Caribbean and Venezuelan Spanish
Jan 22, 2024 3:47:26 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Jan 22, 2024 3:47:26 GMT -5
Caribbean and Venezuelan Spanish
First, Spanish is not the only language spoken in Spain. There is also Catalan and Basque. However, Spanish was the language that the conquistadors and subsequently immigrants from Spain brought to the Americas.
However, they did not all arrive from the same parts of Spain. Some arrived from Andalucía, others from the northern regions such a Galicia and others from the Canary islands. This caused a difference in the way in which Spanish spoken in the different regions of Latin America where they settled.
For example the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean and Venezuela was influenced profoundly by immigrants from the Canary islands just off Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast.
However, they did not all arrive from the same parts of Spain. Some arrived from Andalucía, others from the northern regions such a Galicia and others from the Canary islands. This caused a difference in the way in which Spanish spoken in the different regions of Latin America where they settled.
For example the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean and Venezuela was influenced profoundly by immigrants from the Canary islands just off Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast.
Puerto Rican Example
Andalusia and the Canary Islands
Since most of the original farmers and commoners of Puerto Rico between the 15th and 18th centuries came from Andalusia (Andalucía), the basis for most of Puerto Rican Spanish is Andalusian Spanish (particularly that of Seville) (Sevilla). For example, the endings -ado, -ido, -edo often drop intervocalic /d/ in both Seville and San Juan: hablado > hablao, vendido > vendío, dedo > deo (intervocalic /d/ dropping is quite widespread in coastal American dialects).
Another Andalusian trait is the tendency to weaken postvocalic consonants, particularly /-s/: 'los dos > lo(h) do(h), 'buscar' > buhcá(l) (aspiration or elimination of syllable-final /s/ is quite widespread in coastal American dialects).
Pronouncing "l" instead of "r" in syllable-final position is also a trait of Puerto Rican Spanish that has similarities in Spain - Andalusians sometimes do the opposite, replacing the letter "l" at the end of a syllable with "r" (e.g. saying "Huerva" instead of "Huelva". People from working class areas of Seville can sometimes sound almost indistinguishable from Puerto Ricans (Zatu, the singer of the band SFDK from the Pino Montano district of Seville being an example). This distinction is the main way of distinguishing between the two accents when examples in the "transition zone" exist.
Nevertheless, Canarian Spanish (from Spain's Canary Islands) made the major contribution to Puerto Rican Spanish, and can be considered the basis of the dialect and accent. Many Canarians came in hopes of establishing a better life in the Americas. Most Puerto Rican immigration in the early 19th century included people from the Canary Islands, who, like Puerto Ricans, had inherited most of their linguistic traits from Andalusia.
Canarian influence is most present in the language of those Puerto Ricans who live in the central mountain region, who blended it with the remnant vocabulary of the Taíno. Canarian and Caribbean dialects share a similar intonation which, in general terms, means that stressed vowels are usually quite long. Puerto Rican and Canarian Spanish accents are strikingly similar. When visiting Tenerife or Las Palmas, Puerto Ricans are usually taken at first hearing for fellow-Canarians from a distant part of the Canary archipelago.
Later in the 19th century other Spanish immigrants from Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Asturias and Galicia plus other European settlers—mostly from France (including Corsica), Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and even some overseas Chinese—settled in Puerto Rico. Words from these regions and countries joined the linguistic stew.