexico Hispanic English, transcending age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, has been reported as having its own vowel shift as follows: is before a final (so feel merges to the sound of fill), is before any consonant (so suit merges to the sound of soot), is before a final (so shell merges to the sound of shall), and is before any consonant (so cup merges to the sound of something like cop). That said, a later study examining the speech of college students in Albuquerque failed to find evidence of being laxed to or of becoming lowered to .

This form of Chicano English is predominantly spoken in East Los Angeles and has been influenced by the California English of coastal European Americans and African American Vernacular English.