Caribbean Spanish (Spanish:español caribeño,[espaˈɲolkaɾiˈβeɲo]) is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in theCaribbean region. The Spanish language was introduced to the Caribbean in 1492 with the voyages ofChristopher Columbus. It resembles the Spanish spoken in theCanary Islands, and, more distantly, the Spanish of westernAndalusia. With more than 25 million speakers, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the Caribbean Islands.
Seseo, where/θ/ and/s/ merge to/s/, as in the rest of the Americas, in the Canary Islands and in southern Spain.
Yeísmo, where/ʎ/ and/ʝ/ merge to/ʝ/, as in many other Spanish dialects.
/s/ is debuccalized to[h] at the end of syllables, as is common in the southern half of Spain, the Canaries and much of Spanish America:los amigos[lo(h)aˈmiɣo(h)] ('the friends'),dos[ˈdo(h)] ('two').[1] It may also be elided entirely. Syllable-final[s] is always or mostly pronounced in formal speech, like TV broadcasts.
Syllable-initial/s/ is also sporadicallydebuccalized in unstressed syllables, although this process is documented only in certain areas, such as parts of Puerto Rico:cinco centavos[ˈsiŋkohenˈtaβo],la semana pasada[laheˈmanapaˈsaða].
As a reaction to the stigmatization of s-debuccalization and elision,hypercorrections are frequent. For example, speakers may saycatorces año forcatorce años '14 years'. These hypercorrections are calledhablar fisno 'speaking finely', with an extra, hypercorrect 's'.[2]
/x/ pronounced[h], as is common in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and various parts of South America.
Occasionallenition of/tʃ/ to[ʃ] mucho[ˈmutʃo]→[ˈmuʃo], as in part of Andalusia or in Chile.
Word-final/n/ is realized as avelar nasal[ŋ] (velarization). It can be elided, with backwardsnasalization of the preceding vowel:[pan]→[pã]; as in part of Andalusia.
Deletion of intervocalic and word final/d/, as in many Spanish dialects:cansado[kanˈsao] ('tired'),nada[ˈnaða]→[na] ('nothing'), andperdido[pelˈdi.o] ('lost'),mitad[miˈtað]→[miˈta]
assimilation to following consonant, causinggemination. carne[ˈkaɾne]→[ˈkanːe], verde[ˈbeɾðe]→[ˈbedːe]. Most notable of Spanish spoken in and aroundHavana.
/ɹ/ is a common realization in the middle and upper classes in Puerto Rico under the influence of English.
vocalization of/ɾ/ to/i/ hacer[aˈseɾ]→[aˈsej] in theCibao region of the Dominican Republic.
/r/ isdevoiced to [r̥] in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico: cotorra[koˈtora]→[koˈtor̥a] and realised as auvular fricative[ʀ],[χ] (uvularization) in rural Puerto Rican dialects
Severalneutralizations also occur in the syllable coda. The liquids/l/ and/ɾ/ may neutralize to[j] (Cibaeño Dominicancelda/cerda[ˈsejða] 'cell'/'bristle'),[l] (alma/arma[ˈalma] 'soul'/'weapon',comer[koˈme(l)] 'to eat'), or as complete regressive assimilation (pulga/purga[ˈpuɡːa] 'flea'/'purge').[3] The deletions and neutralizations (/ɾ/→/l/→/i/→∅) show variability in their occurrence, even with the same speaker in the same utterance, which implies that nondeleted forms exist in the underlying structure.[4] That is not to say that these dialects are on the path to eliminating coda consonants since such processes have existed for more than four centuries in these dialects.[5]Guitart (1997) argues that it is the result of speakers acquiring multiple phonological systems with uneven control, like that of second language learners.
In Caribbean Spanish, there are geminated consonants when/l/ and/ɾ/ in syllabic coda are assimilated to the following consonant.[6] Examples of Cuban Spanish:
As in all American variants of Spanish the third person plural pronounustedes has supplanted the pronounvosotros/vosotras.
Voseo is now completely absent from insular Caribbean Spanish. Contemporary commentators such as the Cuban Esteban Pichardo speak of its survival as late as the 1830s (see López Morales 1970:136‑142) but by the 1870s it appears to have become confined to a small number of speakers from the lowest social strata. In addition to most of Central America,voseo is used in the northwest of Venezuela (states ofFalcón andZulia), in the north of the Colombian department ofCesar, in the south ofLa Guajira department on Colombia's Atlantic coast, and in theAzuero Peninsula in Panama.
The diminutive (ito, ita) takes the form (ico, ica) after/t/:pato→patico,pregunta→preguntica. BUTperro→perrito.
Possibly as a result of the routine elision of word-final[s], some speakers may use[se] as a plural marker, but generally this tendency is limited to words with singular forms that end in a stressed vowel:[kaˈfe]café 'coffee' →[kaˈfese] 'coffees',[soˈfa]sofá 'sofa' →[soˈfase] 'sofas'.
The second-person subject pronouns,tú (orvos in Central America) andusted, are used more frequently than in other varieties of Spanish, contrary to the general Spanish tendency to omit them when meaning is clear from the context (seepro-drop language). Thus,tú estás hablando instead ofestás hablando. The tendency is strongest in the island countries and, on the mainland, in Nicaragua, wherevoseo (rather than the use oftú for the second person singular familiar) is predominant.
So-called"wh-questions", which in standard Spanish are marked by subject/verb inversion, often appear without the inversion in Caribbean Spanish: "¿Qué tú quieres?" for standard "¿Qué quieres (tú)?" ("What do you want?").[7][8]
Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1975), "A sample of Sixteenth Century 'Caribbean' Spanish Phonology.", in Milán, William G.; Staczek, John J.; Zamora, Juan C. (eds.),1974 Colloquium on Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, pp. 1–11
Guitart, Jorge M. (1997), "Variability, multilectalism, and the organization of phonology in Caribbean Spanish dialects", in Martínez-Gil, Fernando; Morales-Front, Alfonso (eds.),Issues in the Phonology and Morphology of the Major Iberian Languages, Georgetown University Press, pp. 515–536
Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo (2008), "Topicalization and Preverbal Subjects in Spanishwh-interrogatives", in Bruhn de Garavito, Joyce; Valenzuela, Elena (eds.),Selected Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, pp. 225–236
Labov, William (1994),Principles of Linguistic Change: Volume I: Internal Factors, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers
