[3] The territory of contemporary Mexico is not coextensive with what might be termed Mexican Spanish,[4] since linguistic boundaries rarely coincide with political ones.
[5] Meanwhile, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo led to a large number of Mexicans residing in what had become US territory, and many of their descendants have continued to speak Spanish.
[7] Regarding the evolution of the Spanish spoken in Mexico, the Swedish linguist Bertil Malmberg[8] points out that in Central Mexican Spanish—unlike most varieties in the other Spanish-speaking countries—the vowels lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced.
[12] Due to influence from indigenous languages, such as Nahuatl, Mexican Spanish has incorporated many words containing the sequences ⟨tz⟩ and ⟨tl⟩, corresponding to the voiceless alveolar affricate [t͡s] and the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ], present in many indigenous languages of Mexico,[13] as in the words tlapalería [t͡ɬapaleˈɾia] ('hardware store') and coatzacoalquense [koat͡sakoalˈkense] ('from [the city of] Coatzacoalcos').
In contrast, in most of Spain, the /t/ would form part of the previous syllable's coda, and be subject to weakening, as in [aðˈlantiko], [aðˈleta].
The /ʃ/, represented orthographically as ⟨x⟩, is commonly found in words of Nahuatl or Mayan origin, such as Xola [ˈʃola] (a station in the Mexico City Metro).
In northwestern Mexico and rural Michoacan, [tʃ], represented by ⟨ch⟩, tends to be deaffricated to [ʃ], a phonetic feature also typical of southwestern Andalusian Spanish dialects.
[20][21][22] That phoneme, in most variants of Mexican Spanish, is pronounced as either a palatal fricative [ʝ] or an approximant [ʝ˕] in most cases, although after a pause it is instead realized as an affricate [ɟʝ].
In the north and in rural Michoacan, /ʝ/ is consistently rendered as an approximant and may even be elided when between vowels and in contact with /i/ or /e/, as in gallina 'hen', silla 'chair', and sella 'seal'.
The fact that the areas with the strongest preservation of final /s/ are also those with the most frequent unstressed vowel reduction gives the sibilant /s/ a special prominence in these dialects.
[25] Also, the dialects spoken in rural Chihuahua, Sonora, and Sinaloa, like that of New Mexico, have developed aspiration of syllable-initial /s/, as in words like pasar 'to pass' and señor 'sir'.
The traditional familiar second person plural pronoun vosotros—in colloquial use only in Spain—is found in Mexico only in certain archaic texts and ceremonial language.
Mexicans tend to use the polite personal pronoun usted in the majority of social situations, especially in Northern Mexico.
Use of the diminutive does not necessarily denote small size, but rather often implies an affectionate attitude; thus one may speak of "una casita grande" ('a nice, big house').
Other suffixes include, but are not limited to: -azo as in carrazo, which refers to a very impressive car (carro) such as a Ferrari or Mercedes-Benz; -ón, for example narizón, meaning "big-nosed" (nariz = "nose"), or patona, a female with large feet (patas).
It is common to replace /s/ with /tʃ/ to form diminutives, e.g. Isabel → Chabela, José María → Chema, Cerveza ("beer") → Chela/Cheve, Concepción → Conchita, Sin Muelas ("without molars") → Chimuela ("toothless").
[40] Also, there are a number of words widely used in Mexico which have Nahuatl, Mayan or other native origins, in particular names for flora, fauna and toponyms.
Other expressions that are common in colloquial Mexican Spanish include: Most of the words above are considered informal (e.g. chavo(a), padre, güero, etc.
or vulgar (e.g. chingadera, pinche, pedo) and are limited to slang use among friends or in informal settings; foreigners need to exercise caution in their use.
In the lexicon, in addition to the words that originated from Mexico with which the Spanish language has been enriched, such as tomate "tomato", hule "rubber", tiza "chalk", chocolate "chocolate", coyote "coyote", petaca "flask", et cetera; the Spanish of Mexico has many Nahuatlismos that confer a lexical personality of its own.
On other occasions, the indigenous word differs slightly from the Spanish, as in the case of huarache, which is another type of sandal; tlapalería, hardware store, molcajete, a stone mortar, etc.
Other times, the Nahuatl word has almost completely displaced the Spanish, tecolote "owl", atole "cornflour drink", popote "straw", milpa "cornfield", ejote "green bean", jacal "shack", papalote "kite", etc.
There are many indigenismos "words of indigenous origin" who designate Mexican realities for which there is no Spanish word; mezquite "mesquite", zapote "sapota", jícama "jicama", ixtle "ixtle", cenzontle "mockingbird", tuza "husk", pozole, tamales, huacal "crate", comal "hotplate", huipil "embroidered blouse", metate "stone for grinding", etc.
This suffix is considered to be a crossover of the Spanish indirect object pronoun -le with the Nahua excitable interjections, such as cuele "strain.
[49] Mexico has a border of more than 2,500 kilometers with the United States, and receives major influxes of American and Canadian tourists every year.
[55] However, this figure includes anglicisms that permeated general Spanish long ago and which are not particular to Mexico, such as buffete, náilon "nylon", dólar "dollar", hockey, rimel, ron "rum", vagón "railroad car", búfer "buffer", and others.