Spanish Influence on North American English

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, LMU Munich, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I will give a historical overview of the first Spanish settlements in the 15th and 16th century and the following extensions to the Pacific coast as well as along the Atlantic coast. Certainly, the encounters between settlers and Native Americans represented a difficult cultural event. By looking into more detail of these encounters, I will analyze cultural differences and draw focus to the aspect of violent colonization and enslavement. The coming together of the Spanish settlers and the Native Americans caused furthermore many linguistic exchanges and influences, which will also be shown in my paper.

The omnipresence of Spanish and Hispanic population in North America through many centuries can be seen in today¿s North American population, even though the Spanish history of the United States is often underrecognized. This will be investigated in the last part of this paper. For this matter I will compare data from the United States Census Bureau from 2000, 2010 and 2019.