Dominican Spanish

Most of the Spanish-speaking settlers came from Andalusia (southern Spain) and the Canary Islands. When they first arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic, the first native people they had contact with were the Arawak-speaking Taino people.

Spanish, just as in other Latin American countries, completely replaced the indigenous languages (Taíno and the language of the Ciguayos) 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.

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), jagua, maní, papaya (lechosa), sabana, yuca.

Dominican Spanish also includes words and pronunciations borrowed from African languages spoken by the Africans brought to the island after the Taíno extinction, such as cachimbo, which was borrowed from the Portuguese word "cacimba", having the latter being borrowed from the Bantu "cazimba".[6]

• Like most other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (the palatal lateral /ʎ/) and y (historically the palatal approximant /ʝ̞/) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a [ʝ̞] or [dʒ] (these are the sounds in English York and John). That is, in the Dominican Republic (as in most of Latin America and Spain), se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent / he shut up".
• Dominican Spanish has seseo (there is no distinction between /θ/ and /s/). That is, caza ("hunt") is homophonous with casa ("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'ónde va'?". Another example: "David 'tá 'co'ta'o", from "David está acostado" ("David is lying down / David is sleeping").
• The fricative /s/ has a tendency to become an indistinct aspiration or disappear or to become a voiceless [h] or voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] (the latter before voiced consonants) 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 [laɦ ˈmesah sɔn ˈblaŋkah], but in las águilas azules "the blue eagles", syllable-final /s/ in las and águilas might be resyllabified into the initial syllable of the following vowel-initial words and remain [s] ([laˈsaɣilasaˈsulɛh]), or become [h] (it varies by speaker). Aspiration or disappearance of syllable-final /s/ is common to all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
  • Example 1: To say lo niño or los niño, instead of los niños
  • Example 2: To say lluvia ailada or lluvias ailada, instead of lluvias aisladas
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final r 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-final r tends to be changed in many words by an i sound in the Northerly Cibao region and by an l (L) in the Eastern and in the capital city (Santo Domingo): the verb correr (to run) is pronounced correi and correl respectively, and perdón (forgiveness) becomes peidón and peldón. This substitution with the i is delicately (almost mutely) present in Andalusian Spanish, and also the l use is prototypical, and more marked, in Puerto Rican Spanish. It is believed to be of Andalusian origin.
• Dominican Spanish uses the common Caribbean inverted placement of the second person singular pronoun tú in front of the verb in questions: "¿Cómo tú estás?" instead of "¿Cómo estás tú?". When speaking formally or with those not spoken to with familiarity, they use the more formal usted, instead of tú, the conventional word order is used.
• The "d" is silent in the common word-ending -ado. For example, the words casado (married) and lado (side, way) are pronounced as casao and lao 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 as Miguer in Dominican Spanish, a feature shared with Andalusian Spanish and in contrast to Puerto Rican Spanish, where the reverse occurs, e.g. pronouncing the name Arturo (Arthur) as Alturo.
• In the northeastern part of the country, some speakers replace a final "l" with "y". An example is the use of "capitay" instead of "capital."

Other differences with Standard Spanish include subtleties like hypercorrection, in particular, adding the s erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it.

Example 1:

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

Example 2:

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

The hypercorrected form is more of a blatantly sarcastic mode of speech, commonly used for joking rather than everyday speech.

Footnotes

Sources

• Diccionario del español dominicano - Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (Santo Domingo, Editora Judicial, 2013) ISBN 978-9945-8912-0-1
• El español en la República Dominicana - Alvar Gómez, Manuel (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Servicio de Publicaciones) ISBN 84-8138-418-6. ISBN 978-84-8138-418-5.
• El español de la República Dominicana
• "La influencia del inglés en la República Dominicana. Valoración de una encuesta oral", by Manuel Alvar
• "Zonas lingüísticas americanas", by Sergio Zamora
• Culture of Dominican Republic

• Dominican Spanish Bilingual Dictionary English-Spanish
• Learn Dominican Spanish
• Pérez Guerra, Irene: "El arcaismo del español dominicano"
• Dominican Spanish Lessons