Asymmetrical Mixing Patterns of Spanish and English in a New Immigrant Community

Abstract

Analysis of Spanish and English speech in a new immigrant community of Latinos in Georgia, USA, shows that Spanish and English pattern differently. There is a higher frequency of Spanish sentences containing English words than English sentences containing Spanish words. But the reverse is true of grammatical influence without mixing words. There is a higher frequency of English influenced grammatically by Spanish than Spanish influenced grammatically by English. This asymmetry of the two languages may be due to the asymmetrical status of each language in the social setting. Spanish is the first and dominant language of the Latino immigrant community, but English is their second language, the dominant language of the larger community.