Bilingualism among Anglo Texans

[supfromthesite]

I grew up in s. Texas and have noticed I pronounce words I don't know how to say in a sort of spanish way. For example, the word "navajo". It is pronounced Nav-uh-hoe. I always thought it was more like Nauh-vuh-hoe. Am I dumb or does this make sense?

[grad_student200]

Originally Posted by Suesbal

Tommy Lee Jones is said to be fluent in Spanish. I don’t know if he learned it in school or from growing up around Mexican Americans. Is it typical of white men his age who grew up in Texas to know the language?

I grew up in AZ and lived in TX. From having many Spanish-speaking friends from AZ (bilingual Mexican Americans), South FL (Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, etc), and South America, I have come to learn that "Spanish" has local dialects. The way a Tex-Mex person speaks "Spanish" may differ from Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Columbians, Spain, etc. I had a Dominican friend in college who told me he considered a lot of localized Spanish to be "Spanglish" - meaning it was an informal dialect with too many English words intermixed. He clearly suggested that formalized Spanish had become corrupted in some dialects. I would guess Tex-Mex Spanish might not be considered true, formal Spanish by some who speak Spanish. But I defer to the bilingual Spanish-Speaking Experts on that one. As for me, I speak my indigenous language and took German and Russian in college. I haven't used it since those courses decades ago - lol. Ted Cruz openly admits to speaking Spanglish according to this article. It has been said that when Al Pacino speaks Spanish in his roles he tends to use a Cuban dialect (albeit subtle).
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/h...e-is-it-spoken