Discusses the rise of Mexican Spanish as a distinct variety of Spanish and describes the regional and social dialects of contemporary Mexican Spanish. Although countless similarities exist between Mexican Spanish and the Chicano Spanish spoken in the southwestern United States, Mexican Spanish shows greater variability. (GR)

Enormous numbers of Spanish words are used by speakers of Tlaxcalan Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico. The major function of the language is to support the speakers' self-identification. As speakers feel it more beneficial to improve their Spanish, relexification is contributing to the death of the language. (AMH)

A study of dialectal variation in Mexican Sign Language (MSL), the primary language for a large segment of Mexico's deaf community, is presented. Signs used by nine different sources representing various locations, ages, and social groups are compared. The first section reviews a number of previous informal assessments of dialectal variation in…