Spanish dialects and varieties

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There are a series of significant differences in the way the Spanish language is spoken in the 20 or so countries and territories where it is an official language.

Pronunciation

The letters s, c (before e and i), z and x

Main article: Seseo and ceceo.

Within Spain, in sociolinguistic terms, one can roughly distinguish between the standard Castilian and the Andalusian dialects of Castilian Spanish, though in purely linguistic terms one should also consider at least one 3rd dialect, for the s-aspirating area between Madrid and Andalusia. The first Spaniards to settle in the Americas, mostly Andalusians, brought some of their regionalisms with them. Today distinct accents are found in the different nations of the Americas. Typical of Latin America is seseo. The European Castilian phoneme IPA /θ/ as in ciento ("hundred"), caza ("hunt") (interdental voiceless fricative, like English th in thin) does not exist in American Spanish (except in some Andean portions of Peru where /θ/ exists in words like doce, trece); instead the phoneme has merged with /s/ and these example words are, in American Spanish, homophones of siento ("I feel"), and casa ("house").

Since some words would become homophones in Latin America with the confusion of the pronunciation of z or c before e or i and that of s, it is preferred to use instead synonyms or slightly different words. E.g., caza ("hunting") and casa ("house") become homophones, as do cocer ("to boil") and coser ("to sew"). So, in Latin America they use instead mostly cacería ("hunting expedition") and cocinar (which means "to cook" in other dialects).

The most distinctive feature of the Spanish variants is the pronunciation of s. In Northern and Central Spain, and in Antioquia, Colombia, it is apico-alveolar; in Southern Spain and most of Latin America it is lamino-alveolar or dental. In most of Latin America (except for Mexico, highland Guatemala, Costa Rica, Andean Venezuela, Quito and most of highland Ecuador, Argentina, highland Bolivia, and Bogotá) and in the southern half of Spain, syllable-final s is pronounced as an aspiration (a voiceless glottal fricative, /h/), or even not pronounced at all in some variants in rapid speech. For instance, Todos los cisnes son blancos ("All the swans are white"), can be pronounced as [todɔh lɔh sihnɛh sɔn blankɔh], or even [todɔ lɔ sinɛ sɔn blankɔ]. In parts of Andalusia, the distinction between syllables with a now-silent s and those originally without s is preserved by pronouncing the syllables ending in s with open vowels (that is, the open/closed syllable contrast has been turned into a lax/tense vowel contrast).

The pronunciation of the letter x in casual speech in Spain lenites and can drop the initial k component ending up just like their apico-alveolar s (/s̺/). In Latin America it is pronounced as ks, with a regular lamino-alveolar or dental s, but when an s sound (spelled s or c) follows, it is assimilated resulting in kss > ks. This merging of two adjacent s sounds also occurs in the cluster spelled sc, that in Latin America is pronounced merely s; while in Spain this cluster doesn't merge because for them there aren't two adjacent s, but the apico-alveolar /s̺/ followed by the interdental /θ/. For example, excelente is pronounced in Northern and Central Spain as [ɛs̺θeˈlɛnte], but as [ɛkseˈlɛnte] by the rest. "Ascensión" is pronounced in Spain as [as̺θɛnˈs̺jɔn], while in Latin America is pronounced just [asɛnˈsjɔn].

In contrast to the speech of Central and Northern Spain, the pronunciation of /s/ in Andalusia and throughout most of Latin America is lamino-alveolar or dental. Nowadays these variants of Spanish, and other too, are also characterized by a highly relaxed pronunciation, which tends to aspiration and elision of many consonants, not just final s. This is not related to the elision of k in the pronunciation of x, which is general in most dialects of Spanish, except in formal speech. However, s is reinforced because of its dental, stressed realization, in some kind of assimilating phenomenon. Something similar occurs with other sibilant groups, like -sc-, -sz- or -xc- in seseo areas. Thus words like examen ("exam") or próximo ("nearby", "next") are pronounced as [esˈsamen] and [ˈprossimo], respectively, and words like descenso or excelencia in seseo areas become [desˈsenso] or [ɛsseˈlɛnsja]. Due to this tendency, it is not unusual to find similar cases of s assimilation and reinforcement even in cases where two s letters are added through prefixation into a single word, producing only a single s in Standard Spanish, and Northern or Latin American Speech: for example in digámoselo ("let's tell it to them"), formed from the verbal form digamos and clitic pronouns se and lo, a typically Andalusian pronunciation would be [diˈɡamosselo], or in desaborido ("untasteful" or "boring", "pessimistic"), from the prefix des ("un-") plus adjective saborido ("tasteful"), an Andalusian pronunciation would be [(d)essaboˈrido].

Ladino dialect is a special case, since due to the fact that its speakers were expelled from Spain in the 15th century, they have preserved the old sibilants, where /z/ and /s/ are respectively distributed for simple, voiced intervocallic s and voiceless, initial, implosive, or doubled intervocallic s, e.g.: rosa ("rose") becoming [ˈroza] and assentarse ("to sit down") becoming [asenˈtarse]. Due to an archaic seseo phenomenon in Ladino, the two kinds of old Spanish zetas, the voiced z [dz] and the voiceless ç [ts], have also been treated in a similar way. Fazer ("to make") becoming [faˈzer] instead of the medieval [faˈdzer] and plaza ("square") becoming [plasa] instead of medieval [platsa].

The letters y and ll

Traditionally Spanish had a phoneme /ʎ/, a palatal lateral, written ll. This phoneme has been lost in most of the Americas, with the exception of bilingual areas where Quechua, Guaraní and other indigenous languages that have this sound in their inventories are spoken (this is the case of Peru, Bolivia and, especially, Paraguay), but now it is also being lost in Spain (also with the exception of bilingual areas of Catalan and other languages that have preserved this sound in their inventories). It has been preserved in Ladino however, as well as in Tagalog (Filipino) words of Spanish origin such as kordilyera (Tagalog /koɾdiʎeɾa/). In many Spanish-speaking regions, the palatal lateral /ʎ/ has merged with the palatal approximant /ʝ/ (usually written y), and this merged phoneme is pronounced in a variety of ways. This phenomenon is called yeísmo. In most of the area where yeísmo is present, the phoneme is pronounced just as /ʝ/, or even /j/. In the area around the Río de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay) this phoneme is pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, voiceless or weakly voiced (similar to /ʃ/ or /ʒ/).

Sets of variants

In a broad sense, Latin American Spanish pronunciation can be grouped in five sets of variants. The first group, the Caribbean, is spoken in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panamá, the Colombian Caribbean, and the Caribbean parts of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico. The second one is the South American Pacific, which comprises Perú, Chile and Guayaquil, Ecuador. The third is the Central American, spoken in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The fourth is the Argentine-Uruguayan-Paraguayan variant, which probably includes Eastern Bolivia (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando). The fifth, which probably is not a group but a cluster of places that resisted changes in the pronunciation of the s sound at the end of a syllable, has been called the Highland Latin American Spanish, and is spoken in México, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Andean Colombia, Andean Venezuela, Quito, the Peruvian Sierra and Bolivia (except in Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando). Spanish sound library

Grammar

Second person singular

Related article: Voseo.

Most Spanish dialects have two second person singular pronouns, one for informal use and one for more formal treatment. In most dialects the informal pronoun is tú, which comes directly from the Latin, and the formal pronoun is usted, which is usually considered to originate from "vuestra merced", meaning "Your (singular) grace" (though others have traced it to the Arabic Ustad, professor/sir). In a number of regions tú is replaced by another pronoun, vos, and the verb conjugation changes accordingly (see details below). "Vos" comes from Latin vos, which was simply the second person plural informal pronoun.

In any case, there is wide variation as to when each pronoun (formal or informal) is to be used. In Spain, tú is informal (for example, used with friends), and usted is formal (for example, used with older people). In several countries, however, the formal usted is also used to denote a closer personal relationship (parts of Central America and, especially, in Colombia). Many Colombians and some Chileans, for instance, employ usted not only for a child to address a parent, but also for a parent to address a child. Some countries, like Cuba and the Dominican Republic, prefer the use of tú even in very formal circumstances, and usted thus is seldom used. Meanwhile, in other countries, the use of formal rather than informal second-person pronouns denotes authority. In Peru, for example, senior military officers will use tú to speak to their subordinates, while junior officers will only use usted to address their superior officers.

Using tú informally, especially in contexts where usted was to be expected, is called tuteo. The corresponding verb is tutear (a transitive verb, the direct object being the person addressed with the pronoun). Tutear is used even in those dialects where the informal pronoun is vos.

The use of vos instead of tú is called voseo. Voseo is informal in most countries. In Argentina and Uruguay it is the standard form of the informal second person singular, and is used by all to address others in all kinds of contexts, often regardless of social status or age, including by cultured/educated speakers and writers, in television, advertisements, and even in translations from other languages. In Uruguay vos and tú are used concurrently, though vos is much more commonplace. In both cases the verb is conjugated as vos ("Vos querés / Tú querés", rather than "Vos querés / Tú quieres").

The name Rioplatense is applied to the particular dialect, spoken around the mouth of the Río de la Plata and the lower course of the Paraná River, where vos is always used, with verb conjugations that resemble those of the Castilian second person plural. This area comprises the most populated part of Argentina (the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe) as well as an important part of Uruguay including Montevideo, the capital.

In Ecuador, vos is also the most prominent form throughout the country, though it does coexist with usted and the lesser used tú. Vos is regarded as the unofficial standard, but it is not used in public discourse, the media or television. To complicate things more, in Ecuador the choice of pronoun to be used depends on the participants' likeness in age and/or social status. Based on these factors, the addresser can assess himself as being an equal, superior or inferior to the addressee, and the appropriate choice of pronoun to be employed can then be made. Ecuadorians generally use vos among familiarized equals, or by superiors [in both social status and age] to inferiors; tú among unfamiliarized equals, or by a superior in age but inferior in social status; and usted by both familiarized and unfamiliarized inferiors, or by a superior in social status but inferior in age.

Vos can be heard throughout most of Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a small part of Peru as well, but in these places it is reproached as substandard and the speech of the uneducated and ignorant. It is also used as the unofficial standard in the Department of Antioquia (Colombia), in Maracaibo (Venezuela), in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the State of Chiapas in Mexico.

In Chile, tú is the preferred pronoun in all normal and educated speech. Vos is used, pronounced with an aspiration at the end instead of s. When so pronounced, it is always derisive to some extent, with the magnitude of this disdain depending on the inflection of speech. In this form, it is used in informal speech between very close friends as playful banter (usually among men), but even then a change in inflection can change the meaning of a statement, which can result in an offensive comment.

A usage similar to voseo is vos with the verb in the grammatically plural form (as if it were vosotros). It appears as a formal or disrespectfully familiar use in the works of the Spanish Golden Century/Golden Age and period works placed in that era. In Colombia, the choice of second person singular varies with location. In most of inland Colombia (chiefly the Andean region), usted is the pronoun of choice for all situations, even in speaking between friends or family, but in large cities (Bogotá mainly), the use of tú is becoming more accepted in informal situations, especially between young interlocutors of the opposite sex and among young women. In Valle del Cauca (Cali), Antioquia (Medellín) and the Pacific coast, the pronouns used are vos/usted. On the Caribbean coast (mainly Barranquilla and Cartagena), tú is used for practically all informal situations and many formal situations, usted being reserved for the most formal environments. A peculiarity occurs in Boyacá and among older speakers in Bogotá: usted is replaced by sumercé for formal situations (it is relatively easy to spot a Boyacense by his/her use of this pronoun). Sumercé comes from su merced ("your mercy").

In parts of Spain, fifty years ago a child would not use tú but usted to address a parent. This would be very unusual today. Among the factors for the ongoing substitution are the new social relevance of youth and the reduction of social differences. Being addressed as usted makes one feel older. It has also been attributed to the egalitarianism of the right-wing party Falange. By contrast, Spanish leftists of the early 20th century would address their comrades as usted as a show of respect and worker's dignity.

Joan Corominas explains that vos was a peasant form in classical Castilian, and since most Spanish immigrants to the New World belonged to this class, vos became the unmarked form.

Another explanation is that in Spain, although vos denoted high social status by those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.), these people never actually used the pronoun themselves since there were not any people above them in society. Those who used vos were the inferiors (lower classes and peasants). When the waves of Spanish immigrants arrived to populate the New World, they were primarily comprised of these lower classes and peasants. They would then want to raise their social status from what it was in Spain and would demand to be addressed as vos. Everyone thus became vos in the Americas, and the pronoun was transformed into an indicator of low status not only for the addresser, but also for the addressee. Conversely, in Spain today "vos" is still considered a highly exalted archaism that is confined to liturgy, and its use by native Spaniards is seen as deliberate archaism.

Speakers of Ladino still use vos as it was originally used, to address people higher on the social ladder. The pronoun usted had not been introduced to this dialect of Spanish when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, hence vos is still used in Ladino much as usted is used in modern Spanish.

Other less frequent forms analogous to usted are voacé, bosanzé and boxanxé (by Moriscos), vuecencia, v/usía. The latter are short for vuestra excelencia and vuestra señoría. The most common analogous form of usted still used today is vusted, which can be heard in Andean regions of South America.

Second person plural

In Standard European Spanish the plural of tú is vosotros and the plural of usted is ustedes. In Latin America vosotros is not used, and the plural of both tú and usted is ustedes. This means that speaking to a group of friends a Spaniard will use vosotros and a Latin American will use ustedes. The verb conjugation for ustedes employs a grammatically third person plural form (even though ustedes is semantically second person).

In Argentina and Chile, school children are taught the conjugation of vosotros and are not taught to use usted at all. However, it is only a formality, as they rarely if ever use vosotros in real-life situations.

The only vestiges of vosotros in America are boso/bosonan in Papiamento and the use of vuestro/a in place of sus (de ustedes) as second person plural possessive in the Cusco region of Peru.

Joan Corominas supposes that the vos forms in the Caribbean were perceived as slave-talk, and disrespectful for whites initially, and later for everybody.

The plural of the Colombian sumercé is sumercés/susmercedes, from Sus Mercedes ("Your Mercies").

In some parts of Andalusia (the lands around the Guadalquivir river and western Andalusia), the usage is what is called ustedes-vosotros: ustedes is combined with the verbal forms for vosotros.

In Ladino vosotros is still the only second person plural pronoun, since usted does not exist.

Conjugation of the second person

Changes in the pronoun also bring along a change in the second person of the verb. Speakers who use vos also replace the corresponding verb forms with other forms related to the plural form used with vosotros, either without the diphthongization of those forms or without the final s. When irregular verbs are observed it is obvious that vos conjugations are related to the vosotros forms. Some examples follow (note that in Ladino -áis is pronounced [aʃ], and the medial s in vosotros is voiced to [z]).

"You speak" (second person singular)

Iberian Castilian - tú hablas (Andalusian Spanish pronounced tú hablah (the second a of hablah is opened)/tú habla'

Argentina and Central America - vos hablás

Uruguay - vos hablás, tú hablás

Chile - tú hablas, tú hablái, vos hablái

Colombia - usted habla, tú hablas, sumercé habla, vos hablás

Mexico - tú hablas

Venezuela (Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular - vos habláis

Ecuador - vos hablas, vos hablás, vos habláis

Ladino formal - vos favláis

"You speak" (second person plural)

Iberian Castilian - vosotros habláis

Andalusian Spanish - ustedes habláis, pronounced uhtedeh habláih/uttede' hablai'

Canarian Spanish - ustedes hablan

Latin American Spanish - ustedes hablan

Ladino formal and informal - vosotros favláis pronounced vozotros favlash

"That you lose" (subjunctive) - Note that perder is a semi-regular verb, with vowel alternation according to stress position.

Iberian Castilian singular - que tú pierdas

Central America - que vos perdás

Argentina - que vos pierdas

Ecuador - que vos pierdas

Uruguay - que vos pierdas, que tú pierdas

Chile - que tú pierdas, que tú perdái, que vos perdái

Colombia - que usted pierda, que tú pierdas, que sumercé pierda, que vos perdás

Mexico - que usted pierda, que tú pierdas

Venezuela (Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular: que vos perdáis

Ladino formal singular - que vos perdáis pronounced perdásh

Iberian Castilian plural - que vosotros perdáis

Andalusian Spanish plural - que vosotros/ustedes perdáis

Latin American Spanish plural - que ustedes pierdan

Ladino formal and informa plural - que vosotros perdáis pronounced ke vozotros perdásh

"Come" (imperative mood)

Iberian Castilian singular- ven tú

Argentina, Central America, Uruguay, Venezuela (Maracaibo) - vení vos

Ecuador - vení vos, ven vos

Ladino formal singular - vení/d vos

Chile - ven tú, ven vos

Colombia - venga usted, ven tú, venga sumercé, vení vos

Mexico - venga usted, ven tú

Spain Spanish plural - venid vosotros

Andalusian Spanish plural - venid ustedes

Latin American Spanish plural - vengan ustedes/vustedes or vengan susmercedes

Ladino formal and informal plural - vení/d vosotros

The term voseo also applies when a pronoun other than vos is used but the verb immediately following is nonetheless conjugated according to the norms of vos: hence "tú subís, tú decís, tú querés" is still considered voseo.

Verb tenses

Spanish has two ways to express an action finished in the past: the simple past called pretérito indefinido, and the compound tense called pasado perfecto. In Spain and a few other places, the compound tense is preferred in most cases:

Yo he viajado a los Estados Unidos. "I have travelled to the USA."
Cuando he llegado, la he visto. "When I have arrived, I have seen her."

However, most Spanish speakers use the simple past tense, which historically and traditionally is more correct"

Viajé a los Estados Unidos. "I travelled to the USA."
Cuando llegué, la vi. "When I arrived, I saw her."

In Latin America, the compound past tense is used rarely, most notably when the action has been finished recently, to stress its immediacy, much like the present perfect in English, but even in those cases the simple past tense is prevalent.

¿Dónde estuviste? "Where were you?"

In this dialect, the first example of the compound past given above (Yo he viajado...) is grammatical, though it sounds affected or foreign. In fact, most Latin Americans would consider Spaniards uneducated by their excessive and incorrect use of the compound tense. This tendency in Spain seems to be rather new since it was not prevelent in midieval Spanish. Both in Franch and Italian languages tend to use the compound tense when the simple past would be more suitable. The second example (Cuando he llegado), however, would be considered grammatically incorrect due to the presence of the compound tense in the clause started by cuando ("when").

In Latin America one could say " He viajado a España varias veces " , " I have travelled to Spain several times", to express frequency or tendancy like in English. It would be utterly incorrect to say " Ayer, he viajado a España" or " Yesterday, I have travelled to Spain" since it was a definite past stressed by the word yesterday. In Spain, people tend to use the "haber + verb" to express things done in the past even if the action was definite, like "he comprado un coche hace dos años" " I have bought a car two years ago". A Latin American would correct the indivudal by saying "Compré un coche hace dos años" meaning "I bought a car two years ago".

Evolution

The Swedish Hispanist Bertil Malmberg holds^[1] that there is a tendency in the evolution of Spanish to prefer syllables that end in vowels. In variants like that of Argentine gauchos, which were less subject to the standard, this leads to a weakening of final consonants like /l/, /r/ or /s/. The realization of syllable-final /s/ as a barely audible [h] or simply nothing is rather noticeable in many dialects, including the Argentine ones. In the Castilian variety, this tendency did not exist in the past but has recently appeared due to the influence of southern dialects (Andalusia, Madrid, La Mancha, etc.).

However, Malmberg and others have pointed out that in Mexican Spanish, it is vowels that lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. Malmberg explains this by the influence of the consonant-complex Nahuatl language through bilingual speakers and place names. Others have pointed out that Mexican Spanish is tending towards stress timing and concomitant vowel reduction, and that this is likely to be caused by the influence of geographically close English of the United States and strong economic and social-cultural ties between the two countries.

Mutual comprehension

The different dialects and accents do not severely block cross-understanding among the educated. The basilects have diverged more. As an example, early sound films were dubbed into one version for the entire Spanish-speaking market. Currently, non-Spanish (usually Hollywood) productions are dubbed separately into each of the major accents, but productions from another Spanish-language country are never dubbed. The popularity of telenovelas and Latin American music familiarize the speakers with other varieties of Spanish.

Prescription and a common cultural and literary tradition, among other factors, have contributed to the formation of a loosely-defined register which can be termed Standard Spanish (or "Neutral Spanish"), which is the preferred form in formal settings, and is considered indispensable in academic and literary writing, the media, etc. This standard tends to disregard local grammatical, phonetic and lexical peculiarities, and draws certain extra features from the commonly acknowledged canon, preserving (for example) certain verb tenses considered "bookish" or archaic in most other dialects.

External links

References

^ Bertil Malmberg, Det spanska Amerika i språkets spegel, Stockholm, 1966

Spanish dialects and varieties

Pronunciation

The letters s, c (before e and i), z and x

The letters y and ll

Sets of variants

Grammar

Second person singular

Second person plural

Conjugation of the second person

Verb tenses

Evolution

Mutual comprehension

See also

List of dialects and varieties

Spain

The Americas

Other dialects

Other

External links

References

Further reading