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Dominican Spanish

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Dominican Spanish ( español dominicano ) is Spanish as spoken in the Dominican Republic ; and also among the Dominican diaspora, most of whom live in the United States, chiefly in New York City , New Jersey , Connecticut , Rhode Island , Massachusetts , Pennsylvania , and Florida .

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105-538: Dominican Spanish, a Caribbean variety of Spanish, is based on the Andalusian and Canarian Spanish dialects of southern Spain, and has influences from Native Taíno and other Arawakan languages . Speakers of Dominican Spanish may also use conservative words that are similar to older variants of Spanish . The variety spoken in the Cibao region is influenced by the 16th and 17th-century Spanish and Portuguese colonists in

210-412: A /g/ has been added to the stems of many verbs' first-person singular present indicative and present subjunctive forms, such as caigo/caiga from earlier cayo/caya , some other forms such as haiga , common in literary Spanish until the 17th century, are now restricted to nonstandard speech. Until the mid-16th century, the short subject forms nos, vos 'we, you' were still found alongside

315-768: A prosodic boundary marker. There are also hypercorrections of the merger of -/r/ and -/l/ into -/i̯/ . For example, Haití 'Haiti' may be pronounced Artís . Voseo is unknown in Dominican Spanish. Some well-known grammatical features of Dominican Spanish include the use of overt dummy pronouns , as in ELLO hay arroz 'there is rice', especially prominent in El Cibao, instead of hay arroz , and double negation, as in yo no voy no 'I am not going'. Both of those are associated with more marginalized sociolects. Pedro Henríquez Ureña claims that, at least until 1940,

420-461: A "veil that covers local speech". This issue was documented poignantly in the 1935 treatise by Amado Alonso entitled El problema de la lengua en América (The problem of language in [Spanish] America), and was reiterated in 1941 when the scholar Américo Castro published La peculiaridad lingüística rioplatense y su sentido histórico (The linguistic peculiarity of River Plate Spanish and its historical significance). For writers of this viewpoint,

525-634: A concern for spelling reform had developed in the 17th century. This culminated in the 1741 publishing of the Academy's Orthography of the Spanish Language. Between then and 1815, the Academy carried out a significant number of spelling reforms, until Spanish orthography essentially reached its modern form. In the case of coda labial and velar consonants, the Academy typically ruled in favor of variants, like accidente , which maintained those consonants. That said, in some cases, like sujeto 'subject',

630-512: A degree of familiarization with a certain abstract phonetics throughout Spanish America. Dubbings made in Spain, are very particularly localized due to both the language politics of Francoist Spain and later assumptions by Spanish audiences. As Disney has re-issued its productions in newer media or to establish new copyrights, it has increased the number of dialectal versions. Sometimes this has backfired: parents who had watched The Little Mermaid with

735-443: A discourse marker. Also, among rural Cibaeño speakers at least, experiencers tend to become the subject rather than the object of certain verbs such as gustar , hacer falta , and parecer : Cibaeños often drop the a should occur before a definite animate direct object: They also use a unique pattern of cliticization : As in every dialect, Dominican Spanish has numerous vocabulary differences from other forms of

840-462: A distinction remain in rural parts of Huelva, Seville, and Cadiz. This merger has since spread to most of Latin American Spanish, and, in recent decades, to most of urban Peninsular Spanish. /x/ is usually aspirated, or pronounced [h] , except in some eastern Andalusian sub-varieties (i.e. Jaén , Granada , Almería provinces), where the dorsal [x] is retained. This aspirated pronunciation

945-846: A ella ) is similarly typical of central Spain and not present in Andalusia, and, though not prescriptively correct according to the RAE , is frequently heard on Radio and TV programmes. The standard form of the second-person plural imperative with a reflexive pronoun ( os ) is -aos , or -aros in informal speech, whereas in Andalusian, and other dialects, too, -se is used instead, so ¡callaos ya! / ¡callaros ya! ('shut up!') becomes ¡callarse ya! and ¡sentaos! / ¡sentaros! ('sit down!') becomes ¡sentarse! . The gender of some words may not match that of Standard Spanish, e.g. la calor not el calor ('the heat'), el chinche not la chinche ('the bedbug'). La mar

1050-562: A finite verb, especially in narration, as in llega y vístese de prisa instead of the typical llega y se viste de prisa 'arrives and gets dressed quickly'. Like in other Caribbean varieties of Spanish , explicit, redundant subject pronouns are frequent in Dominican Spanish. Pronominal uno 'one' may be frequently used, in cases where speakers of other varieties would use impersonal or reflexive se constructions. Personal subject pronouns can be used to refer to inanimate objects: Ella (la comunidad) es grande 'She (the community)

1155-399: A given locality. According to Penny (2000) , the distinction between a laminal /s/ and /θ/ is native to most of Almería , eastern Granada , most of Jaén , and northern Huelva , while the distinction between an apical /s/ and /θ/ , as found in the rest of Peninsular Spanish, is native to the very northeastern regions of Almería, Granada and Jaén, to northern Córdoba , not including

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1260-589: A lax vowel may become lax themselves, e.g. trébol [ˈtɾeβol] ('clover, club') vs tréboles [ˈtɾɛβɔlɛ] ('clovers, clubs'). Many Western Andalusian speakers replace the informal second person plural vosotros with the formal ustedes (without the formal connotation, as happens in other parts of Spain). For example, the standard second person plural verb forms for ir ('to go') are vosotros vais (informal) and ustedes van (formal), but in Western Andalusian one often hears ustedes vais for

1365-664: A lesser degree, Manchegan Spanish. Due to massive emigration from Andalusia to the Spanish colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, all Latin American Spanish dialects share some fundamental characteristics with Western Andalusian Spanish, such as the use of ustedes instead of vosotros for the second person informal plural, seseo , and a lack of leísmo . Much of Latin American Spanish shares some other Andalusian characteristics too, such as yeísmo , weakening of syllable-final /s/ , pronunciation of historical /x/ or

1470-599: A map showing the different ways of pronouncing these sounds in different parts of Andalusia. The map's information almost entirely corresponds to the results from the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula , realized in the early 1930s in Andalusia and also described in Navarro Tomás, Espinosa & Rodríguez-Castellano (1933) . These sources generally highlight the most common pronunciation, in colloquial speech, in

1575-438: A marginal issue in the past, but it has now become an important subject for debate. The lasting influence of linguistic centralism has led some commentators to claim that the problem of fragmentation is non-existent and that it is enough simply to emulate educated language. One author, for example, repeated the doctrine of Menéndez Pidal when stating that: [i]t is possible that [speakers in] one or several of [the] mass media, at

1680-412: A nasal vowel at the end of a word. Intervocalic /d/ is elided in most instances, for example pesao for pesado ('heavy'), a menúo for a menudo ('often'). This is especially common in the past participle; e.g. he acabado becomes he acabao ('I have finished'). For the - ado suffix, this feature is common to all peninsular variants of Spanish, while in other positions it

1785-598: A national level, though this appears to have changed in recent decades, and there is evidence that the speech of Seville or the norma sevillana enjoys high prestige within Western Andalusia. Due to the large population of Andalusia, Andalusian dialects are among the most widely spoken dialects in Spain. Within the Iberian Peninsula, other southern varieties of Spanish share some core elements of Andalusian, mainly in terms of phonetics  – notably Extremaduran Spanish and Murcian Spanish as well as, to

1890-537: A pan-Hispanic dubbing disliked the re-dubbed Peninsular Spanish dubbing. At the First International Congress of the Spanish Language , held in 1997 in Zacatecas , Mexico, controversy emerged around the concept of Standard Spanish. Some authors, such as the Spanish writer José Antonio Millán , advocated defining a "common Spanish", composed of the lowest common denominator of most dialects. Others, such as

1995-407: A particular moment, may give cause for concern because of their use of vernacular forms. ... [But f]rom moment to moment, society's needs and the cultural obligations appropriate to these media ... demand from [them] a higher level of culture, which includes raising speech to the most educated forms. Therefore they also will be, with greater and greater clarity, a strong force for the raising of

2100-448: A particular religious community, while Castilian or a closely related dialect was spoken by nearly everyone. The first grammar of Castilian , and the first explicit codification of any modern European language, was published in 1492 by Antonio de Nebrija . Further commentary on the language was offered by Juan de Valdés in 1535. At around the same time, early printers also played a strong standardizing role. Nebrija notably described

2205-807: A plant). It is descended from the Latin word "vāgīna", which meant "sheath". In the Dominican Republic "vaina" is mainly a thing, a matter, or simply "stuff". For example, ¿Qué vaina es esa? means ¿Qué cosa es esa? , "What is that thing/stuff?". Anglicisms —due to cultural and commercial influence from the United States and the American occupations of the Dominican Republic during 1916–1924 and 1965–1966—are extremely common in Dominican Spanish, more so than in any other Spanish variant except for Puerto Rican and perhaps Northern Mexican Spanish . A prime example of this

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2310-448: A popular dish in Andalusia, and this spelling is used in many parts of Spain when referring to this dish. For general usage, the spelling would be pescadito frito . Llanito , the vernacular of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar , is based on Andalusian Spanish, with British English and other influences. In Andalusia, there is a movement promoting the status of Andalusian as

2415-454: A reduction in the amount of variation reflected in writing. In many cases, non-standard varieties, as well as Judaeo-Spanish, retain features which were once common in written, standard Spanish. For instance, while there was variation in the imperfect and conditional endings of verbs between the now-standard -ía , and -íe and -ié (i.e. tenía, teníe, tenié, cantaría, cantaríe, cantarié 'I had, I would sing') in writing up until

2520-470: A separate language and not as a dialect of Spanish. Standard Spanish Standard Spanish , also called the norma culta , 'cultivated norm', refers to the standard , or codified , variety of the Spanish language , which most writing and formal speech in Spanish tends to reflect. This standard, like other standard languages, tends to reflect the norms of upper-class, educated speech. There

2625-464: A servant to Spanish imperialism", and Juan María Gutiérrez rejected the naming of a correspondent. However, the proposal was finally accepted, eventually resulting in the founding of the Association of Spanish Language Academies . The academies insisted on the preservation of a "common language", based on the upper-class speech of Spain and without regard for the influence that indigenous languages of

2730-475: A sound in medieval Spanish, which originally comes from Latin /f/ , i.e. Latin fartvs 'stuffed, full' → harto [ˈharto] (standard Spanish [ˈarto] 'fed up'). This also occurs in the speech of Extremadura and some other western regions, and it was carried to Latin America by Andalusian settlers, where it also enjoys low status. Nowadays, this characteristic is limited to rural areas in Western Andalusia and

2835-403: A standardizing effect on written Romance in the area. It also led to a massive expansion of Castilian's vocabulary, mainly achieved through borrowing , but also through derivation , especially through the use of suffixes . The syntax of written Spanish also became a lot more elaborate, with a greater number of subordinate clauses , and fewer clauses connected with e 'and'. Additionally,

2940-450: A type of roof covering and influencing the various spoken dialects of Spanish. Individual varieties of Spanish can be located in both geographical and social space, with the speech of the most powerful being most similar to the standard roof, while the speech of the least powerful differs the most from the standard. Today, forms from standard Spanish are increasingly penetrating into rural speech and competing with nonstandard forms. During

3045-474: Is " vaguada ", which is a corruption of the English " bad weather ", though in Dominican Spanish the term has come to mean storm or torrential downpour, rather than a spot of unpleasant climate. Hence, a common Dominican expression: " Viene una vaguada ", "here comes a vaguada ", or "here comes a storm". Another excellent example of this is " boche ", a corruption of the English "bull shit", though in Dominican Spanish

3150-557: Is also heard in most of Extremadura and parts of Cantabria . Word-final /n/ often becomes a velar nasal [ŋ] , including when before another word starting in a vowel, as in [meðãˈŋasko] for me dan asco 'they disgust me'. This features is shared with many other varieties of Spanish, including much of Latin America and the Canary Islands, as well as much of northwestern Spain, the likely origin of this velarization. This syllable-final nasal can even be deleted, leaving behind just

3255-919: Is also more frequently used than el mar . La mar de and tela de are lexicalised expressions to mean a lot of... . Many words of Mozarabic , Romani and Old Spanish origin occur in Andalusian which are not found in other dialects in Spain (but many of these may occur in South American and, especially, in Caribbean Spanish dialects due to the greater influence of Andalusian there). For example: chispenear instead of standard lloviznar or chispear ('to drizzle'), babucha instead of zapatilla ('slipper'), chavea instead of chaval ('kid') or antié for anteayer ('the day before yesterday'). A few words of Andalusi Arabic origin that have become archaisms or unknown in general Spanish can be found, together with multitude of sayings: e.g. haciendo morisquetas (from

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3360-537: Is big'. Dominican Spanish allows for "preverbal placement of subjects with interrogatives and with non-finite clauses". In more normative speech, the subject would typically go after the verb instead. Some examples are: ¿Qué ustedes quieren comer? 'What do you guys want to eat?' and Eso es para Odalis llevárselo a Lari 'That's for Odalis to take it to Lari'. Other prominent aspects of Dominican Spanish include focalizing ser constructions, and clause-final negation and affirmation: In addition to these traits,

3465-471: Is frequently pronounced polo ché . Another phenomenon related to Anglicisms is the usage of brand names as common names for certain objects. For example, " Gillette " and its derivative yilé refer to any razor, and while the machete is known as machete , this being originally a Spanish word, it is sometimes referred to as a "colín", derived from "Collins & Co.", name of a former Connecticut toolmaker. Below are different vocabulary words to demonstrate

3570-426: Is only used for indirect objects. That said, there is competition between that system and others in much of Spain. These other systems are either the purely semantic system, in which lo is reserved for non-countable objects, while le, la, les, las refer to countable objects, and there is no marking for case , as found in the traditional speech of much of northwestern Castile , eastern Cantabria and part of

3675-435: Is quite frequent in middle-class speech, and some level of lenition is sociolinguistically unmarked within Andalusia, forming part of the local standard. That said, Andalusian speakers do tend to reduce the rate of syllable-final lenition in formal speech. Yeísmo , or the merging of /ʎ/ into /ʝ/ , is general in most of Andalusia, and may likely be able to trace its origin to Astur-leonese settlers. That said, pockets of

3780-588: Is stigmatized and usually associated with rural areas, it is worth noting that it was historically found in some large cities such as Huelva and Cádiz , although not in the more prestigious cities of Seville and Córdoba . Above all in eastern Andalusia, but also in locations in western Andalusia such as Huelva , Jerez , and Seville, there is a shift towards distinción . Higher rates of distinción are associated with education, youth, urban areas, and monitored speech. The strong influence of media and school may be driving this shift. Penny (2000) provides

3885-552: Is still common, which calls into question its status as a hypercorrection since these children have little exposure to standard forms of speech. Word-internally, s-insertion is most common before voiceless stop consonants, especially /t/ , and almost never occurs before nasals. Rural residents of El Cibao frequently insert an s after function words, as in des todo 'of everything'. This is typically before stop consonants but can occasionally be before vowels, as in des animales 'of animals'. Some speakers also use final s-insertion as

3990-421: Is still some variation, especially lexical and phonological, in the current standard, and forms of address differ between different countries, with the informal second-person plural vosotros predominantly being used in Spain, and voseo being used in much of Latin America. As mentioned above, there is still significant variation in the use of third-person clitic pronouns. While Latin America uniformly uses

4095-549: Is variation within this standard such that one may speak of the Mexican , Latin American , Peninsular (or European), and Rioplatense standards, in addition to the standard forms developed by international organizations and multinational companies. The dialect that would become standard Spanish originated in the speech of medieval Burgos and surrounding areas. The traits of Burgos speech began to extend beyond its immediate area due to

4200-519: Is widespread throughout most of the southern half of Spain. Also, as occurs in most of the Spanish-speaking world, final /d/ is usually dropped. This widespread elision of intervocalic /d/ throughout the vocabulary is also shared with several Asturian and Cantabrian dialects, pointing to a possible Asturian origin for this feature. One conservative feature of Andalusian Spanish is the way some people retain an [h] sound in words which had such

4305-550: The ⟨j⟩ sound as a glottal fricative , and merging syllable-final /r/ and /l/ . Canarian Spanish is also strongly similar to Western Andalusian Spanish due to its settlement history. Most Spanish dialects in Spain differentiate, at least in pre-vocalic position, between the sounds represented in traditional spelling by ⟨z⟩ and ⟨c⟩ (before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ ), pronounced [θ] , and that of ⟨s⟩ , pronounced [s] . However, in many areas of Andalusia,

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4410-583: The Dominican Republic , particularly in grammar and phonetics. However, second generation immigrants from Haiti use to speak very close to the Dominican standard speech, if not actually speaking it, assimilating into the mainstream speech. Most of the Spanish-speaking settlers came from Andalusia (southern Spain ) and the Canary Islands . When they first arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic,

4515-579: The Latin American Spanish (compared to European Spanish). Dominican Spanish has also received some limited influence from Haitian Creole , due to the Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo and continuing cross-border contacts. Haitian influence is stronger in border regions. Haitian Creole and Samaná English have also influenced the speech of Samaná Province further adding to the African influence found in

4620-519: The evolution of sibilants and the loss of /h/ , which occurred during this time, and betacism , or the merger of the phonemes /b/ and /v/ , which had become complete in northern Spain by the fifteenth century. One notable case of grammatical variation in Spanish has to do with third-person object pronouns . Much of northern Spain, as well as Andalusia and Latin America, uniformly uses an etymological, case -based system in which lo, la, los, las retain their accusative value, while le, les

4725-729: The flamenco culture. This pronunciation represents resistance to the dropping of /h/ that occurred in Early Modern Spanish . This [h] sound is merged with the /x/ phoneme, which derives from medieval / ʃ / and / ʒ / . This feature may be connected to northwestern settlers during the reconquista, who came from areas such as eastern Asturias where /f/ had, as in Old Castile, become /h/ . /tʃ/ undergoes deaffrication to [ʃ] in Western Andalusia, including cities like Seville and Cádiz , e.g. escucha [ehˈkuʃa] ('s/he listens'). A list of Andalusian lenitions and mergers in

4830-406: The phonemes of the local Romance dialect, led to such a linguistic consciousness. This new spelling was used inconsistently at first, but became used with increasing sophistication by the early 13th century. In particular, finding a way to represent Romance's sibilant and palatal consonants in this new system was quite difficult, because Latin had no palatals and only one sibilant, /s/ , and so

4935-399: The provincial capital , and to a small region of northern Huelva. Also according to Penny (2000) and Navarro Tomás, Espinosa & Rodríguez-Castellano (1933) , seseo predominates in much of northwestern Huelva, the city of Seville as well as northern Seville province, most of southern Córdoba, including the capital, and parts of Jaén, far western Granada, very northern Málaga , and

5040-702: The syllable coda . Most broadly, these characteristics include yeísmo , the pronunciation of the ⟨j⟩ sound like the English [h] , velarization of word- and phrase-final /n/ to [ŋ] , elision of /d/ between vowels, and a number of reductions in the syllable coda, which includes occasionally merging the consonants /l/ and /r/ and leniting or even eliding most syllable-final consonants. A number of these features, so characteristic of Spain's south, may have ultimately originated in Astur-leonese speaking areas of north-western Spain, where they can still be found. The leniting of syllable-final consonants

5145-538: The 1880s, a new political situation and the intellectual independence of the former colonies drove the Real Academia Española to propose the formation of branch academies in the Spanish-speaking republics. The project encountered some opposition from local intellectuals. In Argentina , for example, Juan Antonio Argerich , suspecting an attempt by Spain at cultural restoration, argued in favor of an independent academy, one that would not be merely "a branch office,

5250-540: The Americas and other European languages such as Italian, Portuguese, and English were having on the lexicon and even the grammar of American Spanish . That orientation persisted through the 20th century. A 1918 letter from Ramón Menéndez Pidal of the Real Academia Española to the American Association of Teachers of Spanish on the appearance of the first issue of its journal Hispania suggested: The teaching of

5355-456: The Andalusian dialects have entered general Spanish with a specific meaning. One example is juerga , ("debauchery", or "partying"), the Andalusian pronunciation of huelga (originally "period without work", now " work strike "). The flamenco lexicon incorporates many Andalusisms, for example, cantaor , tocaor , and bailaor , which are examples of the dropped "d"; in standard spelling these would be cantador , tocador , and bailador , while

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5460-463: The Cibao valley, and shows a greater than average influence by the 18th-century Canarian settlers. Despite the large share of African ancestry among Dominicans (see Afro-Dominicans ), the African element in the local Spanish is not as important as one might expect. There is also a significant influence from African languages in the Spanish spoken by Haitian and Afro-Caribbean migrant descendants in

5565-706: The Spanish Golden Age. For example, the handling of syllable-final labial and velar consonants in a number of Latinate words, such as concepto 'concept' and absolver 'absolve' was highly variable during this period. Typically, these forms alternated between forms with and without the coda consonant, such as acidente/accidente 'accident'. There were also cases of labials becoming u , as in conceuto 'concept' or cautivo 'captive', and interchanges of ⟨p/b⟩ and ⟨c/g⟩ , as in correbto/correcto 'correct'. These labial and velar consonants have been preserved in most words in

5670-644: The Spanish arrived, they found the flora and fauna of the island, as well as various cultural artifacts, very different from those of Spain, so many of the words used by the natives to name these things were conserved and assimilated, thereby enriching Spanish lexicon. Some of these words include: ají , anón , batata , barbacoa , bejuco , bija , caiman , canoa , caoba , conuco , guanábana , guayaba , hamaca , hobo (jobo) , hutía , iguana , jagua , maní , papaya (lechosa) , sabana , yuca . Dominican Spanish also includes words indirectly borrowed from African languages via Portuguese , such as cachimbo , which

5775-570: The Spanish language he sought to codify as a companion of empire in his address to Queen Isabella , at the time referring to Spain's possessions in Europe and not to Spain's soon-to-be-conquered possessions in the Americas . After the settling of the Royal Court at Madrid, and subsequent dialect mixing and the establishment of new varieties spoken in Madrid, standard written Spanish became primarily based on

5880-423: The city of Almería. Likewise, ceceo is found in southern Huelva, most of Seville, including an area surrounding but not including the capital, all of Cádiz including the capital, most of Málaga, western Granada, and parts of southern Almería. Outside Andalusia, seseo also existed in parts of western Badajoz , including the capital, as of 1933, though it was in decline in many places and associated with

5985-502: The country during the occupation in the 1960s. Dominican license plates for SUVs are marked with a "G" for " gipeta ", a variant of, and pronounced like, "yipeta", before their serial number. The word "tichel", from "T-shirt", also refers to a rugby shirt, association football jersey, or undershirt, and similarly, " corn flakes " and its variant " con fléi " can refer to any breakfast cereal , in Dominican Spanish, be it puffed corn, bran flakes , or puffed wheat . The borrowing " polo shirt "

6090-434: The dialect. Other differences with Standard Spanish include adding the s erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it. Example 1: Example 2: The hypercorrected form is often part of a blatantly sarcastic mode of speech, commonly used for joking rather than everyday speech. It's often called hablar fisno 'speaking finely', with an extra 's' in fino . Among rural children in El Cibao, s-insertion

6195-454: The dominance of this more conservative direct object pronoun system in Andalusia may be due to the presence of Asturleonese settlers in the Reconquista. Subsequent dialect levelling in newly founded Andalusian towns would favor the more simple grammatical system, that is, the one without leísmo. Laísmo (the substitution of indirect pronoun le with la , as in the sentence la pegó una bofetada

6300-471: The drift away from educated Castilian language was an unmistakable sign of social decay. Castro declared that the peculiarities of Argentine Spanish, especially the voseo , were symptoms of "universal plebeianism", "base instincts", "inner discontent, [and] resentment upon thinking about submitting to any moderately arduous rule". According to Castro's diagnosis, the strong identity of the Buenos Aires dialect

6405-498: The educated population of the Dominican Republic continued to use the future subjunctive verb forms ( hablare, hubiere ). Educated Dominicans never used the conditional in place of the imperfect subjunctive , as in Si yo habría visto 'If I had seen', nor did they ever use the imperfect subjunctive instead of the conditional, as in entonces yo hubiese dicho 'then I would have said'. Clitic object pronouns could often be placed after

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6510-465: The effective example that is propagated through social interaction and literary creation". This kind of classist centralism—common to other colonial languages, especially French—has had lasting influence on the use and teaching of the language. Only recently have some regional varieties (such as voseo in Argentina) become part of formal education and of the literary language—the latter, thanks largely to

6615-498: The end of the fourteenth century, the -ié variant could still be heard in rural areas of the Province of Toledo as of the later 20th century. Likewise, until shortly after the end of the fifteenth century, words that had inherited syllable-final v alternated with forms in which that v had been vocalized to u . While forms with u , such as deuda 'debt' and ciudad 'city' are now standard, Judaeo-Spanish prefers forms with

6720-434: The etymological system are labelled leísmo , or the use of le, les for a direct object, and laísmo , refers to the use of la, las for an indirect object. Following a period of concern over the unity of the language, Latin American Spanish began to be taken into account in designing prescriptive grammars and dictionaries, from the mid-20th century onwards. The phrase "dialects of Spanish" often leads to

6825-430: The etymological system inherited from southern Spain, there is much competition between that system and others in the written language of much of the rest of Spain. One hybrid system, which is mostly case-based except that le, les can also refer to masculine human direct object referents, has become dominant in Spain today, although it only made it into prescriptive grammars in the 20th century. Uses which deviate from

6930-545: The expanded forms nosotros, vosotros in writing. The shorter form vos is used in Judaeo-Spanish, alongside the expanded vosotros , and the use of non-deferential, singular vos continues in much of Latin America, where it has become known as voseo . While voseo has become part of standard usage in some countries, such as Argentina, its existence has always been controversial, and it remains stigmatized in other locations. Standard Spanish may be seen as

7035-489: The first native people they had contact with were the Arawak -speaking Taino people . Spanish, just as in other Latin American countries, completely replaced the indigenous languages ( Taíno , Macorix and Ciguayo ) of the Dominican Republic to the point where they became entirely extinct, mainly due to the fact that the majority of the indigenous population quickly died out only a few years after European contact. However, when

7140-480: The following has been found in rural speech in El Cibao, among people who are functionally illiterate, by Bullock & Toribio (2009) : Likely related to the frequent use of subject pronouns, in the Cibao region ello 'it/there' may be used as a dummy pronoun with "impersonal and meteorological verbs, unaccusative predicates , impersonal passives, and other constructions in which transitives are used intransitively": It's been suggested that ello functions as

7245-521: The foundation of the Royal Spanish Academy , part of the Academy's explicit purpose was the normalization of the language, "to fix the words and expressions of the Castilian language with the greatest possible propriety, elegance and purity". Throughout the 18th century the Academy developed means of standardization. Between 1726 and 1793 it published a "dictionary of the Castilian language, in which

7350-499: The informal version. Although mass media have generalised the use of le as a pronoun for animate, masculine direct objects, a phenomenon known as leísmo , many Andalusians still use the normative lo , as in lo quiero mucho (instead of le quiero mucho ), which is also more conservative with regards to the Latin etymology of these pronouns. The Asturleonese dialects of northwestern Spain are similarly conservative, lacking leísmo, and

7455-416: The journalist Fermín Bocos (director of Radio Exterior de España ), denied the existence of a problem and expressed the idea of the supposed superiority of educated Castilian Spanish over dialects with more influence from other languages. Finally, experts from the Americas such as Lila Petrella stated that a neutral Spanish language could possibly be developed for use in purely descriptive texts, but that

7560-567: The language [to a high standard] and for its unification. In any event, in the sphere of spoken language, the issue has become problematic since at least the 1950s when the commercial demands on movie dubbing studios working with Hollywood films began to call for the development of a Spanish whose pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical features would not be recognizable as belonging to any particular country ( español latino or español neutro , "Latin American Spanish" or "Neutral Spanish"). This goal soon proved to be an elusive one: even if

7665-486: The language should aim to provide a broad knowledge of literary Spanish, considered as a highly regarded model; and [only] in an incidental way should it explain the slight variations that are exhibited in educated speech in Spain and in Spanish America, showing the essential unity of all within the literary pattern ... [And] in the specific case of teaching Spanish to foreigners, I see no reason to hesitate in imposing

7770-571: The language. The Dominican Academy of Letters (Academia Dominicana de la Lengua) published in November 2013 a dictionary of Dominican terms ( Diccionario del español dominicano ) containing close to 11,000 words and phrases peculiar to the Dominican dialect. Here are some examples: A slightly pejorative slang expression also common around most of the Caribbean basin is vaina . The Castilian meanings are "sheath", "pod", "shell", "shell casing", and "hull" (of

7875-493: The literary naturalism of the mid-20th century. The question of standard language took on new relevance with the rise of the mass media , when, for the first time, speakers of different dialects gained immediate access—by radio, television, and, more recently, the Internet—to language from regions speaking a variety different from their own. The weakness of the standard form's influence on spoken language had made standardization

7980-645: The lower class. Seseo was likewise found, in 1933, in a southern, coastal area of Murcia around the city of Cartagena , and in parts of southern Alicante such as Torrevieja , near the linguistic border with Valencian . Ceceo was also found in the Murcian villages of Perín and Torre-Pacheco , also near the coast. Andalusian Spanish phonology includes a large number of other distinctive features, compared to other dialects. Many of these are innovations, especially lenitions and mergers , and some of Andalusian Spanish's most distinct lenitions and mergers occur in

8085-605: The major variations among dialects with regard to semantics and pragmatics would imply that it is impossible to define a single standard variety that would have the same linguistic value for all Spanish-speakers. Above all, certain grammatical structures are impossible to form in a neutral way, due to differences in the verb conjugations used (e.g. the use of the second-person familiar pronoun vos in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Central American countries, while most other countries prefer tú , and most Colombians tend to use usted in

8190-594: The military success of the Kingdom of Castile . Crucially, speakers of the Burgos dialect were involved in the 1085 capture of Toledo , which was the traditional old capital of a united peninsular kingdom in the Visigothic era . In the ensuing dialect mix, characteristics of Burgos speech became more favored in upper-class Toledan speech than those native to Toledo or those brought by other settlers. Thus, post-reconquest Toledan speech

8295-427: The misunderstanding that a previously uniform Spanish has split into several divergent varieties, and that nonstandard varieties are derivatives, or debasements, of standard Spanish. This is historically backwards because language has always existed in a state of variation, and standard languages are historically derived from local dialects, not the other way around. Additionally, the standardization of Spanish has led to

8400-490: The modern standard, while rural, nonstandard varieties typically prohibit syllable-final labial and velar consonants. Likewise, there was a frequent interchange between non-stressed /e/ and /i/ and between non-stressed /o/ and /u/ , as in much modern nonstandard Spanish. That said, a preference for the now-standard forms was beginning to form, as Juan de Valdés recommends forms like vanidad/cubrir 'vanity/cover' over their competitors vanedad/cobrir . In 1713, with

8505-486: The most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish , differing in many respects from northern varieties in a number of phonological , morphological and lexical features. Many of these are innovations which, spreading from Andalusia, failed to reach the higher strata of Toledo and Madrid speech and become part of the Peninsular norm of standard Spanish . Andalusian Spanish has historically been stigmatized at

8610-424: The original v . The preterite forms of some irregular verbs had multiple variants until the 17th century. Thus, the verb traer 'to bring' could be conjugated truxe, truxo 'I brought, he brought', alongside modern traxe, traxo (now spelled with ⟨j⟩ and not ⟨x⟩ ). The variants truje, trujo are still found in some predominantly rural nonstandard varieties. Although

8715-540: The orthographic ⟨z⟩ and the soft ⟨c⟩ are transcribed with ⟨ θ ⟩, whereas the orthographic ⟨s⟩ is transcribed with ⟨ s ⟩. Additionally, in most regions of Andalusia which distinguish /s/ and /θ/ , the distinction involves a laminal [s] , as opposed to the apico-alveolar [s̠] of most of Spain. The pronunciation of these sounds in Andalusia differs geographically, socially, and among individual speakers, and there has also been some shift in favor of

8820-405: The orthography, which had been quite chaotic at the beginning of Alfonso X's reign in the mid-13th century, became systematized, although it was not entirely free of variation. Alfonso X's promotion of writing in Castilian was likely intended in part to have a unifying effect on his kingdom. Each of the three more well-established written languages, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic , was associated with

8925-421: The pronunciation of the Castilian region. The priority of written language over spoken language, and of Peninsular Spanish over American varieties, was the central thesis of Menéndez Pidal's letter. The "barbaric character of the American indigenous languages", in his opinion, should prevent them from having any influence over American Spanish. The tutorship of the Academy would take care of the rest. With that, he

9030-713: The representation of these phonemes was very inconsistent at first. The first major steps toward standardization of Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile ( Alfonso, the Wise ), who assembled scribes and translators at his main court in Toledo. The king supervised a vast number of writings and even wrote some documents himself. These included extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge, either composed originally or translated from Islamic sources. This huge amount of writing based out of Toledo, in fields previously reserved for Latin, had

9135-689: The results could, on occasion, approximate a universally intelligible form, at the same time the process prevented the transmission of a familiar, intimate, or everyday tone. Disney Pictures took an early interest in unified dubbing. Three Little Pigs was dubbed in Paris by Castilian and French-accented actors. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio were dubbed in Argentina under Luis César Amadori . Later Disney films were dubbed in Mexico under Edmundo Santos . Nevertheless, its continued use has produced

9240-399: The same terms in more general Spanish may be cantante , músico , and bailarín . Note that, when referring to the flamenco terms, the correct spelling drops the "d"; a flamenco cantaor is written this way, not cantador . In other cases, the dropped "d" may be used in standard Spanish for terms closely associated with Andalusian culture. For example, pescaíto frito ("little fried fish") is

9345-644: The similarities between the dialects of the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries, including Puerto Rico , Cuba , Colombia , Venezuela , and Panama . The dialects of Andalusia and the Canary Islands , two regions of Spain that have been highly influential on the dialects of these countries, are also included. Andalusian Spanish The Andalusian dialects of Spanish ( Spanish : andaluz , pronounced [andaˈluθ] , locally [andaˈluh, ændæˈlʊ] ) are spoken in Andalusia , Ceuta , Melilla , and Gibraltar . They include perhaps

9450-412: The simpler form prevailed, in other cases both forms survive with slightly different uses, like respecto/respeto 'respect'. In some cases with the sub-, ob- prefixes, like obscuro/oscuro 'dark', variation persists, although the simpler forms appear certain to prevail. When coda velar or labial consonants followed a nasal consonant , as in prompto/pronto 'soon', the middle velar or labial

9555-487: The speech of Madrid , even though its origin is sometimes popularly assigned to other cities, such as Valladolid . The Early Modern Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is sometimes called classical or Golden Age Spanish , referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Spanish orthography was still far from consistent during this time. The gap between the largely unchanged system developed under Alfonso X and spoken Spanish expanded due to changes such as

9660-480: The standard distinción . As testament to the prevalence of intra-speaker variation, Dalbor (1980) found that many Andalusians alternate between a variety of sibilants, with little discernible pattern. Additionally, the idea that areas of rural Andalusia at one time exclusively used ceceo has been challenged, and many speakers described as ceceante or ceceo -using have in fact alternated between use of [s̟] and [s] with little pattern. While ceceo

9765-458: The syllable coda that affect obstruent and liquid consonants includes: As a result, these varieties have five vowel phonemes, each with a tense allophone (roughly the same as the normal realization in northern Spanish; [ä] , [e̞] , [i] , [o̞] , [u] , hereafter transcribed without diacritics) and a lax allophone ( [æ] , [ɛ] , [ɪ] , [ɔ] , [ʊ] ). In addition to this, a process of vowel harmony may take place where tense vowels that precede

9870-454: The term has come to mean a reprimanding, fulmination, or harangue in general terms. Hence, a common Dominican expression: " Me echaron un boche ", "they threw me a boche ", or "they reprimanded me". Furthermore, is the Dominican Spanish word for SUV , "yipeta", "jeepeta", or rarely "gipeta". This term is a corruption of the American "Jeep", which was the primary mode of transport for the GIs throughout

9975-409: The true sense of the words is explained, as well as their nature and quality, along with the phrases and forms of speech, and the proverbs, sayings, and other matters pertinent to the use of the language". In 1771 a Grammar of the Spanish Language was published. One area of the language the Academy sought to fix was its orthography. Because of the growing distance between spelling and pronunciation,

10080-400: The two phonemes are not distinguished and /s/ is used for both, which is known as seseo /seˈseo/ . In other areas, the sound manifests as [ s̟ ] (a sound close, but not identical to [ θ ] ), which is known as ceceo ( /θeˈθeo/ ). Unless a specific dialect is transcribed, transcriptions in this article follow the standard pattern found in the syllable onset, so that

10185-417: The unity of language as the guardian of national unity, and the upper classes as the guardians of language orthodoxy. Much of Menéndez Pidal's work is aimed at pursuing that goal, recommending greater zeal in the persecution of "incorrect" usage through "the teaching of grammar, doctrinal studies, dictionaries, the dissemination of good models, [and] commentary on the classical authors, or, unconsciously, through

10290-517: The unity of the "educated" language would guarantee the unity of the Hispanic world. On the other hand, the Colombian philologist Rufino José Cuervo —who shared Bello's prognosis of the eventual fragmentation of Spanish into a plurality of mutually unintelligible languages (although unlike Bello he celebrated it)—warned against the use of the written medium to measure the unity of the language, considering it

10395-524: The western Basque Country , or hybrid systems in-between the two extremes. One such hybrid system, largely identical to the semantic system but with a gender distinction for non-countable objects (as in, esta leche hay que echarla 'this milk has to be thrown out', where the purely semantic system would use echarlo ), was dominant in the written Spanish of Golden Age Castile. A number of phonetic features which have since become restricted to nonstandard speech were frequently represented in writing during

10500-459: The word morisco , meaning pulling faces and gesticulating, historically associated with Muslim prayers). These can be found in older texts of Andalusi. There are some doublets of Arabic-Latinate synonyms with the Arabic form being more common in Andalusian like Andalusian alcoba for standard habitación or dormitorio ('bedroom') or alhaja for standard joya ('jewel'). Some words pronounced in

10605-505: Was borrowed from the Portuguese word "cacimba", having the latter being borrowed from the Bantu "cazimba". Many of these African influences are quite distant and left a minor impact on modern day Dominican Spanish, and usually these words are also used in other Spanish-speaking countries as far-away as Argentina, therefore it is not just a phenomenon restricted to the Dominican Republic but common in

10710-584: Was characterized by a large number of features from Burgos. This city became the main center of the kingdom and the Christian Primate see , giving its local dialect a privileged position. The standardization of Spanish required its use in a large number of domains, traditionally reserved for Latin, and that required speakers to become conscious of Spanish as a separate linguistic code from Latin. The introduction of new ways of writing Romance from France, resulting in spelling systems which sought to represent

10815-416: Was due to the general acceptance of popular forms at the expense of educated ones. Castro worries above all about the impossibility of immediately perceiving the social class of the speaker from the traits of his speech. The lack of the "checks and inhibitions" that the upper classes should represent seemed to him an unmistakable sign of social decay. Castro's text is typical of a widespread view that sees

10920-472: Was simply dropped. In the 19th century, as the various republics of Latin America became independent, the use of Spanish was connected to nationhood, and numerous constitutions recognized Spanish as the official language of their respective countries. The Spanish language words used in the Latin American countries began to be recorded in dictionaries as "Americanisms", beginning in the 19th century. There

11025-427: Was trying to counteract the prediction made by Andrés Bello in the prologue (p. xi) to his Grammar of 1847, which warned of the profusion of regional varieties that would "flood and cloud much of what is written in America, and, altering the structure of the language, tend to make it into a multitude of irregular, licencious, barbarian dialects". According to this interlocking linguistic and political viewpoint, only

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