Dominican Spanish
Español dominicano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲoldominiˈkano]
Native to	Dominican Republic
Ethnicity	Dominicans
Native speakers	13 million (Including Dominican diaspora in other countries and immigrants living in Dominican Republic) (2014)[1] 9 million (only including Dominicans in DR)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian Spanish North American Spanish Caribbean Spanish Dominican Spanish
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Spanish alphabet (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in	Dominican Republic
Regulated by	Academia Dominicana de la Lengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa[2]
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	es-DO

Spanish language
A manuscript of theCantar de mio Cid, 13th century
Overview
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v t e

Dominican Spanish (español dominicano) isSpanish as spoken in theDominican Republic; and also among the Dominican diaspora, most of whom live in the United States, chiefly inNew York City,New Jersey,Connecticut,Rhode Island,Massachusetts,Pennsylvania, andFlorida.

Dominican Spanish, a Caribbean variety of Spanish, is based on theAndalusian andCanarian Spanish dialects of southern Spain, and has influences from Native Taíno and otherArawakan languages. Speakers of Dominican Spanish may also useconservative words that are similar to older variants ofSpanish. The variety spoken in theCibao region is influenced by the 16th and 17th-centurySpanish andPortuguese colonists in the Cibao valley, and shows a greater than average influence by the 18th-centuryCanarian settlers.^[3][4]

Despite the large share of African ancestry among Dominicans (seeAfro-Dominicans), the African element in the local Spanish is not as important as one might expect.^[5]

There is also a significant influence fromAfrican languages in the Spanish spoken byHaitian andAfro-Caribbean migrant descendants in theDominican Republic, particularly in grammar and phonetics.^[6] However,second generation immigrants from Haiti use to speak very close to the Dominican standard speech, if not actually speaking it,assimilating into the mainstream speech.

Most of the Spanish-speaking settlers came fromAndalusia (southernSpain) and theCanary Islands. When they first arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic, the first native people they had contact with were theArawak-speakingTaino people.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish, just as in other Latin American countries, completely replaced the indigenous languages (Taíno,Macorix andCiguayo) of the Dominican Republic to the point where they became entirely extinct, mainly due to the fact that the majority of the indigenous population quickly died out only a few years after European contact.^{[citation needed]}

However, when the Spanish arrived, they found the flora and fauna of the island, as well as various cultural artifacts, very different from those of Spain, so many of the words used by the natives to name these things were conserved and assimilated, thereby enriching Spanish lexicon. Some of these words include:ají,anón,batata,barbacoa,bejuco,bija,caiman,canoa,caoba,conuco,guanábana,guayaba,hamaca,hobo (jobo),hutía,iguana,jagua,maní,papaya (lechosa),sabana,yuca.^{[citation needed]}

Dominican Spanish also includes words indirectly borrowed from African languages viaPortuguese, such ascachimbo, which was borrowed from the Portuguese word "cacimba", having the latter being borrowed from the Bantu "cazimba".^[7] Many of these African influences are quite distant and left a minor impact on modern day Dominican Spanish, and usually these words are also used in other Spanish-speaking countries as far-away as Argentina; therefore it is not just a phenomenon restricted to the Dominican Republic but common in theLatin American Spanish (compared to European Spanish). Dominican Spanish has also received some limited influence fromHaitian Creole, due to theHaitian occupation of Santo Domingo^[6] and continuing cross-border contacts. Haitian influence is stronger in border regions. Haitian Creole andSamaná English have also influenced the speech ofSamaná Province further adding to the African influence found in the dialect.^[8]

• Like most other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish featuresyeísmo: the sounds represented byll (the palatal lateral/ʎ/) andy (historically the palatal approximant/ʝ/) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a[ʝ] or[ɟʝ]. That is, in the Dominican Republic (as in most ofLatin America andSpain),se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous withse calló "he became silent / he shut up".
• Dominican Spanish hasseseo (there is no distinction between/θ/ and/s/). That is,caza ("hunt") is homophonous withcasa ("house").Seseo is common to nearly all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
• Strong contraction in everyday speech is common, as in"voy a" into"vuá" or"voá", or"¿para adónde vas?" into"¿p'a'nde va'?". Another example:"David 'tá 'co'ta'o", from"David está acostado" ("David is lying down / David is sleeping"), though vowel degemination is normal in most Spanish dialects, cf. Standard Peninsular"David est'acostado", normally pronounced with a single[a].
• The fricative/s/ has a tendency to disappear or to become avoiceless glottal fricative[h] at the end of syllables. The change may be realized only at the word level or it may also cross word boundaries. That is,las mesas son blancas "the tables are white" is pronounced[lahˈmesahsomˈblaŋkah] (or[lahˈmesasomˈblaŋkah], with a degeminated[s]), but inlas águilas azules "the blue eagles", syllable-final/s/ inlas andáguilas might be resyllabified into the initial syllable of the following vowel-initial words and remain[s] ([laˈsaɣilasaˈsuleh]), or become[h] (it varies by speaker).Aspiration or disappearance of syllable-final/s/ is common to much of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain. Syllable-final [s] is less frequently reduced in formal speech, like TV broadcasts.^[9]
  • Example 1: To saylo niño orlos niño, instead oflos niños
  • Example 2: To saylluvia ailada orlluvias ailada, instead oflluvias aisladas
• Syllable-initial/s/ can occasionally be aspirated as well in rural parts ofEl Cibao. This occurs most often in the reflexive pronounse and insí 'yes'.^[10]
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the finalr sound in verb infinitives. The elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech.
• Syllable-finalr tends to be changed in many words by ani sound in the NortherlyCibao and inEl Seibo Province^[11] and by anl (L) in the Eastern and in the capital city (Santo Domingo): the verbcorrer (to run) is pronouncedcorrei andcorrel respectively, andperdón (forgiveness) becomespeidón andpeldón. Final/l/ is also merged into-/i̯/ in El Cibao and El Seibo. This substitution with thei is delicately (almost mutely) present inAndalusian Spanish, and also thel use is prototypical, and more marked, inPuerto Rican Spanish. It is believed to be of Andalusian origin.
• The "d" is silent in the common word-ending-ado. For example, the wordscasado (married) andlado (side, way) are pronounced ascasao andlao in Dominican Spanish.
• In a few parts of the country, an "el" at the end of a word is pronounced as "err." For example,Miguel may be pronounced asMiguer in Dominican Spanish, a feature shared withAndalusian Spanish and in contrast toPuerto Rican Spanish, where the reverse occurs, e.g. pronouncing the nameArturo (Arthur) asAlturo.
• Word-final/n/is typically velarized at the end of a phrase or before another word starting in a vowel. Final/n/ may also be velarized word internally.^[12] In rural El Cibao, final/n/ may also be completely elided, typically nasalizing the preceding vowel, but occasionally it can be dropped entirely with no trace of nasalization. That total elision is most common among children.^[13]
• The alveolar trill/r/ and even the tap/ɾ/ can be replaced with an uvular trill among some rural speakers from El Cibao.^[14]
• In rural parts of El Cibao, final unstressed vowels are often reduced in intensity and length, and post-tonic/o/ can be raised to/u/, thusgallo 'rooster' can be pronounced likegallu. Inoyó, third person singular preterite form ofoír 'to hear', the initial/o/ is often also raised to/u/ by rural Cibaeños:/uˈʝo/.^[15]

Other differences withStandard Spanish include adding thes erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it.

Example 1:

• standard:administraciones públicas[aðministɾaˈsjonesˈpuβlikas] [public administrations]
• vernacular:aminitracione pública[aminitɾaˈsjoneˈpuβlika]
• hypercorrected:asministracione púsblica[asministɾaˈsjoneˈpusβlika]

Example 2:

• standard:jaguar [jaguar]
• vernacular:jagual /jaguai
• hypercorrected:jasguar

The hypercorrected form is often part of a blatantly sarcastic mode of speech, commonly used for joking rather than everyday speech. It's often calledhablar fisno 'speaking finely', with an extra 's' infino. Among rural children in El Cibao, s-insertion is still common, which calls into question its status as a hypercorrection since these children have little exposure to standard forms of speech.^[16] Word-internally, s-insertion is most common before voiceless stop consonants, especially/t/, and almost never occurs before nasals.^[17] Rural residents of El Cibao frequently insert an s after function words, as indes todo 'of everything'. This is typically before stop consonants but can occasionally be before vowels, as indes animales 'of animals'. Some speakers also use final s-insertion as aprosodic boundary marker.^[18]

There are also hypercorrections of the merger of-/r/ and-/l/ into-/i̯/. For example,Haití 'Haiti' may be pronouncedArtís.^[19]

Voseo is unknown in Dominican Spanish.^[20]

Some well-known grammatical features of Dominican Spanish include the use of overtdummy pronouns, as inELLO hay arroz 'there is rice', especially prominent in El Cibao, instead ofhay arroz, and double negation, as inyo no voy no 'I am not going'.^[21] Both of those are associated with more marginalized sociolects.

Pedro Henríquez Ureña claims that, at least until 1940, the educated population of the Dominican Republic continued to use thefuture subjunctive verb forms (hablare, hubiere). Educated Dominicans never used theconditional in place of theimperfect subjunctive, as inSi yo habría visto 'If I had seen', nor did they ever use the imperfect subjunctive instead of the conditional, as inentonces yo hubiese dicho 'then I would have said'. Cliticobject pronouns could often be placed after a finite verb, especially in narration, as inllega y vístese de prisa instead of the typicalllega y se viste de prisa 'arrives and gets dressed quickly'.^[20]

Like in otherCaribbean varieties of Spanish, explicit, redundant subject pronouns are frequent in Dominican Spanish. Pronominaluno 'one' may be frequently used, in cases where speakers of other varieties would use impersonal or reflexivese constructions. Personal subject pronouns can be used to refer to inanimate objects:Ella (la comunidad) es grande 'She (the community) is big'.^[22]

Dominican Spanish allows for "preverbal placement of subjects with interrogatives and with non-finite clauses". In more normative speech, the subject would typically go after the verb instead. Some examples are:¿Qué ustedes quieren comer? 'What do you guys want to eat?' andEso es para Odalis llevárselo a Lari 'That's for Odalis to take it to Lari'.^[23]

Other prominent aspects of Dominican Spanish include focalizingser constructions, and clause-final negation and affirmation:

• Ustedes tenían que venir más temprano era 'You had to come earlier (it was)'
• El francés, yo no sé no si es fácil de aprender 'French, I don't know if it's easy to learn'
• Mamá sabía mucho sí 'Mom knew a lot'^[24]

In addition to these traits, the following has been found in rural speech in El Cibao, among people who are functionally illiterate, byBullock & Toribio (2009):

• A change from-mos to-nos in the first-person plural (nosotros) endings withantepenultimate stress, as in the past subjunctive, imperfect, and conditional tenses, ie:nos bañábamos tonos bañábanos,nos bañáramos tonos bañáranos,nos bañaríamos tonos bañaríanos. This is likely due to the influence of thecliticnos, and analogy with standard forms such asllámanos 'call us'.^[25]
• Subjunctive forms used instead of the imperative, as intraigamos cinco quintales de producto 'we're bringing five hundredweights of product', oralgo aquí que le digamos yagua 'something here that we call yagua'.^[25]
• Substitution ofha 'he/she/it has' forhe 'I have', for example,yo le ha dado pela por eso 'I gave them a beating for that'.^[25]
• General archaic, nonstandard forms of common verbs:Puede que haigan haitianos para allá 'There could be Haitians over there', withhaigan instead ofhaya, oryo quería dir 'I wanted to go' withdir instead ofir.^[25]
• As in many other dialects, impersonalhacer andhaber may show third person plural agreement. What's more peculiar is that they may also be conjugated in other persons as well:
  • Hacían (< hacía) como tres meses que no llovía 'It's been three months since it last rained'
  • Habían (< había) algunos que sabían 'There were some who knew'
  • Yo hago (< hace) que tiempo que no voy para allá 'It's been some time since I've gone over there'
  • Habemos (< hay; < somos) pocas familias en Los Compos 'There are few of us families in Los Compos'
  • Haigamos (< hay; < somos) dos o tres 'There are two or three of us'^[25]
• Medio anddemasiado, when modifying adjectives, often are inflected for gender, thustengo la barriga media (< medio) mala 'I have a half-bad belly'.^[26]
• Fácil anddifícil can be used as adverbs without the-mente suffix. Also, when used as adjectives, they don't always agree with plural subjects:se aprende fácil 'it's learned easily',son muy difícil (< difíciles) 'they're very difficult'.^[27]
• The plural forms of nouns ending in stressed vowels typically are formed with-se or-ses, instead of the standard-es:Yo no voy a los cabareses 'I don't go to the cabarets'. This is likely due to an analogy with words likefeliz 'happy',lápiz 'pen', pronounced[feˈli] and[ˈlapi] in the singular butfelices andlápices in the plural.^[27]
• Those same/s/-final words may receive a plural interpretation:esos son lapi (< lápices) 'those are pens'.^[27]
• Bien 'well' may be used as a predicate adjective, as inson bien 'they're good'.^[27]
• Saber andcostar, typically meaning 'to know' and 'to cost', have acquired a modal meaning:Hasta 25 días sabía (< solía) durar 'It used to last up to 25 days',Me costará ir a la clínica 'I'll have to go to the clinic'.^[27]
• Cualquiera 'anyone' can be used in reference to a first person subject, as incualquiera se va forme debo ir 'I must go'.^[27]

Likely related to the frequent use of subject pronouns, in the Cibao regionello 'it/there' may be used as a dummy pronoun with "impersonal and meteorological verbs,unaccusative predicates, impersonal passives, and other constructions in which transitives are used intransitively":^[22]

• Ello hay personas que lo aprenden bien (el inglés) 'There are people who learn it (English) well'^[23]
• Ello no está lloviendo aquí 'It's not raining here'^[23]
• Ello vienen haitianos aquí 'Haitians come here'^[23]
• Ello queda mucho tiempo todavía 'There's still a lot of time left'^[23]
• Porque si ello llega una gente de pa' fuera 'Because if some people from outside arrive'^[23]
• Ello vienen haitianos aquí 'Haitians come here'^[23]

It's been suggested thatello functions as a discourse marker.^[22]

Also, among rural Cibaeño speakers at least,experiencers tend to become the subject rather than the object of certain verbs such asgustar,hacer falta, andparecer:

• Yo me gustaría ser profesora, instead ofA mí me gustaría ser profesora 'I'd like to be a teacher'
• Yo nunca me ha pasado nada de eso forA mí nunca me ha pasado nada de eso 'None of that's happened to me'
• Aunque yo me va a hacer falta forAunque a mí me va a hacer falta 'Although I'll need that'
• Los zumbadores lesgustan venir a esas flores forA los zumbadores lesgusta venir a esas flores 'The hummingbirds like coming to these flowers'^[28]

Cibaeños often drop thea should occur before a definite animate direct object:

• Oyendo los haitianos 'Hearing Haitians'
• Para entender las personas de Francia 'To understand people from France'^[28]

They also use a unique pattern ofcliticization:

• Vámoselo a tener que dar forVamos a tener que dárselo 'We will have to give it to them'
• Vételo a sembrar forVé a sembrarlo 'Go sow it'^[28]

This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Dominican Spanish" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

As in every dialect, Dominican Spanish has numerous vocabulary differences from other forms of the language. The Dominican Academy of Letters (Academia Dominicana de la Lengua) published in November 2013 a dictionary of Dominican terms (Diccionario del español dominicano) containing close to 11,000 words and phrases peculiar to the Dominican dialect.^[29] Here are some examples:

A slightly pejorative slang expression also common around most of theCaribbean basin isvaina. The Castilian meanings are "sheath", "pod", "shell", "shell casing", and "hull" (of a plant). It is descended from theLatin word "vāgīna", which meant "sheath".^[32] In the Dominican Republic "vaina" is mainly a thing, a matter, or simply "stuff". For example,¿Qué vaina es esa? means¿Qué cosa es esa?, "What is that thing/stuff?".^{[citation needed]}

Anglicisms—due to cultural and commercial influence from theUnited States and theAmerican occupations of the Dominican Republic during 1916–1924 and 1965–1966—are extremely common in Dominican Spanish, more so than in any other Spanish variant except for Puerto Rican and perhaps NorthernMexican Spanish. A prime example of this is "vaguada", which is a corruption of the English "bad weather", though in Dominican Spanish the term has come to mean storm or torrential downpour, rather than a spot of unpleasant climate. Hence, a common Dominican expression: "Viene una vaguada", "here comes avaguada", or "here comes a storm". Another excellent example of this is "boche", a corruption of the English "bull shit", though in Dominican Spanish the term has come to mean a reprimanding, fulmination, or harangue in general terms. Hence, a common Dominican expression: "Me echaron un boche", "they threw me aboche", or "they reprimanded me". Furthermore, is the Dominican Spanish word forSUV, "yipeta", "jeepeta", or rarely "gipeta". This term is a corruption of the American "Jeep", which was the primary mode of transport for the GIs throughout the country during the occupation in the 1960s. Dominican license plates for SUVs are marked with a "G" for "gipeta", a variant of, and pronounced like, "yipeta", before their serial number. The word "tichel", from "T-shirt", also refers to a rugby shirt, association football jersey, or undershirt, and similarly, "corn flakes" and its variant "con fléi" can refer to anybreakfast cereal, in Dominican Spanish, be it puffed corn,bran flakes, orpuffed wheat. The borrowing "polo shirt" is frequently pronouncedpolo ché.^{[citation needed]}

Another phenomenon related to Anglicisms is the usage of brand names as common names for certain objects. For example, "Gillette" and its derivativeyilé refer to any razor, and while the machete is known asmachete, this being originally a Spanish word, it is sometimes referred to as a "colín", derived from "Collins & Co.", name of a formerConnecticut toolmaker.^{[citation needed]}

Below are different vocabulary words to demonstrate the similarities between the dialects of the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries, includingPuerto Rico,Cuba,Colombia,Venezuela, andPanama. The dialects ofAndalusia and theCanary Islands, two regions ofSpain that have been highly influential on the dialects of these countries, are also included.

Footnotes

Sources

• Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (2013).Diccionario del español dominicano (in Spanish). Santo Domingo: Editora Judicial.ISBN 978-9945-8912-0-1.
• Alvar, Manuel (1985)."La influencia del inglés en la República Dominicana. Valoración de una encuesta oral".Anuario de Letras: Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (in Spanish).23:249–254.
• Alvar, Manuel (2000).El español en la República Dominicana : estudios, encuestas, textos (in Spanish). La Goleta Ediciones.ISBN 978-84-8138-418-5.
• Bullock, Barbara E.; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline (2009). "Reconsidering Dominican Spanish: Data from the rural Cibao".Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana.7 (2):49–73.JSTOR 41678401.
• Henríquez Ureña, Pedro (1940).El Español en Santo Domingo (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.
• Lipski, John M. (2008). "Dominican Spanish in the United States".Varieties of Spanish in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. pp. 132–141.ISBN 9781589012134.
• Saborit, J; Estévez, I."El español de la República Dominicana".Geocities (in Spanish). Archived fromthe original on 27 October 2009.
• Zamora, Sergio."Zonas lingüísticas americanas".La Lengua Española (in Spanish). Archived fromthe original on 6 February 2008.

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