The African slave trade brought African languages into contact with Spanish and Portuguese beginning in the fifteenth century, and resulted in the Africans' gradual acquisition of these languages. John Lipski describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language found in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America over the last 500 years. Separating legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping, he shows how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on Spanish today.