Dominican Spanish

Dominican Spanish 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, Boston, and Miami.

Dominican Spanish, a subset of Caribbean Spanish, is based on the Andalusian and Canarian Spanish dialects of southern Spain, and has borrowed vocabulary from Taíno and other Arawakan languages, from West African languages, and from English. Speakers of Dominican Spanish may also use conservative words that in the upper-class speech of Spain would be considered archaisms. The variety spoken in the Cibao region is a mixture of two dialects: that of the 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese colonists in the Cibao valley, and that of the 18th-century Canarian settlers.^[1][2]

History

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, 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 and the language of the Ciguayos) 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 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), jagua, maní, papaya (lechosa), sabana, yuca.

The Dominican Spanish lexicon also includes words borrowed from African languages spoken by the Africans brought to the island after the Taíno extinction, such as cachimbo, which was borrowed from the Portuguese word "cacimba", having the latter being borrowed from the Bantu "cazimba".^[3]

Phonology

• Like many other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (the palatal lateral /ʎ/) and y (historically the palatal approximant /j/) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a [j] or [dʒ] (these are the sounds in English York and John). That is, in the Dominican Republic (as in most of Latin America and Spain), se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent / he shut up".
• Dominican Spanish has seseo (traditional /θ/ merges with /s/). That is, casa ("house") is homophonous with caza ("hunt"). Seseo is common to nearly all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
• Strong contraction in everyday speech is common, as in "voy a" into "vuá" or "voá", or "¿para adónde vas?" into "¿p'ónde va'?". Another example: "David 'tá 'co'ta'o", from "David está acostado" ("David is lying down / David is sleeping").
• The fricative /s/ has a tendency to become an indistinct aspiration or disappear or to become a voiceless glottal fricative [h] at the end of syllables. The change may be realized only at the word level or it may also cross word boundaries. That is, las mesas son blancas "the tables are white" is pronounced [lahˈmesah sɔn ˈblaŋkah], but in las águilas azules "the blue eagles", syllable-final /s/ in las and águilas might be resyllabified into the initial syllable of the following vowel-initial words and remain [s] ([laˈsaɣilasaˈsulɛh]), or become [h] (it varies by speaker). Aspiration or disappearance of syllable-final /s/ is common to all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
  • Example 1: To say lo niño or los niño, instead of los niños
  • Example 2: To say lluvia ailada or lluvias ailada, instead of lluvias aisladas
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final r sound in verb infinitives. The elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech.
• Syllable-final r tends to be changed in many words by an i sound in the Northerly Cibao region and by an l (L) in the Eastern and in the capital city (Santo Domingo): the verb correr (to run) is pronounced correi and correl respectively, and perdón (forgiveness) becomes peidón and peldón. This substitution of i is delicately (almost mutely) present in Andalusian Spanish, and also the l use is prototypical, and more marked, in Puerto Rican Spanish. It is believed to be of Andalusian origin.
• Dominican Spanish uses the common Caribbean inverted placement of the second person singular pronoun tú in front of the verb in questions: "¿Cómo tú estás?" instead of "¿Cómo estás tú?". When speaking formally or with those not spoken to with familiarity, they use the more formal usted, instead of tú, the conventional word order is used.
• The "d" is silent in the common word-ending -ado. For example, the words casado (married) and lado (side, way) are pronounced as casao and lao in Dominican Spanish.
• In a few parts of the country, an "el" at the end of a word is pronounced as "err." For example, Miguel may be pronounced as Miguer in Dominican Spanish, a feature shared with Andalusian Spanish and in contrast to Puerto Rican Spanish, where the reverse occurs, e.g. pronouncing the name Arturo (Arthur) as Alturo.

Other differences with Standard Spanish include subtleties like hypercorrection, in particular, adding the s erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it.

Example 1:

• standard: administraciones públicas [public administrations]
• vernacular: aminitracione pública
• hypercorrected: asministracione púsblica

Example 2:

• standard: jaguar [jaguar]
• vernacular: jagual / jaguai
• hypercorrected: jasguar

The hypercorrected form is more of a blatantly sarcastic mode of speech, commonly used for joking rather than everyday speech.

Vocabulary

As in every dialect, Dominican Spanish has numerous vocabulary differences from other forms of 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.^[4] 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 a plant). It is descended from the Latin word "vāgīna", which meant "sheath".^[7] 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, save for Puerto Rican and perhaps Northern Mexican Spanish. A prime example of this 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 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". The pronoun "they" in Dominican Spanish often refers to the third person singular, so that me dijeron, "they told me", is sometimes used instead of "a man told me", or "a woman told me", or "the young boy by the lemon tree told 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 GI's throughout 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" 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.

Some words and names borrowed from Arawakan

References

Footnotes

Sources

• "A new perspective on Afro-Dominican Spanish: the Haitian contribution"- http://www.personal.psu.edu/jml34/afrodom.pdf
• Diccionario del español dominicano - Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (Santo Domingo, Editora Judicial, 2013) ISBN 978-9945-8912-0-1
• El español en la República Dominicana - Alvar Gómez, Manuel (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Servicio de Publicaciones) ISBN 84-8138-418-6. ISBN 978-84-8138-418-5.
• El español de la República Dominicana
• "La influencia del inglés en la República Dominicana. Valoración de una encuesta oral", by Manuel Alvar
• "Zonas lingüísticas americanas", by Sergio Zamora
• Culture of Dominican Republic

Other links

• Dominican Spanish Bilingual Dictionary English-Spanish
• Learn Dominican Spanish
• Pérez Guerra, Irene: "El arcaismo del español dominicano"
• Dominican Spanish Lessons