A History of Afro-Hispanic Language: Five Centuries, Five Continents

The African slave trade brought African languages into contact with Spanish and Portuguese beginning in the fifteenth century, and resulted in the Africans' gradual acquisition of these languages. John Lipski describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language found in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America over the last 500 years. Separating legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping, he shows how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on Spanish today.

"...this book is extremely well written, meticulously researched, complete in its descriptions and extremely useful for anyone wishing to delve into the current problems of African influences in Spanish and Portuguese. Once again John Lipski is to be congratulated for another outstanding contribution to the field of Hispanic linguistics."
William Megenney, University of Southern California, Reviews/Recensions

Describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language contact and how they have affected contemporary Spanish.

John Lipski is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University.

Acknowledgements; Note on the appendix; Introduction; 1. Africans in the Iberian peninsular, the slave trade, and overview of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts; 2. Early Afro-Portuguese texts; 3. Early Afro-Hispanic texts; 4. Africans in colonial Spanish America; 5. Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America: sixteenth to twentieth centuries; 6. Survey of major African language families; 7. Phonetics/phonology of Afro-Hispanic language; 8. Grammatical features of Afro-Hispanic language; 9. The Spanish-Creole debate; References; Index.