ABSTRACT
“Andale pues. Ay te miro.” If you can understand this way of leave-taking, then you are familiar with the dialect of Spanish that will be examined in this chapter. For those of you who do not, it translates roughly as “Alright, then. See you around.” Not every Mexican American or Chicano would use these very words, but it is within the bounds of the wide-ranging dialect that linguists call Southwest Spanish. Of course, no translation can give the full flavor and effect of an utterance in this dialect, spoken as it is by a group of people who share a common culture, ancestry, and history, as well as a common ethnic language.
