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The Spanish approximators and (“sort of,” “as if,” “kind of,” “seems,” “like”) serve multiple pragmatic functions. They can be employed in similar contexts to express vagueness when speakers experience uncertainty or to hedge and avoid being straightforward. Furthermore, these forms can alternate according to context since they represent two ways of saying the same thing. This study investigated the use of and in two speech events: narratives of personal experience (non-institutional) and therapeutic interviews (institutional), which were generated by Spanish speakers of several varieties, educational levels, and lengths of residence in the United States. The study was informed by the theoretical frameworks of sociolinguistic and pragmatic variation, and the data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings revealed that while was the preferred form among the speakers of the study they employed como que more often in the therapeutic interviews. Thus, both discourse and the pragmatic functions conditioned the use of these approximators.

In Spanish, imprecise quantities are typically expressed through approximators (APs) (e.g., casi$60 ‘almost’, como $ 30 ‘like’, and 90 y pico ‘-ish’). APs make semantic boundaries fuzzy, but they provide instructions for utterance interpretation by establishing upper limits (e.g., casi), lower limits (e.g., y pico), or no specific limits (e.g., como). While APs occur frequently in naturally occurring language, they are rarely included in second language (L2) classrooms or textbooks, limiting learners’ exposure to these forms. This study examined how intermediate L2, advanced L2, and native Spanish speakers (n = 20 per group) discussed imprecise quantities during oral interviews in which they responded to money-related questions. The study investigated the effect of L2 proficiency and cumulative length of exposure abroad in the learners’ lexical knowledge of APs. GLMMs revealed that, overall, an increased L2 proficiency correlated to a more frequent and more natural use of APs. A significant interaction between L2 proficiency and length of stay abroad was also found, as even short periods abroad resulted in significant lexical gains for the intermediate learners. The results show that while proficiency mediates AP use, naturalistic exposure at an early stage accelerates lexical acquisition, promoting a more target-like expression of numeric imprecision.