A handbook of phrases containing the most common ‘cuencanismos’ to help foreigners in Cuenca

Abstract

For some years, the city of Cuenca has been going through a significant migration process. Many American citizens have been travelling to our city to reside in it. This process has brought a big problem for these new residents, as they must learn a second language to fit in. Formal learning is useful, but it is often incomplete since formal language differs a lot from the informal language that isspoken on the streets of our city. For this reason, the project “A Handbook of Phrases Containing the Most Common ‘Cuencanismos’ to Help Foreigners” aims to create, as the name says, a handbook with the most common cuencanismos in use, to help foreigners understand our unique speech. To compile the most common cuencanismos, a survey was administered to some local residents of Cuenca. Then, through a selection process, the most common cuencanismoswere compiled and used to design a proficiency test regarding these idioms, which was applied to two different groups of foreigners, some of Spanish teaching schools and others from various parts of the city. The purpose of the test was to measure foreigners’ knowledge about cuencanismos.The results were as expected, and after a process of analysis and interpretation, the conclusion is that a handbook with the most common cuencanismos might help our new residents to understand our lexicon more accurately and adapt to our city in a better way.