[3] It is commonly marked by a great deal of code switching between Andalusian Spanish and British English and by the use of Anglicisms and loanwords from other Mediterranean languages and dialects.

[4] The English language is becoming increasingly dominant in Gibraltar, with the younger generation speaking little or no Llanito despite learning Spanish in school.

One difference from surrounding dialects is that Gibraltarians tend to maintain this high rate of reduction of final consonants even in very elevated registers, whereas Andalusians would try to adopt a more neutral pronunciation.

[12] Llanito has undergone some degree of lexical restructuring as a result of its reduction of final consonants and the unofficial status of Spanish.

They introduced words and expressions from Haketia, a largely extinct Judeo-Spanish language spoken by the Sephardic communities of Northern Morocco such as in Tetuan and Tangiers, and the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.

[21] Although Llanito is largely based on the colloquial Spanish spoken in the Campo de Gibraltar, there are numerous elements beyond code-switching to English which make it unique.

Llanito frequently uses verbal expressions with para atrás, or p'atrás, mirroring use of English phrasal verbs ending in "back".

Churchill was associated with foreign imports from the United Kingdom which were highly prized in Gibraltar and, according to Vallejo, Lord Napier had a particularly big nose.

[25] However, linguists also propose chachi to be a contraction of the Caló term chachipén meaning "truth", since this language is the source of a significant proportion of Spanish slang.

[26] Laura Wright, an English professor at the University of Cambridge, and Sophie Macdonald, a Gibraltarian undergraduate she was supervising, began researching the language in 2022.

Wright sought a research grant from the Gibraltarian government without success, but induced a minister to put saving Llanito into his election manifesto.