Bolivian Spanish
Español boliviano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲolβoliˈβjano]
Native to	Bolivia
Native speakers	4.1 million (2014)[1] 4.5 million in Bolivia (2014)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian Spanish Bolivian Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Official status
Regulated by	Academia Boliviana de la Lengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa[2]
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	es-BO
Bolivia
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Bolivian Spanish (orCastilian) is the variety ofSpanish spoken by the majority of the population inBolivia, either as a mother tongue or as a second language. Within the Spanish of Bolivia there are different regional varieties. In the border areas, Bolivia shares dialectal features with the neighboring countries.

Throughout Bolivia the preservation of phonemic contrast between/ʝ/ and thelateral/ʎ/ (i.e. the absence ofyeísmo) is the norm.^[3][4]Aspiration of syllable-final/s/ is frequent in the lowlands, while in the highlands the sibilant/s/ tends to be preserved, realized either as alaminal or, frequently, anapical[s].^[4][5] In highland dialects, the"trill" phoneme (orthographic⟨rr⟩ or word-initial⟨r⟩) is oftenassibilated, realized as avoiced apicoalveolar fricative,^[5][6] oralveolar approximant, which pronunciation is similar to the sound of⟨r⟩ ([ɹ]) in English. In highland Bolivian Spanish there is "intense reduction" of unstressed vowels in contact with/s/, often resulting in syllables with/s/ as their nucleus, e.g.pues ("well,...") pronounced[ps].^[4][7]

This variety of Spanish is spoken on the Chaco-Beni plain and in the Santa Cruz valleys, a region that includes the departments ofSanta Cruz,Beni, andPando.^[8] Spanish is spoken by almost the entire population of these regions, and—like Spanish throughout the Americas—has its basis inAndalusian Spanish andCanarian Spanish, but with influences of native languages such asChiquitano,Chané andGuarani, as well as Old World languages includingPortuguese andArabic.^[8] And although it is fairly uniform across regions and social classes, there are subtle geographical differences.

This dialect is characterized by thedebuccalization ("aspiration") of final/s/. For example, the wordpues is pronounced[pweh]. For the second-person-singular pronoun and verb forms, the use of "voseo" is dominant. The use ofdiminutive-ingo and theaugmentative-ango is unique to this dialect. For example:chiquitingo ("very small") andgrandango ("very large").

Loanwords fromChiquitano or from an extinct variety close to Chiquitano includebi 'genipa',masi 'squirrel',peni 'lizard',peta 'turtle, tortoise',jachi 'chicha leftover',jichi 'worm;jichi spirit', among many others.^[9]

This dialect is spoken mainly in the valleys and theGran Chaco of the department ofTarija, but also in the region ofVilla Abecia andCamargo (in the department ofChuquisaca), in the province ofSud Chichas (capitalTupiza), and in the Chaco regions of Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz.

The second-person-singularvoseo is in full use inTupiza, in the west of Tarija, and in the rest of the aforementioned areas.

The Chapaco accent has an intonation similar to that of Jujuy, Salta, and Tucumán in Argentina, as the territory where it was originally spoken is now located in theRío de la Plata Province of Tarija. This intonation appears throughout the Bolivian Chaco, Tupiza (Sud Chichas) and the Chuquisaca valleys of Camargo, Villa Abecia, Azurduy, Alcalá, etc.

This variety is spoken in the departments ofCochabamba andChuquisaca. It is somewhat similar toAndean Spanish but differs in intonation and the use of idiomatic expressions, due to the mixture of Spanish andQuechua spoken in the valleys of Bolivia.

Because many institutions and companies use "tú" and the "tuteante" verb forms for the familiar second-person singular, it is common to encounter the erroneous statement that "tuteo" rather than "voseo" is the usual form in the speech of Bolivia.

This chart shows the similarities between the dialects of Spanish spoken inBolivia and those spoken in its neighboring Spanish-speaking countriesArgentina,Chile,Peru, andParaguay, as well asPortuguese spoken in neighboringBrazil.

This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Bolivian Spanish" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Canfield, D. Lincoln (1981),Spanish Pronunciation in the Americas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Coimbra Sanz, Germán (1992),El castellano de Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia: Parva Editores
• Lipski, John M. (1994),Latin American Spanish, London: Longman

• Languages of Bolivia (Radboud University of Nijmegen)Archived 2018-11-12 at theWayback Machine

• Spanish dialects of South America
• Culture of Bolivia
• Languages of Bolivia

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