Caribbean Spanish

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

Caribbean Spanish (Spanish: español caribeño) is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. It closely resembles the Spanish spoken in Andalusia and the Canary Islands.

More precisely, the term refers to the Spanish language as spoken in the Caribbean islands of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean mainland along the coast of Mexico, Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) Colombia and Venezuela.

Characteristics

Frequently, word-final /s/ and /d/ are dropped (as in compás [komˈpa] 'beat', mitad [miˈta] 'half'). /s/ (as well as /f/ may also be debuccalized to [h].^[1] Similarly, nasals and /ɾ/ in the infinitival morpheme may also be dropped (e.g. ven [bẽ] 'come', comer [koˈme] 'to eat');^[2] the dropping of final nasals doesn't result in further neutralization compared to other dialects since the nasalization of the vowel is maintained. Several neutralizations also occur in the syllable coda. The liquids /l/ and /ɾ/ may neutralize to [j] (e.g. Cibaeño Dominican celda/cerda [ˈsejða] 'cell'/'bristle'), [l] (e.g. alma/arma [ˈalma] 'soul'/'weapon'), or as complete regressive assimilation (e.g. pulga/purga [ˈpuɡɡa] 'flea'/'purge').^[2]

These deletions and neutralizations show variability in their occurrence, even with the same speaker in the same utterance, implying that nondeleted forms exist in the underlying structure.^[3] This is not to say that these dialects are on the path to eliminating coda consonants, since these processes have existed for more than four centuries in these dialects.^[4] Guitart (1997) argues that this is the result of speakers acquiring multiple phonological systems with uneven control similar to that of second language learners.

Other features include

• Intervocalic /d/ is often deleted (at times causing diphthongs): cansado /kanˈsau/ ('tired'), nada /na/ ('nothing'), and perdido /perˈdio/ ('lost').^{[citation needed]}
• /x/ is glottal [h]
• /r/ is often pronounced [x] and aspirated, especially in Puerto Rico: eg. revolucion [xeβoluˈsjoŋ] ('revolution')
• Heavy usage of the pronouns tú and usted (or vos in Central America), often put before a phrase (tú estas hablando instead of estás hablando). This occurs with great frequency in Nicaragua, where vos is the dominant written and spoken form of the spanish language. Out of the nations that comprise the Caribbean coast, it is the only country where this is evident.

See also

• Cuban Spanish
• Dominican Spanish
• Puerto Rican Spanish
• Nicaraguan Spanish

References

Bibliography

• Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1975), "A sample of Sixteenth Century 'Caribbean' Spanish Phonology.", in Milán, William, Colloquium on Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, pp. 1–11 
• Guitart, Gorge M. (1997), "Variability, multilectalism, and the organization of phonology in Caribbean Spanish dialects", in Martínez-Gil, Fernando, Issues in the Phonology and Morphology of the Major Iberian Languages, Georgetown University Press, pp. 515–536 
• Labov, William (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change: Volume I: Internal Factors. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 

Further reading

• Cedergren, Henrietta (1973), The Interplay of Social and. Linguistic Factors in Panama, Cornell University 
• Poplack, Shana (1979). Function and process in a variable phonology. University of Pennsylvania.