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Spanish is not a foreign language in Virginia. Many Virginia residents speak Spanish on a regular basis at home, at work, and with friends and neighbors. The same happens in Roanoke, where 6.4% of the overall population are Hispanic or Latino. Spanish, in fact, can be heard through the different Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods in Roanoke/Salem. Many signs of restaurants, churches, institutions, organizations are in Spanish. Some examples are Somos Virginia, El Toreo, or La Bodeguita Hispana.

This website is an online corpus of oral production of different generations of Spanish speaking speakers and L2 speakers of Spanish in Virginia. The development of this project contributes to document the linguistic pluralism of Virginia. It allows future generations to analyze language variation and change by different Spanish communities in this region.

The Virginia Corpus of Spanish Variation currently consists of audio files and full transcripts available for download. Researchers, educators and the public in general will be given free access to the corpus.