Filología y Lingüística XXVIII (2): 93-110, 2002
RESUMEN
En este estudio se examinan los patrones de distribución que se manifiestan en una situación de contac-
to dialectal entre hablantes del español salvadoreño y mexicano en Houston, Texas. Dos variables, el
voseo (uso del pronombre vos de segunda persona y la morfología correspondiente) y el andar transiti-
vo (uso de andar para significar el llevar algo en sí mismo), se comparan a través de entrevistas socio-
lingüísticas llevadas a cabo por un hablante del español mexicano entre cuatro grupos de hablantes del
español salvadoreño. La mayor distribución cuantitativa del voseo y del andar transitivo en el grupo que
se entrevistó en El Salvador que en cualquiera de los grupos que se entrevistaron en Houston muestra
que los informantes en Houston tienden a acoplarse al habla del entrevistador mexicano. Las diferen-
cias cuantitativas entre los diferentes grupos en Houston nos indican que la edad del informante al mo-
mento de arribo al área de contacto dialectal influye en los patrones de distribución. Asimismo, las di-
ferencias en la distribución del voseo y del andar transitivo sugieren que los informantes parecen estar
más conscientes de algunas características dialectales que de otras.
ABSTRACT
This study examines the distributional patterns evidenced in a dialect contact situation between speakers
of Mexican and Salvadoran Spanish in Houston, Texas. Two variables, voseo (use of second person
pronoun vos and its corresponding morphology) and transitive andar (use of andar to mean ‘carry
something on one’s person’), are compared in sociolinguistic interviews conducted by a speaker of
Mexican Spanish among four groups of Salvadoran Spanish speakers. Higher frequencies of both voseo
and transitive andar in the group interviewed in El Salvador than any of the groups interviewed in
Houston show that the informants in Houston tend to accommodate to the Mexican interviewer.
Differences between the Houston groups indicate that distributional patterns are influenced by the
informant’s age of arrival to the area of dialect contact. At the same time, distributional differences
between voseo and transitive andar suggest that informants seem to be more aware of the use of some
dialect features than others.*
1. Introduction
The description and analysis of linguistic patterns of Central American communities
in the United States constitutes an important component of Spanish linguistic research that has
been for the most part overlooked. Lipski (2000: 190) points out that “Because of the difficult
conditions under which they [have] arrived and lived, the language and culture of Central
Americans in the United States have not received an acknowledgment proportional to the
ACCOMMODATION IN A DIALECT CONTACT SITUATION
José Esteban Hernández
 
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA94
numerical strength of this population”. Trends in Central American immigration to the United
States during the 1980’s and 1990’s show the numerical importance that the group has
acquired. For example, figures from the 1990 census indicate that at least 1,323,830 persons
claimed Central American origin in the United States. When we look at national origin,
565,081 Salvadorans constitute the largest Central American group in the United States. As a
result of their growing numbers, Salvadorans have become a fast growing group within
different Hispanic communities, which has in turn caused the diversification of the Hispanic
population across the United States. Table 1 shows the major distribution of Salvadorans by
state and the District of Columbia.
Table 1
Distribution of Salvadorans in the United States: 
the top five states and the District of Columbia
California 338,769
Texas 58,128
New York 47,350
Virginia 23,537
Florida 12,400
Washington D.C. 10,513
At the state level, we see that 58,128 Salvadorans made Texas the state with the
second largest Salvadoran population, surpassed only by 338,769 Salvadorans in California.
The population breakdown in major metropolitan areas across the United States is as follows.
Table 2
Distribution of the six major Salvadoran populations by metropolitan areas
Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside 274,788
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island 63,676
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 52,438
Washington D.C.-MD-VA 51,893
Houston-Galveston-Brazoria 40,475
Miami-Fort Lauderdale 9,118
The 1990 census indicates that a total of 625, 929 persons claimed Mexican heritage
in the Houston area. We should state that while the Mexican origin community has been well
established in the area since the middle of the 1800’s, Salvadoran immigration to the area
represents a recent phenomenon; its major increase occurred during the 1980’s at the peak of
civil conflict in El Salvador. Between 1980 and 1990, for example, 345,942 Salvadorans
immigrated to the United States. Thus, national immigration trends show that out of the
565,081 persons that claimed Salvadoran origin in the 1990 census, 458,678 were foreign born
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 95
and only 106,405 were born in the United States. The flow of Salvadoran immigration to the
Houston area has continued, mainly because the end of the civil war did not bring an answer
to the socioeconomic problems which gave rise to the conflict.
While the Mexican community undoubtedly constitutes the largest Spanish-speaking
group in the area, it is difficult to estimate the size of the Salvadoran community in Houston.
Consequently, projections of the Salvadoran population vary. First, a significant part of the
Salvadoran population that has entered illegally for the most part goes unreported in census
figures. Then, the steady growth in legal and illegal immigration within that ten year time span
in which the census is conducted can only be predicted. For example, Lipski (1988: 95)
believes that the 100,000 mark “has been surpassed even by the most conservative estimates”.
In a sociological study, Rodriguez (1987: 9) estimates that “undocumented Salvadorans in
Houston probably number over 50,000”. At any rate, the official census figures alone make
Salvadorans the second largest Spanish-speaking group in the Houston area1. 
These demographics have facilitated the interaction between Mexicans and
Salvadorans in the Houston area. People of Mexican origin in Houston occupy several well
established neighborhoods, where they are the overwhelming majority or maintain an
important presence. Salvadoran immigrants have mainly sought residence within these
established enclaves, where stores, restaurants, and other specialized businesses cater
mainly to the Spanish-speaking community. Rodriguez (1987: 5-6) corroborates the impact
of undocumented Central American immigration on Mexican housing patterns in Houston,
and states that “A large segment of undocumented Central Americans have settled in the old
Mexican/Chicano barrios where Mexican immigrants are concentrated.” Lipski (1988: 98)
also reports that Salvadoran immigrants of lower working class and middle class
socioeconomic levels tend to live in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods. Findings by
Rodriguez (1987: 20) confirm that undocumented Salvadorans usually work alongside
undocumented workers of other nationalities. This tendency is also reaffirmed by Lipski
(1988: 99) who notes that “a very high percentage [of Salvadorans] work with Mexicans,
and nearly all Salvadoran immigrants patronize stores and restaurants where Mexicans and
Mexican Americans are found in large numbers”. Thus, economic, laboral, courtship,
friendship, and kinship bonds between Salvadorans and Mexicans have grown in the last
two decades.
In this article we analyze the effects that this dialect contact situation between
Salvadorans and Mexicans has on the Salvadoran Spanish in Houston, Texas. The study
measures the degree of accommodation that occurs when Salvadoran informants interact
with a Mexican interviewer. Two linguistic variables, voseo and transitive andar, that may
differ in their degree of speakers’ awareness are explored. The rest of this paper is organized
as follows. Section 2 is a pilot study that compares dialect awareness among Mexicans
living in two different Southwestern cities. Section 3 is a summary of accommodation
theory. Sections 4 describes the data collection process and the methodology used. Section
5 accounts for the distinct uses of each linguistic variant studied in two varieties. Section 6
presents and interprets the variational patterns found in the data. Finally, Section 7 offers
some concluding remarks.
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA96
2. Dialect awareness in two communities: a pilot study
Much work indicates that language contact does not occur under situations of neutral
emotions and perceptions (Weinreich 1953, Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Rather, language
groups in contact usually form impressions and opinions about each other that reflect and
shape the type of social interaction; this is also true of dialect contact. For this reason, it comes
as no surprise that speakers of a language also have perceptions about varieties of their native
language as spoken by other groups. This ability to differentiate between dialects helps
speakers to imitate a specific accent. For instance, in looking at speakers of British English,
Trudgill (1986: 12) suggests that salient features of American English are usually produced in
those cases in which speakers want to sound like Americans (e.g. telling jokes, acting a role).
Saliency as explained by Trudgill (1986: 12) refers to those features that are “most prominent
in the consciousness” of speakers. This goes back to the Labovian notion that sociolinguistic
markers have a high level of awareness.
To compare awareness about specific dialect features in Salvadoran Spanish, eleven
speakers of Mexican Spanish, living in Houston and Albuquerque, New Mexico were asked to
determine the origin of five speakers in five different taped conversations that were extracted
from interviews conducted among Salvadorans in Houston. All participants were speakers of
Northern Mexican varieties that do not share those features in the conversations with Salvadoran
Spanish. The pilot study was conducted in Houston, primarily because of the exceptional
opportunity offered by the dialect contact situation. According to the 1990 census, persons of
Mexican origin account for 82% of the total Hispanic population, and persons of Salvadoran
origin comprise 5% of the total Hispanic population2. Albuquerque was chosen because
Mexicans also constitute the largest immigrant Hispanic subgroup. Like Houston, Albuquerque
has constantly received waves of Mexican immigration during this century. The 1990 census
showed that 70,145 persons, 53.3% of the total Hispanic population, claimed Mexican origin in
the Albuquerque metropolitan area3. However, the 1990 census also showed that only 253
Salvadorans, 0.001% of the total Hispanic population, lived in the Albuquerque metropolitan
area. Consequently, we tried to evaluate whether Mexicans in Houston, where Salvadorans are
a significant presence, differed from Mexicans in Albuquerque, where there is no significant
Salvadoran presence, in their awareness of certain features present in this variety. More
specifically, we also wanted to look at the participant’s level of awareness between phonological
and morphological features in Salvadoran Spanish. Six different participants in Houston had the
opportunity to listen to two different taped conversations each, for a total of twelve responses.
To compare these results, five participants in Albuquerque had the opportunity to listen to two
different taped conversations each, for a total of ten responses. Although all speakers in the taped
conversations were Salvadorans, “El Salvador” was not an option in the place of origin. Instead,
participants were asked to choose among several Mexican states or de otro país ‘from another
country’, where they could write in any country (See APPENDIX A).
Because we were trying to determine whether participants relied more on
phonological, lexical or morphosyntactic features in their recognition of Salvadoran Spanish,
the five taped conversations used differed in their phonological, lexical, and grammatical
content. Figure 1 summarizes the features found in each conversation, which are not part of
the Northern Mexican varieties of the participants.
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 97
Conversation 1
(JG/2/14)4 
Phonological: /n/ → [N] / _$
Morphosyntactic: none
Lexical: none
Conversation 2:
(MM/1/32)
Phonological: /n/ → [N] / _$, /s/ → [h] / _$, /b/ → [b] / V_V
Morphosyntactic: none
Lexical: none
Conversation 3:
(RH/1/55)
Phonological: /n/ → [N] / _$, /s/ → [h] / _$, /s/ →  / _$
Morphosyntactic: Use of adjective + copula, la cerveza muy cara está.
Lexical: Use of ¿va? ‘right?’ instead of ¿verdad? as in 
Mexican Spanish.
Conversation 4:
(GL/2/20)
Phonological: /n/ → [N] / _$, /s/ → [h] / _$, /b/ → [b] / V_V, r → / _#
Lexical: Use of a saber ‘who knows’ instead of ¿quién sabe? As in 
Mexican Spanish.
Conversation 5:
(AC/1/39)
Phonological: /n/ → [N] / _$, /s/ → [h] / _$, /s/ → / _$, /b/ → [b] / V_V
Morphosyntactic: Use of voseo (See examples 2-10).
Lexical: none
In Figure 1 we see that conversation 1 shows only /n/ velarization. Conversation 2
presents the use of /n/ velarization, /s/ aspiration, and an intervocalic /b/ occlusiveness.
Conversation 3 shows /n/ velarization, /s/ aspiration and deletion, in addition to the use of
adjective + copula, as in la cerveza muy cara está ‘the beer is very expensive’, and the use of
¿va? ‘right?’, as in quizás se la creyeron, ¿va? ‘maybe they believed it, right?’. In Salvadoran
Spanish verdad, suffers greater reduction than in Northern Mexican Spanish and is usually
pronounced va or veá. Conversation 4 shows all the phonological features present in
Conversation 2, /r/ deletion, and the use of a saber ‘who knows’, as in yo creo que era cuestión
de querernos dejar ahí o a saber qué ‘I think it was a matter of wanting to leave us there, who
knows what’. Finally, Conversation 5 shows most of the characteristic phonological features
present in Salvadoran Spanish, and the use of voseo, as in entre más rápido echás el viaje ‘the
faster you make the trip’.
The taped conversations with prevailing phonological features were always played
first, while those combining phonological with lexical or grammatical features were always
Figure 1
Some phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features in five taped conversations with Salvadorans
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA98
played second. Consequently, the numerical order in Figure 1 was never altered to prevent
participants from listening to conversations that had lexical or grammatical features before
listening to those with primarily phonological features.
Table 3
Origin recognition of Salvadoran speakers in five different conversations 
among Mexican evaluators in Houston and Albuquerque
CONVERSATION ORIGIN HOUSTON ORIGIN ALBUQUERQUE
RESPONSES RESPONSES
1 Tamaulipas, México 1 Tamaulipas, México 1
Veracruz, México 1 mexicoamericano 1
Guerrero, México 1 
El Salvador none El Salvador none
2 Veracruz, México 1 mexicoamericano 2
El Salvador 2 El Salvador none
3 Veracruz, México 1
Guerrero, México 1
El Salvador 3 El Salvador none
4 Jalisco, México 2
El Salvador 2 El Salvador 1
5 Jalisco, México 1
El Salvador 1 El Salvador none
Table 3 shows that the Houston participants recognized the Salvadoran origin of the
speakers in the conversations with greater accuracy than the participants in Albuquerque. For
example, if we look at responses given for Conversation 2, two out of three participants in
Houston suggested Veracruz, Mexico as the place of origin, while one suggested El Salvador.
On the other hand, the two Albuquerque participants suggested a Mexican American origin.
All Houston participants recognized the origin of speakers in Conversations 3, 4, and 5, but
only one in Albuquerque recognized the speaker in Conversation 4 as Salvadoran5.
Participants in Houston recognized speakers in the conversations as Salvadorans 7 out of 12
times for a 58% accuracy. On the other hand, participants in Albuquerque recognized speakers
in the conversation as Salvadorans only 1 out of 10 times for a 10% accuracy. We can infer
that this reflects a lack of awareness of the characteristic features that distinguishes the
Salvadoran variety from the Mexican variety.
A more important finding is the fact that the awareness of participants in Houston
increases as we descend along Table 3. Once they could rely on lexical or grammatical
features, participants in Houston were able to determine place of origin with a 100% accuracy.
That is, awareness of the specific dialect features heightened as the participants in Houston
shifted, from relying completely on phonological features, to relying additionally on lexical
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 99
and grammatical features. On the other hand, participants in Albuquerque were not aware of
the characteristic features of this dialect. Table 3 clearly shows that phonological features
alone are not as perceptible in the Houston dialect contact situation, as the combination of
phonological, lexical, and grammatical features seems to be. If we consider that Conversations
1 and 2 show only phonological traits, we see that participants in Houston recognized speakers
in the conversations as Salvadoran 1 out of 6 times for a 16.6% accuracy. This is compared to
a 0% accuracy among participants in Albuquerque. Again, the accuracy of the participants
sharply differs in the responses of those conversations that combined phonological and
grammatical features. Here, participants in Houston recognized speakers as Salvadorans 6 out
of 6 times for a 100% accuracy. Participants in Albuquerque only recognized speakers as
Salvadoran 1 out of 6 times for a 17% accuracy.
The areas of Veracruz and Guerrero, two of the three Mexican states indicated as place
of origin for speakers in conversations 1 and 2 in Houston, share similar phonological traits
with Salvadoran Spanish. Lipski (1994: 282) lists velarization of word final /n/ and weakening
of syllable final /s/ as characteristic features of these two Mexican varieties. These two
characteristics are also present in Salvadoran Spanish. In contrast, the Tamaulipas and the
Mexican American variety, indicated as the origin of Speakers 1 and 2 in Albuquerque, do not
share those features with Salvadoran Spanish. Table 3 confirms that Mexican evaluators in
Houston have a greater awareness of some morphosyntactic and lexical features of the dialect
features found in the conversations. Two previous observation made by Lipski (1989: 105) are
also supported: 1) that in Mexico, speakers of Mexican varieties are generally not aware of the
use of voseo by Central Americans (we can infer that this can be generalized to other dialect
features and to Mexicans who move to areas in the United States without a significant Central
American presence); 2) that dialect contact in the United States brings an “increased
awareness of linguistic differences” in speakers of Mexican varieties.
3. Accommodation theory
Trudgill (1983:143) describes accommodation “as adjustments in pronunciation and
other aspects of linguistic behavior in terms of a drive to approximate one’s language to that of
one’s interlocutor, if they are regarded as socially desirable and/or if the speaker wishes to
identify them with them and/or demonstrate good will towards them.” Thus, accommodation
of Salvadoran speakers may imply an attempt by speakers to identify with, or to present
themselves as more pleasant to the Mexican interviewer. Accommodation could also mean that
certain features of the Salvadoran variety have acquired a social meaning that reflects the social
status of its users, even though this is beyond the scope of the present study. In this sense, the
data to be presented in the following section poses some of the questions found in previous
dialect contact research. Mainly, what makes a speaker of variety A adopt a feature of variety
B or vice versa? What features are more easily adopted into a specific variety and favored over
original ones? Are speakers more aware of the use of certain dialect features than others?
It has been argued that speech accommodation varies according to similarities and
differences in the varieties in contact. In some cases, dialect contact involves historically
related, although not necessarily similar, varieties. In this case, speakers of variety A more
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA100
than likely have an idea of what variety B sounds like, and vice versa. Here, speakers also
recognize those specific characteristics that distinguish each variety in contact. Thus, if
speakers in the former case resort to an accommodation strategy, they do so by altering the
frequency of the preferred variants, which already form part of their speech repertoire. This
argument goes back to Trudgill’s idea that “accommodation within the speech community [...]
involves altering the frequency of usage of particular variants or variables over which the
speaker already has control. Accommodation beyond the speech community, on the other
hand, may well involve the adoption of totally new features of pronunciation (1986: 12).”
Accommodation in a dialect contact situation brought about by immigration, as in the case of
Salvadoran and Mexican Spanish, may involve (1) increasing the frequency of preferred
variants which already form part of the speaker’s speech repertoire, (2) decreasing
proportionally those that are stigmatized, and/or (3) integrating those features which are
absent from the speaker’s speech repertoire. In the case of dialect contact in Houston, dialects
from two different Spanish speaking areas have met in a predominantly English-speaking
environment. However, people of Mexican origin in the state constitute an important
numerical presence with a strong historical vinculum.
In the present situation, even though there is an intense contact between the two
communities, the attitudes of Mexicans toward Salvadorans tend to be negative when they
pertain to language. For example, Mexicans in Houston have adopted the use of ethnic slurs
such as guanaco6 to refer to Salvadorans. Mexicans also tend to imitate what they perceive to
be characteristic, perhaps stigmatized, features of Salvadoran Spanish. For instance, Mexicans
may imitate the use of [h] instead of [s] syllable finally, and the use of vos ‘you’ instead of tú
‘you’. Otherwise, interaction occurs without major points of friction. Lipski (2000:196) notes
that “On a personal level, Salvadorans of all socioeconomic groupings feel no negative
emotions toward Mexicans or Mexican Americans but rather regard them as fellow Latinos.”
The two groups perform and work in similar jobs, attend the same social events, and live in
the same neighborhoods. Mexican Spanish in Houston has acquired the use of Salvadoran
lexical items for foods, such as curtido ‘type of salad’ and pupusa ‘round maize pancake’, but
other grammatical levels of Mexican Spanish do not seem to be affected.
4. Data and methodology
Fifteen hours and thirty minutes of speech samples were recorded by the same
interviewer from thirteen informants in Houston, and two informants in El Salvador. The type
of conversation varied from a semi-directed style, where the interviewer asked about topics
that affected Salvadorans in Houston and in El Salvador, to a more casual style, where
informants introduced their own topics of interest. Most informants talked about the
differences of life in El Salvador and Houston, adversities experienced during the civil war,
the journey from El Salvador to Houston, challenges in adapting to life in the United States,
and relations between Mexicans and Salvadorans in the community. We should state that even
though the analysis of possible sociolinguistic correlations could prove to be extremely
productive, the number of occurrences of the two variables only permitted the more general
analysis of the distributional patterns in the dialect contact situation explained below.
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 101
The speech sample of the two informants living in El Salvador, and that of one Houston
informant who had arrived two weeks prior to the interview served to document variation of
dialect features in the Salvadoran variety “in situ”. I will refer to these speakers as the El
Salvador group. All other Houston informants had lived in the area for at least five years. These
twelve informants were distributed into three groups, according to age of arrival in Houston.
Group 1 consists of four speakers that arrived in the area at 21 years of age or older, Group 2
consists of four speakers that arrived between 14 and 20 years of age, and Group 3 consists of
four speakers that arrived between ages 3 and 11. The division in the age of arrival between
Groups 2 and 3 was done considering Chamber’s (1992: 689) observation that “A person seven
or under will almost certainly acquire a new dialect perfectly, and a person 14 or over almost
certainly will not. In between those ages, people will vary.” The informants who arrived in the
area at the ages of 10 and 11 fell below the 14 year old mark; therefore, I included those
informants in Group 3. This cut-off point agrees with Silva-Corvalán’s research who notes that
“the structures of one’s native language are usually firmly acquired” around 11-12 (1994: 15).
In order to see the variational patterns within those speakers of the Salvadoran variety who,
according to Chambers (1992), “almost certainly will not” acquire new dialect features, the
speakers who arrived in Houston at age 14 or older were divided into Groups 1 and 2. The
partition between Groups 1 and 2 was based on the assumption that those who arrived between
14 and 20 had more opportunities for exposure to the Mexican variety outside the home
environment at an earlier age. For instance, two informants in Group 2 attended part of their high
school years in Houston. Another informant in Group 2 shared a room with a group of Mexican
friends upon arriving in Houston. Figure 2 summarizes the characteristics of the four groups.
SPEAKER AGE OF ARRIVAL YEARS IN HOUSTON
El Salvador: AA - -
CR - -
EF - -
Group 1:
(21-older) RH 55 8
AC 39 17
MMa 34 5
MM 32 21
Group 2:
(14-20) RM 20 8
GL 20 8
NB 18 30
JG 14 8
Group 3:
(11-younger) RO 11 12
ED 10 16
CD 8 15
FA 3 18
Figure 2
Coding of Salvadoran speakers into four groups by age
of arrival and years of residence in Houston
 
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA102
The interviewer, a speaker of a Northern Mexican variety, lived for over four years in
the predominantly Spanish speaking southeast part of Houston, where most of the data was
collected. We hoped this would help in collecting more reliable samples of variation patterns
in the speech of the Houston Salvadoran informants. At the same time, we expected that if
accommodation occurred, it would take place obeying patterns already present in the
community. Without exception, a reciprocal use of casual pronominal forms (i.e. tú or vos ‘you
casual’) was used between the interviewer and speakers in Group 2, Group 3, the informants
in El Salvador Group, and the two males in Group 1. On the other hand, the interviewer used
usted ‘you formal’ to communicate with the two female members of Group 1, but received the
use of a casual pronominal form from them.
5. The linguistic variables
The degree of accommodation was quantified by looking at contrasting distributional
patterns present in Salvadoran and Mexican Spanish. Thus, voseo, the preferred casual
pronominal form in Salvadoran Spanish, contrasts with tuteo, the preferred form in Mexican
Spanish; and the transitive use of andar, to express carrying something on oneself, contrasts
quantitatively with verbs like traer, llevar, cargar, and portar in Mexican Spanish. The choice
of voseo, perhaps the most characteristic morphosyntactic feature of Central American
Spanish, seemed obvious because previous studies have indicated that Salvadorans favor the
use of tuteo when they come in contact with speakers of other varieties of Spanish (Lipski
1988, 1994). On the other hand, the use of andar in transitive constructions has not been
documented as much, and studies have not claimed that Salvadorans will replace andar with
another lexical item when in contact with speakers of other Spanish varieties.
5.1. Voseo and tuteo
Usage of tuteo extends across most of Mexico, except parts of Chiapas and Tabasco,
bordering Guatemala. Mexicans in Houston also prefer the use of tuteo. Voseo entails a change
in the syllabic stress of conjugated verb forms, as in tú hablas > vos hablás7‘you speak’. This
causes the appearance of monothongized forms of stem changing verbs as in tú puedes > vos
podés ‘you can’, the retention of the thematic vowel in monosyllabic forms as in ven > vení
‘come here’, and the use of regularized forms in some irregular verbs as in di > decí ‘say’. The
quantified data only considers contrasting voseo and tuteo forms: the present indicative, the
present subjunctive, and the imperative. Thus, future and imperfective forms (hablarás ‘you
will talk’, hablabas ‘you used to talk’) are not considered because they are identical in tuteo
and voseo, as well as shared present indicative forms like vas, das and ves. Preterit was not
considered in our study due to the common tendency of speakers in tuteo varieties to use
analogical forms, such as (tú) hablastes ‘you spoke, talked’, along with prescriptive forms,
such as (tú) hablaste ‘you spoke, talked’. The use of tuteo is illustrated in (1).
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 103
1. - Tienes que conocer a la persona primero. (RH/1/55)
- ‘You have to know the person first.’
The next examples illustrate the use of voseo.
2. - Y la mujer me decía: venite, traete a la niña. (RH/1/55)
- ‘And my wife would say to me: come here, bring the girl.’
3. - Ese dinero antes no entraba porque no había mucha gente de allá aquí, hoy hay
mucha. En Los Ángeles, olvidate, está lleno. (AC/1/39)
- ‘That money did not enter because there were not many people from there here. In
Los Angeles, forget it, it is full.’
4. - Me paraban y me decían: llevanos a tal parte que, que vamos a hacer un operativo.
(RH/1/55)
- ‘They used to stop me and they used to say: take us to such place that, that we are
going to do an operation.’
5. - Así que recogían todo lo que ellos querían. Ya, decían: parale, le decían, en una
parte deshabitada. (RH/1/55)
- ‘So they picked up everything they wanted. Ready, they would say: stop, they would
tell him, in an uninhabited place.’
5.2. Andar and traer
The verb andar, as in anda buscando algo ‘he is looking for something’, functions as an
auxiliary in progressive and copular constructions, as well as a lexical verb meaning ‘walk, go,
and go around’, in Mexican and Salvadoran Spanish. In the latter, andar has also acquired an
innovative use that expresses the idea of carrying something on one’s person (Lipski 1994: 260).
In this context, andar is primarily used as a transitive verb. On the contrary, Mexican Spanish
employs a variety of verbs to express the same idea, such as traer ‘to bring’, llevar ‘to take,
wear’, portar ‘to carry (a weapon)’, and cargar ‘to carry’. In Salvadoran Spanish most of these
verbs are usually restricted to their original lexical meaning. For example, in Salvadoran Spanish
traer usually means to bring, but in Mexican Spanish it additionally implies carrying or bearing
something on one’s person, as illustrated in (6) where the speaker reports on his response to the
demand for money made by his Salvadoran companion during their trip across Mexico.
6. - No, yo no traigo feria tampoco, le digo. Me dice que: sí traes. ¿Sabes qué ghey?, no
traigo, le dije. No traigo y no estés fregando.
- ‘No, I do not have money on me either, I tell him. He tells me that: you do have
[money] on you. You know what man?, I do not have [money] on me, I said. I do not 
have [money] on me and stop bugging me.’ (RM/2/20)
The use of andar as a transitive verb is illustrated in (7) to (9).
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA104
7. - Allí llegan todos. Tenías que andar vehículo pa’ llevartelos. (AC/1/39)
- ‘Everybody arrives there. You had to take a vehicle to take them.’
8. - no, sí, puedes andar arma... (AC/1/39)
- ‘no, yes, you can carry a weapon...’
9. - Ya va a hacer ahora en mayo tres años que me entregaron una virgen y la ando de 
peregrina y...
- ¿La qué?
- Una virgen, una virgen de... Es la virgen de Fátima, y la, y yo la, esta virgen... Ya
ahora ya ando también una virgen de Guadalupe. Las ando de peregrinas, de casa en
casa. (NB/2/18)
- ‘Now in May it is going to be three years that they gave me a virgin and I carry her
on pilgrimages and...’
- ‘You what?’
- ‘A virgin, a virgin of... It is the virgin of Fatima, and, and I, this virgin... And now I
also carry a virgin of Guadalupe. I carry them on pilgrimages, from house to house.’
6. Analysis of the variational patterns
Table 4
Distribution of tuteo-voseo and traer (& other)-andar in three groups
of Salvadoran speakers by age of arrival
EL SALVADOR GROUPS 1 & 2 GROUP 3
AGE OF ARRIVAL AGE OF ARRIVAL
HOUSTON 14 + HOUSTON 3-11
N % N % N %
MORPHOLOGICAL
VARIATION:
TUTEO 19 11.8% 240 94.5% 38 100%
VOSEO 142 88.2% 14 5.5% - 0%
TOTAL 161 100% 254 100% 38 100%
LEXICAL VARIATION:
TRAER & OTHER 2 18.2% 21 70% 11 68.8%
ANDAR 9 81.8% 9 30% 5 31.2%
TOTAL 11 100% 30 100% 16 100%
* Difference between El Salvador and both Houston groups is significant in pronominal usage (Chi square =
287.182, p = .000), as in choice of verb form (Chi square = 8.775246, p = .003). No other differences are
statistically significant.
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 105
Table 4 shows contrasting patterns of variation between speakers in El Salvador and
Houston. In the El Salvador group, those dialect features previously labeled as characteristic
of the Salvadoran variety were quantitatively favored: voseo 88.2% and transitive andar
81.8%. We find the opposite distribution in the Houston groups where tuteo and traer & other
verbs are preferred. Percentages for the combination of Groups 1 and 2 (Houston 14 or older)
do not differ sharply from Group 3 (Houston 11 or younger), other than the categorical use of
tuteo in the latter group. 
The high use of voseo among speakers recorded in El Salvador is surprising for two
reasons. First, even though voseo is the preferred pronominal form of address in El Salvador, it
has sustained ample opposition from more traditionalist views, which consider its use as a
vulgar and uneducated form (Lipski 1988:103). There is also a strong association of tuteo with
the upper socioeconomic levels of Salvadoran society. The inclination to use tuteo in
commercial and political advertising, and in official governmental contexts is a direct
consequence of this linguistic dichotomy, which subjects Salvadorans to a constant passive
exposure to tuteo. Second, although the traditionalist view has far from caused the eradication
of voseo8, linguistic attitudes have been said to materialize into linguistic insecurity when
Salvadorans come in contact with speakers of other Spanish varieties (Lipski 1988:103).
However, Table 2 indicates that speakers in El Salvador group maintained high levels of voseo
in Salvadoran-Mexican interaction9. Looking at pronominal expression, we find that most
verbal forms in the data were not accompanied by an expressed subject pronoun. However, an
actual count of pronoun expression in El Salvador, shows that the interviewer was addressed 58
times as vos, as in vos sabés que sólo te dicen ‘you know that they only tell you’, and only two
times as tú (by Speaker 3), as in creo que vos- tú ya lo conoces ‘I think that you [vos]- you [tú]
already know him’. This can be compared to 45 occurrences of tú and zero uses of vos among
Groups 1 & 2 (Houston 14 or older). Therefore, even though we find variation of grammatical
forms, the actual distribution of pronouns suggests that speakers in El Salvador rely on vos as
the basic pronominal form in the conversation while Houston speakers rely on tú.
We see in Table 4, that tuteo first appears in the El Salvador group and culminates in
the complete replacement of voseo in Group 3. The increase in the use of tuteo morphology
from 11.8% in the El Salvador group to 94.5% in the combined total of Groups 1 and 2 can
be interpreted as a possible reinforcement of the linguistic attitudes that speakers bring from
El Salvador. Since voseo is the preferred grammatical form in El Salvador, increased
appearance of tuteo in the speech of informants in Groups 1 and 2 may be interpreted as
degrees of accommodation to the interviewer. The categorical distribution of pronominal
forms in Group 3 could be interpreted as the maximum degrees of accommodation. This does
not necessarily tell us much about the behavior of voseo in other environments. We suppose
that all informants who arrived in Houston after the age of 14 or older came from a voseo
predominant environment. However, there is no way to predict the actual level of feature
exposure or acquisition of informants in Group 3. Perhaps, speakers of the age range present
in Group 3 arrived in Houston at an age when they were exposed to higher levels of peer
pressure or exposure to Mexican dialect features and attitudes.
A major difference between distribution of second person morphological forms and
the distribution of verb choice in transitive “carry” constructions is that voseo reached
categorical or almost categorical non-use in the Houston data, whereas quantitatively
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA106
transitive andar maintained a more elevated presence: 30% in the combined Groups 1 and 2,
and 31.2% in Group 3. Two verbs other than andar occurred in the El Salvador group: Speaker
2 used the verb portar ‘carry a weapon’, as in el arma que vos portás ‘the weapon that you
carry’; and Speaker 1 produced the only instance of traer. In groups 1, 2, and 3, substitutes for
andar were traer, portar, and cargar. Speaker 12 produced all the instances of transitive andar
in Group 3. This significant fact indicates that the sociolinguistic history of any given speaker
can outweigh factors such as age of arrival in this contact situation: Speaker 12 arrived in
Houston at age 3, and she is the only informant who has lived and grown in Southwest
Houston, an area where Salvadorans are more numerous than in other parts of the city. Perhaps
residence within particular Houston areas may be a significant factor in the present contact
situation, even though this is certainly beyond the scope of the present study.
Again, the frequent mentions of Central American voseo contrasts with the few
references of the transitive use of andar. In all likelihood, the documentation of attitudes
towards voseo may parallel the degree of awareness that many Salvadoran speakers hold of
the two morphological forms (i.e. voseo-tuteo). On the other hand, the absence of
documentation of transitive andar in Central American Spanish may mirror the lack of
awareness that speakers in El Salvador exhibit when they use andar as a transitive verb. That
is, many speakers in El Salvador perceive tuteo as a more educated or “uppity” morphological
choice, but the same distinction does not exist between transitive andar and traer & other
verbs. The results show that the quantitative distribution of tuteo/voseo forms, perhaps tied to
a greater awareness of voseo, is affected to a greater degree than the distribution of andar/traer
as a verb choice to express the idea of carrying something on one’s person.
In section 3 we suggested that the contact situation increased Mexicans’ awareness to
some features of the Salvadoran variety. This is verified by comments made during the
sociolinguistic interviews which indicate that perceptions sometimes develop into concrete
judgments toward the Salvadoran variety, as in the next examples. In (10), antes ‘before’
refers to the speaker’s adolescent years.
10. Antes [los mexicanos] me hacían chistes y quizás por eso no decía mucho (...) por
decir cipote, o vos o- (ED/3/10)
‘Before they [Mexicans] used to make jokes and that is probably why I did not say
much (...) for saying cipote ‘boy’, or vos, or-’. 
11. y no sé nomás no quería [hablar] porque tal vez me iba- se iban a burlar de mí so
entonces, este, aunque- yo no hablaba ¿verdá? como de El Salvador porque pues
cuando viene aquí uno aprende lo de la demás gente (CD/3/8)
‘and I do not know I just did not want [to talk] because maybe I would- they would
mock me so then, ugh, even though- I did not talk, right? like from El Salvador
because when we come here we learn the ways of other people’. 
Mexican attitudes toward the Salvadoran variety seem to have reinforced the negative
linguistic perceptions of some of the informants. Differences in the rate of accommodation
also suggest different degrees of feature awareness among the Salvadoran informants. This
tendency to accommodate to the speech of the Mexican interviewer in our study variety has
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 107
also been proposed by Schreffler (1994: 107) who states that “The desire of many Salvadorans
to blend into the Mexican population encourages them to attempt to acquire ways of speaking
that are generally associated with Mexicans. In order to achieve this goal, they must shed the
linguistic trait that most readily identifies them as Salvadorans.”
6.1. Variation in speakers arriving in Houston at age 14 and older
In this section, we analyze the distributional patterns of all informants who arrived in
the Houston area at the age of 14 or older. Because speakers in these groups (1 and 2) originate
in an environment where voseo and transitive andar are the predominant or categorical
features, changes in the relative frequency of these features in the Houston Salvadoran variety
may indicate the extent of accommodation between the speakers and the interviewer.
Table 5
Distribution of grammatical and lexical variation in two groups
of Salvadoran speakers arriving in Houston at age 14 +
GROUP 1 GROUP 2 GROUPS 1 & 2
AGE OF ARRIVAL AGE OF ARRIVAL AGE OF ARRIVAL
HOUSTON 21 + HOUSTON 14 - 20 TOTAL 14 +
N % N % N %
GRAMMATICAL:
PRONOMINAL USAGE:
TUTEO 98 89% 142 98.6% 240 94.5%
VOSEO 12 11% 2 1.4% 14 5.5%
TOTAL 110 100% 144 100% 254 100%
LEXICAL:
CHOICE OF VERB FORM:
TRAER & OTHER 5 45% 16 84% 21 70%
ANDAR 6 55% 3 16% 9 30%
TOTAL 11 100% 19 100% 30 100%
* Group 2 shows a significantly higher use of tuteo than Group 1 (Chi square = 10.8528, p = 0.001), and a
significantly higher use of traer and other verbs (Chi square = 4.982912, p = 0.025).
Compared to the distribution of tuteo/voseo among speakers in the El Salvador group
(11.8%% tuteo and 88.2% voseo), Table 5 shows that voseo decreased considerably when
Salvadorans, who arrived in Houston at age 14 and older, interacted with the Mexican
interviewer: 11% in Group 1 and 1.4% in Group 2. The lower use of voseo occurs in Group 2,
which shows an almost complete preference for tuteo. Again, the present study cannot predict if
the overwhelming preference of tuteo implies the existence of similar distributional patterns of
voseo among Group 2 speakers in other contexts. That is, the present results show an
REVISTA DE FILOLOGÍA Y LINGÜÍSTICA108
accommodation process that occurs when Salvadorans informants interact with a speaker of
Mexican Spanish. Further data that shows patterns of use among the Salvadoran community itself
and in different contextual situations is needed to fill the limitations of the present study.
However, the degrees of distribution show that age of arrival to the area is a significant factor in
the accommodation process. Group 1 shows higher levels of use of voseo and transitive andar.
The different distributional patterns for tuteo/voseo and traer/andar also suggests that
speakers of the two groups (1 and 2) maintain distinct linguistic behavior toward each
characteristic feature. Here, the opposing attitudes towards voseo and andar, mentioned
before, may influence the divergent variational patterns. For example, in Table 5, tuteo
displays high levels of use during speaker/interviewer interaction (89% in Group 1 and 98.6%
in Group 2). In contrast, the distribution of andar is slightly higher among speakers in Group
1: 45% for traer and 55% for andar.
7. Conclusion
We have shown that in the interaction between Mexican and Salvadoran interlocutors
in this contact situation voseo and transitive andar, two features that distinguish Salvadoran
Spanish from Mexican Spanish, diminish in their frequency of use. Thus, while speakers in El
Salvador showed a strong quantitative preference for the use of these two features, voseo and
transitive andar, among Salvadorans in Houston the use of tuteo became almost categorical.
Traer & other verbs also displayed an important increase in their frequency. However, the
quantitative analysis shows that in Mexican and Salvadoran communication, voseo
experienced a greater rate of accommodation than transitive andar. Based on differences in
the distributional patterns of accommodation of the two features, we indicated that the greater
rates of accommodation in voseo environments could be partially triggered by attitudes
already present in El Salvador itself, which contrasted with the lack of awareness associated
with the use of transitive andar. In this dialect contact situation, age of arrival also proved to
be an important factor favoring accommodation. The present investigation would like to point
to the need of further work that could shed light on variational patterns of language use among
Salvadorans in differing contexts. This line of work may help in understanding the possible
lasting effects of accommodation on Salvadoran Spanish in contact with other varieties of
Spanish in the United States.
Notes
* I am grateful to Rena Torres Cacoullos (University of New Mexico) and Garland Bills (University of
New Mexico) for providing valuable comments on this topic. I am also grateful to Esther Brown and
Jessie A. Aaron for reading earlier versions of this study. Needless to say, all errors remain solely mine.
I thank the Office of Graduate Studies
1. The Census 2000 figures showing specific ethnic and national origin breakdown of the Hispanic
population in Houston are not available yet, although we can expect an increase in the official numbers
of Salvadorans in Houston.
HERNÁNDEZ: Accommodation in a Dialect Contact Situation 109
2. The 5% count was based on 1990 census figures for “Race and Hispanic Origin”, which includes those
born of Salvadoran parents. The 1990 census shows a much smaller count under “Place of Birth of
Foreign-Born Persons”. At any rate, the two counts should be seen as a conservative reflection of the
actual Salvadoran population in Houston.
3. This does not include 60,030 people who claimed to be “other Hispanic”. More than likely, this reflects
the tendency of a significant part of the Hispanic population of the state to consider themselves
“hispanos” or “nuevomexicanos”.
4. In each example, the parentheses refer to the following information: (speaker/ group /age of arrival).
5. The evaluator in Albuquerque that identified speaker 4 moved to the area two and a half years ago from
Los Angeles, California, a city with a strong Salvadoran presence. When asked how she was able to
determine the origin of the person, she confirmed that she had Central American friends in Los Angeles,
including Salvadorans.
6. This derogatory term is commonly used among Central Americans to refer disparagingly to Salvadorans
(cf. Varela 1998-99:6-7).
7. Emphasis falls on the highlighted syllable.
8. From personal observation of pronominal use in San Sebastián, I can say that the use of the pronoun vos
was categorical during Salvadoran-Salvadoran interaction. That is, tú never substituted vos in casual
interactions.
9. Two informants in El Salvador had attained a university education, and one was currently enrolled in
a university. This could in turn mean more exposure to prescriptive views. Level of formal Spanish
language instruction in Houston was at most complete or incomplete elementary in all but one case
in Group 1 and 2.
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APPENDIX A
Answer sheet with suggested places of origins of speakers in taped conversation
¿De dónde cree usted que podría ser esta persona?
‘Where do you think this person could be from?’
a) de Tamaulipas (northern Mexican state)
b) de Veracruz (Mexican state –and city of the same name– bordering the Gulf of 
Mexico)
c) de Guerrero (Mexican state bordering the Pacific Ocean)
d) de Jalisco (Mexican state also bordering the Pacific Ocean)
e) de Estados Unidos ‘United States’ (mexicoamericano ‘Mexican American’)
f) de un pueblo pequeño en México ‘from a small town in Mexico’
g) del campo en México ‘from the countryside in Mexico’
h) de otro país ‘from another country’ (Escriba el nombre ‘Write the name’)