Un chin-chin of Spanish

¿De dónde es usted....es cubana?

No. Soy de aquí- los Estados Unidos.

¿Nació en los EE. UU.?

Sí, ¿por qué?

Su español es como lo que se hablan en las Islas Canarias, o como las islas del Caribe. ¿Ha viajado a España, o vivía allí por un rato?

No, desafortunadamente. Mi conocimiento de español – la mayoría de ello – es teórico. Aprendía español en la escuela.

Hmm, interesante. Bueno, ¡suena cubana!

I’ve heard this from patients frequently enough that my curiosity is officially piqued! When I speak to them in Spanish at the office, they assume I’m either Cuban or from Southern Spain-- the Canary Islands -- to be exact. They tell me that my Spanish is very similar to the dialect spoken in those locations. This is very interesting and highly unusual to me, since I’m an Italian-Polish-American born to an English-only speaking family in the suburbs of New York City. I decided to do a little investigating...

Incidentally, all Spanish spoken in the Caribbean shares the same basic dialect, and there is a historical reason behind this. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, there was a large migration of people from the Canary Islands and Andalucía (southern Spain) to Cuba and the other Caribbean islands. The speech patterns in these areas were heavily influenced by these new settlers. Common language characteristics include:

1) the “debuccalization” of the end consonant “s” – in laymen’s terms, the weakening of or even complete dropping of the “s” sound at that end of a word. For ex:

Los niños no están aquí.   --> Lo’ niño’ no están aquí.

2) the complete dropping of “s” at any position in the word. For ex.:

Disfrutar --> Difrutar  

  

Después --> Depue’ (de-pwe)

3) the dissimilation of the final “r”, particularly in infinitive words. For ex.:

Nadar --> Nada’

Although I have been known to make the pronunciation changes as described above – which could give the listener, potentially, a sense of my Spanish language origin – there are other characteristics of Cuban/Caribbean Spanish that I don’t follow. For ex.:

4) the use of “ico” or “ica” at the end of a word for the diminutive (instead of “ito/ita”), for ex, to indicate a small or quick moment, a Cuban speaker would say:

“un momentico, por favor” ,

whereas I was taught to say “un momentito, por favor”

Dominican Spanish, in addition to the southern Spain, Canary Island Spanish influence, also represents a combination of borrowed vocabulary from the Taíno language (the language of the original native inhabitants of that region) and the 17^th  and 18^th century Portuguese colonists.  In addition to the language characteristics I’ve listed above, it is also not uncommon to hear the following in Dominican Spanish:

5) Silencing of the “d” in words ending in “ado”. For ex.:

Él es casado ---> Él es casao.

Mire al lado --> Mire al lao.

6) the letters “l” and “r” are substituted for one another. For ex.:

Miguel  is pronounced Miguer

Arturo   is pronounced Alturo

7) the unique indigenous vocabulary of the region:

guagua – bus               (Castilian: autobús)

chin-chin – a little       (Castilian: un poco)

All of this research got me to thinking about my early introductions to Spanish language: who taught me, and where were they from? I was introduced to very basic Spanish (alphabet, vocabulary lists, etc) in the 7^th grade by a teacher who was French Canadian. In high school, my studies were conducted by a Peruvian teacher. It wasn’t until I reached college, and began taking advanced classes in Spanish literature and composition, that I had a Cuban professor. It was in college that I firmly dedicated myself to ‘getting the language right’, so to speak. I wanted to sound authentic, more like a native speaker, so I paid more attention to and practiced how words should be pronounced. Having a Cuban professor as my guide, it is not so unusual now to imagine how my Spanish began sounding more and more Caribbean in origin.

There is the standard, textbook language taught in school. And then there is the language spoken by the people. What they say and how they say it reflects who they are as a culture and from where they come historically. Speak the standard language with them and you open the channels of communication. But speak in their dialect, and you open the doors of trust, friendship and understanding.

“Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.” –Rita Mae Brown

References

 “Cuban Spanish.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 August 2016. Web. 26 August 2016.

“Dominican Spanish.”Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 July 2016. Web. 26 August 2016.

Brod Fortress, Slavonski-Brod, Croatia