This study examin es the behavior of 331 Spanish speakers, 269 immigrants to the United St ates and 62 native-born individuals, through questionnaires and soc iolinguistic interviews. Results show that increased U.S. life expe rience correlates with expanded use of English in both draft and public domains of life. Additionally, greater use of English co-exists wit h maintenance of fine-grained patterns of structured linguistic var iation in Spanish, such that U.S.-born speakers demonstrate remarkable s imilarity to the immigrant generation in their usage of three variables: (i) subject pronoun presence vs. absence, (ii) grammatical subject position, and (iii) syllable-final /s/. The co-occurence of increased u se of English, on one hand, and intergenerational structural contin uity in variable linguistic behavior in Spanish, on the other, chal lenges two misconceptions about Spanish in the United States: that (1) S panish-speaking immigrants and their U.S. born children are unwilli ng or unable to learn English, and (2) regular use of English entai ls attrition and/or failed acquisition of Spanish. Neither of these view s finds empirical support in our data.
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