Language contact and dialect contact

The Puerto Rican migration has brought to the American melting pot many intriguing issues. Puerto Ricans are US citizens by birth, and, thus, their migration from Puerto Rico is comparable to any interstate movement within the mainland. On the other hand, their culture and language are as foreign to general American culture as the cultures and languages of many other ethnic groups that migrate from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Previous studies on Puerto Rican Spanish have focused on the variety as spoken in New York City. However, one should not assume that the findings of previous studies on this variety of Spanish will shed light on its history and development in every Puerto Rican community in the United States. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to document and explain a selected number of variable elements in the pronunciation of the Puerto Rican Spanish variety spoken in Lorain, Ohio, a city a few miles west of Cleveland.