Isleño Spanish (Spanish:español isleño,French:espagnol islingue) is a dialect ofCanarian Spanish spoken by the descendants of immigrantCanary Islanders who settled inSt. Bernard Parish,Louisiana, United States, during the late 18th century.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} It has been greatly influenced by adjacent language communities as well asimmigration from peninsularSpain and otherSpanish-speaking countries.^[2][3][4] Moreover, the dialect spoken by theIsleños who settled alongBayou Lafourche is differentiated asBrule Spanish.^[7][8]

In the present day, Isleño Spanish is approaching completeextinction.^[1][9][10] Throughout the 20th century,modernization andurbanization came to disrupt greatly the transmission of Spanish, coupled with the hardships ofnatural disasters.^[2][10][11] The remaining Spanish speakers of the community tend to be elderly individuals from fishing communities of eastern St. Bernard Parish.^[2][1]

The Isleños are descendants of colonists from theCanary Islands who arrived inSpanish Louisiana between 1778 and 1783.^[10][11] It estimated that about 2,000 Canary Islanders were settled into a series of communities, one of those coming to be known as San Bernardo (Saint Bernard).^[2][11]

Early in the establishment of this community, a minority ofAcadians were present along withFilipinos from the nearby community ofSaint Malo which intermarried with the Canary Islanders.^[12] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the community was reinforced by immigration from rural, peninsular Spanish regions such asAndalusia,Santander,Galicia, andCatalonia.^[3] A survey conducted in 1850 found at least 63 natives of Spain, 7 Canary Islanders, 7Cubans, and 7Mexicans in the community.^[2]

The1915 New Orleans hurricane destroyed many of the Isleño fishing communities situated in eastern St. Bernard Parish.^[13] Only a couple years later, theSpanish flu pandemic left over one thousand people dead in the community.^[14] With the adoption of the Louisiana Constitution of 1921, public education was required to be conducted in English.^[15]

AfterWorld War II, urbanization and modernization played a greater effect on the community and the retention of Spanish.^{[2][11][10][16]} This was compounded byHurricane Betsy which severely damaged much of Isleño community and presence in St. Bernard Parish.^[17] In 2005,Hurricane Katrina devastated the community and only a fraction of Isleño families have returned to their original communities.^[1][18]

Currently, the transmission of Spanish has halted completely along with the preservation of many traditions.^[2][1][11] Those who know Isleño Spanish or speak the dialect as afirst language are often elderly community members.^[2][1][16] The younger generation of Isleños who speak Spanish mostly derive from modern Mexican Spanish and Caribbean Spanish due to larger frequency of contact with native Mexican, Caribbean, and Central American Spanish speakers, most of the younger generation live in other areas of Louisiana, mostly New Orleans.

In many respects, Isleño Spanish shares an array of similarities with other Spanish dialects, generally of theCanary Islands, mainlandSpain, and theCaribbean.^[2][3][5] Isleño Spanish merges thephonemes/θ/ and/s/ into the single phoneme/s/, a phenomenon known asseseo.^[2][5][19] At least until the mid twentieth century, Isleño Spanish speakers made a distinction between/ʎ/ and/ʝ/, which is still typical of rural speech in the Canaries, but later studies have suggested instability in this feature.^[2][4]

Some of the notable features regardingconsonants are described below:

• /d/ often undergoes deletion.^[4] In intervocalic position,/d/ is habitually elided:peludo[peˈlu] 'hairy' ormiedo[ˈmjeo] 'fear'.^[2][4][5] In word-final positions,/d/ is deleted and the final vowel becomes stressed such as inusted[uhˈte] 'you'.^[2][4]
• /g/ is typically maintained in word-initial position but may become[b] when followed byo oru.^[2][4] In all other positions,/g/ is realized as an approximant[ɣ].^[4]
• Historical/h/ is generally preserved where it derives from theVulgar Latin/f/ like inhacer[haˈsej] 'to do, to make'. Since it is phonetically identical to/x/ (which is also glottal), this can be phonemicized as/xaˈsei/.^[3][4][6]
• /n/ is largely preserved as[n] but[ŋ] is occasionally heard.^[2][5] However, the sequence[jn] results in the loss of[n].^[2][4]
• /r/ remains analveolar trill in word-initial position or when written <rr>.^[2] Elsewhere, it can be realized as[l] at the end of a syllable so thatarte 'seine' is often pronounced[ˈalte] rather than[ˈaɾte].^[2] With some speakers, this becomes[h] so thatporque 'because' is pronounced[ˈpohke].^[4] Just like with/d/, in word-final position,/r/ is habitually deleted.^[2][4][19]
• /s/ is typically becomes the aspirate[h] but is preserved in intervocalic positions likelos casas[lohˈkasah] 'the houses' and other instances.^[2][3][4][5]
• /x/ is pronounced[h] exclusively, which is common in the southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and throughout the Caribbean.^[2][4]

As for the vowels used in Isleño Spanish, there are a handful of differences toStandard Spanish. In certain instances,e is raised toi in everyday speech such asdecir[ðiˈsi] 'to say'.^[2][3][4] A similar phenomenon occurs witho, where it is generally raised tou:llover[ʎuˈβej] 'to rain'.^[4] Additionally, thediphthong[ej] is often pronounced as[aj] in words likeseis[ˈsajh] 'six' orrey[ˈraj] 'king' which can be found in the Canaries and rural Spain.^[2][4]

The grammatical gender of certain words in Isleño Spanish differs from that of other dialects. Some examples includeel costumbre (la costumbre),la color (el color) andel miel (la miel).^[2][4] It has been suggested that these differences are due to the early influence ofPortuguese onCanarian Spanish.^[2]

Pronouns are often used redundantly in Isleño Spanish, just as in Caribbean dialects, for phonological reasons and to maintain the distinction between subjects.^{[2][4][5][16]} Moreover, the pronounsvos andvosotros remain unknown in the community.^[2][4][5]

Non-inverted questions such as¿Cómousted se llama? rather than¿Cómo se llamausted? are common in Isleño Spanish, which is a characteristic shared by various Caribbean Spanish varieties, possibly originating to the Canary Islands.^[2]

Contact with other groups and substantial immigration into the St. Bernard community has shaped their vocabulary to some extent. Some of the largest contributions have been made byEnglish,Louisiana French,Louisiana Creole, regionaldialects of Spanish, and the variousCastilian languages.^[3][4][5] Additionally, several archaic terms deriving fromOld Spanish have been preserved.^[2]

A handful of terms originating to theGuanche languages have continued to be used in Isleño Spanish. In particular, the wordgofio is used to describe toasted cornmeal or flour which is nearly identical to its usage in the Canaries.^[4] Also present istotizo 'nape of the neck', which is believed to come from theGuanches as well.^[6]

1. The comparison of terms below uses the following abbreviations for different parts of speech: (n.) noun, (m.n.) masculine noun, (f.n.) feminine noun, (v.) verb, (adj.) adjective.

The Isleños who settled in the community of Valenzuela along Bayou Lafourche were greatly influenced by the immigration ofAcadian refugees and further isolation.^[3][7][8] The dialect has been considered an "offshoot" of Isleño Spanish and is referred to as Brule Spanish.^[3] The name comes from the agricultural practices of the Isleño community near the Bayou Lafourche, who, after 1820, sold much of their farmland and started new farms on swampland that they cleared and burned known asbrulis.^[7][8] During the latter half of the 20th century, the Isleños left these communities, leading to the dissolution of theirspeech community.^[8] Their dialect is highlyendangered if not already extinct as only a few dozen octogenarian speakers were known to exist in the early 1990s.^[3]

The dialect possesses a large number ofloanwords fromLouisiana French which is seen as the main distinction between it and Isleño Spanish.^[3][7] Even so, an amount of similarities in vocabulary between Brule and Isleño Spanish exist:

1. The comparison of terms below uses the following abbreviations for different parts of speech: (n.) noun, (m.n.) masculine noun, (f.n.) feminine noun, (v.) verb, (adj.) adjective, (adv.) adverb.

• Frank Michael Fernández, Jr.
• Irván "Puco" Pérez

• Isleño (Louisiana)
• Canarian Spanish
• Caribbean Spanish
• Spanish in the United States
• Sabine River Spanish

• Holloway, Charles Edward (1993).The Death of a Dialect: Brule Spanish in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. pp. viii–ix, 43–45, 143. An extensive linguistic investigation of Brule Spanish.
• Lestrade, Patricia Manning (1999).Trajectories in Isleño Spanish with special emphasis on the lexicon. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. A lexical investigation of Isleño Spanish and a community survey.
• Lipski, John M (July 1, 1990).The Language of the Isleños: Vestigial Spanish in Louisiana. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press.ISBN 0807115347. A linguistic investigation highlighting defining characteristics of Isleño Spanish.
• MacCurdy, Raymond R (1950).The Spanish Dialect in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Albuquerque The University of New Mexico Press.ASIN B003BGM7WY. Phonetic and phonological study of Isleño Spanish with a detailed lexicon.
• MacCurdy, Raymond R. (December 1959). "A Spanish Word-List of the "Brulis" Dwellers".Hispania.42 (4): 547–554.doi:10.2307/335051.JSTOR 335051. A word list of Brule Spanish with its similarities to Isleño Spanish.

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