Spanish in Contact with Other Languages and Bilingualism across the Spanish-Speaking World

This chapter describes situations of bilingualism and language contact involving the Spanish language in different corners of the world. It follows a thematic division that relies on findings regarding the major issues in contact linguistics that are reached based on Spanish data and the main contact phenomena that obtain across the Spanish-speaking world. First, the chapter describes the major sources of lexical borrowing into Spanish. The focus is on borrowing from Arabic, the indigenous languages of the Americas, and English. Second, it describes cases of structural convergence in situations of contact between Spanish and other languages at the phonological and morphosyntactic levels. Third, it examines the existence of Spanish-based contact varieties, including both creoles and non-creolized varieties. Fourth, the chapter analyzes the phenomenon of code-switching, with a special focus on English/Spanish code-switching in the United States. Fifth, it presents two major macro-sociolinguistic issues as they pertain to Spanish: language maintenance and language shift. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the status of Spanish as a world language and offers an outlook into the future of bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world and directions for future research.