“Hace dos años para atrás que fui a Egipto...”: sobre algunas semejanzas entre el español de Gibraltar o yanito y el español de Estados Unidos”

Abstract

The situation of contact between English and Spanish in the United States bears some resemblance with that of Gibraltar. Significant similarities can be identified both at a sociolinguistic and linguistic as well as discursive level, despite the apparent profound demographic, political, social and cultural differences between the two Spanish-speaking communities. Based on a corpus of compositions written by Gibraltarian adolescents, I analyze a number of structural and discursive features that differentiate Gibraltarian Spanish or Yanito from Andalusian Spanish and that, conversely, are well-documented in the speech of US Spanish transitional bilinguals.