ABSTRACT
The Spanish language has a long and convoluted history in the United States. The book provides us with a snapshot of the complex and multidimensional picture of US Spanish(es) from three very different lenses: language attitudes, language in contact, and heritage language learning. The Spanish spoken by native speakers is considered the best, while the Spanish spoken by heritage speakers was not considered significantly better than the one spoken by language learners—despite the fact that they were rated as more Hispanic than members of the language learners group. Ironically, female heritage speakers were evaluated as speaking significantly better Spanish when they used. The possibility of systematizing the use of preterite and imperfect tenses among three groups of heritage speakers of Spanish—beginners, intermediate-level learners, and advanced learners is explored. The lower the level of Spanish proficiency, the higher the variance in preterite-imperfect use—compared to native-speaker consensus, as determined by data from nine native speakers of Mexican Spanish.
