An ethno-cultural dialect of the English language, primarily spoken by Hispanic Americans on the East Coast of the United States, demonstrates considerable influence from New York City English and African American Vernacular English, with certain additional features borrowed from the Spanish language.
The academic literature has recently labelled the language variety New York Latino English, referring to its city of nineteenth-century origin, or, more inclusively, East Coast Latino English. In the 1970s scholarship, the variety was more narrowly called (New York City) Puerto Rican English or Nuyorican English.
Other terms have also occasionally been employed, such as Latin American Vernacular English. The dialect originated with the Puerto Ricans moving New York City after World War II and, particularly, the subsequent generations born in the New York dialect region who were native speakers of both English and Spanish.
However, it is now the customary dialect of many Hispanic Americans of diverse national heritages, not simply Puerto Ricans, in the New York metropolitan area and beyond on the East Coast.
According to linguist William Labov, "A thorough and accurate study of geographic differences in the English of Latinos from the Caribbean and various countries of Central and South America is beyond the scope of the current work," largely because "consistent dialect patterns are still in the process of formation." Importantly, this East Coast Latino ethnolect is a native variety of English and not a form of Spanglish, broken English, or interlanguage. It is not spoken by all Latinos in this region, and it is not spoken only by Latinos. It is sometimes spoken by people who know little or no Spanish.