Dialect map ofPeru andEcuador.Andean Spanish is in red and purple.
Andean Spanish is a dialect ofSpanish spoken in the centralAndes, from southernColombia, with influence as far south as northernChile andNorthwestern Argentina, passing throughEcuador,Peru, andBolivia. While similar to other Spanish dialects, Andean Spanish shows influence fromQuechua,Aymara, and otherindigenous languages, due to prolonged and intense language contact. This influence is especially strong in rural areas.[1]
In Andean Spanish, the/s/ is never aspirated in the final position and so is pronounced[s], not[h].[1] In northern Chile, syllable-final /s/ is mostly aspirated.
In parts of highland Peru, especially Cusco and Puno,/s/ is sometimes pronouncedapical, rather thanlaminal.[2]
As in all Latin American dialects of Spanish, Andean Spanish hasseseo (/θ/ is not distinguished from/s/). Thus,casa ("house") andcaza ("hunt") are homophones. However, inCusco Region andCajamarca, many speakers realize/s/ as[θ] in many words, particularly inonce, doce, trece.[2][3][4][5]Seseo is common to all of America, the Canary Islands, and several areas in southern Spain.
Especially in the Ecuadorian variant, coda/s/ is often voiced to[z] before a vowel or before a voiced consonant (including sonorants), but the latter is also a feature of most other Spanish dialects.[1] In the Peruvian variant, it is palatalized before/i/.[citation needed]
In Bolivia, Ecuador, and southern Peru,/ʎ/ and/ʝ/ do not merge (lack ofyeísmo).[1][6] In northern Ecuador,/ʎ/ tends to be pronounced as avoiced postalveolar fricative.[7] However, yeísmo is on the rise among Ecuador's middle and upper classes.[8]
Often the vowels/e/ and/i/ or/o/ and/u/ are merged because of the influence of the three-vowel system of Quechua and Aymara.[1]
/r/ and/ɾ/ are assibilated to[r̝] and[ɾ̞], respectively.[1] This is in decline among the middle and upper classes.[6]
/f/ is realised as bilabial[ɸ], sometimes with an epenthetic/w/ following.[1]
Emphasis is given to the consonants but the vowels are weakened, especially for unstressed syllables (like inMexican Spanish).[1][6]
Theintonation patterns of some Andean accents, such as those of Cusco, have been influenced by those of Quechua. Even monolingual Spanish speakers can show Quechua influence in their intonation.[10][11]
Voseo is common in the Bolivian and Ecuadorian Andes, largely among rural and poorer speakers. It is nearly extinct in Peru. Some speakers tend towardspronominal voseo, usingvos with thetú conjugations of verbs, whereas more indigenous speakers tend to use thevos conjugations.[1]
Words likepues,pero andnomás are often used similarly to the modal suffixes ofQuechua andAymara. They can be stacked at the end of a clause:
Dile nomás pues pero."Just go ahead and tell him."[1]
Andean Spanish also widely uses redundant "double possessives" as in:
De María en su casa estoy yendo."I'm going to Maria's house."[1]
This also shows howen can indicate "motion towards" in the Andes.En may also be used "before a locative adverb, as inVivo en acá 'I live here' orEn allá sale agua 'Water is coming out there.'"[1]
Due to Aymara and Quechua influence, Andean Spanish often uses thepluperfect tense or clause-finaldice "he/she says" to indicateevidentiality.[1] Evidentialdice is more common in monolingual Peruvian Spanish.[1]
In upper Ecuador, a type of construction withdar + gerund is common, ie:
Pedro me dio componiendo mi reloj."Pedro fixed my watch."[1]
Andean Spanish typically uses more loans from Aymara and Quechua than other Spanish varieties.[1] In addition, some common words have different meanings.Pie, meaning "foot," can refer to the whole leg, due to Aymara influence.Siempre ("always") can mean "still."[1]
^O'Rourke, Erin (2004). "Peak placement in two regional varieties of Peruvian Spanish intonation". In Auger, Julie; Clements, J. Clancy; Vance, Barbara (eds.).Contemporary approaches to Romance linguistics: selected papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. pp. 321–342.ISBN9789027247728.
