Spanish and Ladino in Contact in the United States

Abstract This study explores contact between Ladino-speaking Sephardim and Spanish-speaking Latinos in New York City and Los Angeles, home to two of the largest factions of each population in the United States. While the retention of postalveolar sibilants [ʒ, dʒ, ʃ] in Ladino, corresponding to velar [x] in Spanish, helps distinguish these varieties, research has demonstrated cases where Sephardim implement the latter phone in lieu of one of the former. That such contact-induced change is a result of interaction between Sephardim and Latinos is further examined in this research. Twenty-five speakers of Ladino participated in two oral-production tasks: within-group and between-group testing. In the former, informants were paired with another speaker of Ladino; in the latter, they were paired with a speaker of Spanish. Data reveal that informants replace postalveolar sibilants with velar [x] at a rate of 18.2% within group and 76.5% between group, when direct equivalencies exist. Statistical analysis demonstrates that production of velar [x], the dependent variable, is conditioned by several independent variables, both social (age, gender, city of residence, interlocutor) and linguistic (type of lexical correspondence and origin of lexicon). Subsequent discussion considers the role of accommodation in determining the ways in which speakers select and implement variation in their speech.