A Dictionary of New Mexico & Southern Colorado Spanish

The Spanish spoken in rural areas of New Mexico and southern Colorado can be described as a regional type of language made up of archaic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish; Mexican Indian words, mostly from the Nahuatl; a few indigenous Rio Grande Indian words; words and idiomatic expressions peculiar to the Spanish of Mexico (the so-called mexicanismos); local New Mexico and southern Colorado vocabulary; and countless language items from English which the Spanish-speaking segment of the population has borrowed and adapted for everyday use. Dr. Ruben Cobos began informally collecting examples of this unique dialect while a high school student in Albuquerque in the late 1920s, curious about differences he noted in New Mexico speech when compared with that he brought from Mexico and Texas. In the 1940s he undertook serious study of the language, and in 1983 produced the seminal work A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish. Over the past two decades he has continued his research in.