Spanish in Algeria: Last Attestations of an Extinct Variety

Abstract

The Spanish spoken in Algeria is one of the most unknown varieties of the entire Spanish-speaking spectrum. Except for a few studies from the end of the last century, we do not know whether there are still speakers of Spanish as a native language and what characteristics they possess. In this article, we intend to give an account, thanks to a fieldwork study, of the heritage Spanish that the children of the few Spanish speakers who lived there have learnt and maintained, once they left the country. The results will show not only the influence of Arabic and French, but also the dialectal particularities of this variety of Spanish and the extent to which it has changed from what was recorded in past decades. The data are not only pioneering in this sense, but also represent the latest evidence of Spanish in this area of the Maghreb.