Dominican Spanish

Dominican Spanish is Spanish as spoken in the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola (La Española in Spanish) and throughout the Dominican diaspora (mostly in New York, Boston, and Miami), influenced by the Kongo language and other African languages. It is similar to Puerto Rican Spanish and Cuban Spanish, Canarian Spanish (Canary Islands of Spain), Venezuelan Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Jamaican Patois. One main similarity in Dominican Spanish to these other Spanish forms is the borrowing of African and Arawakan words; the Arawakan peoples had inhabited all of these areas including the Canary islands where they were imported for workforce. Speakers of Dominican Spanish may also use several Spanish archaisms.

Phonology

• Like many other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (the palatal lateral /ʎ/) and y (historically the palatal approximant /j/) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a [j] or [dʒ] (these are the sounds in English York and John.) That is, in the Dominican Republic, se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent".
• The fricative /s/ have a tendency to become an indistinct aspiration or disappear or to become a voiceless glottal fricative, [h] at the end of syllables. This 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 [lah'mesah sɔn 'blaŋkah], 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] ([la'sagila a'sulɛh]), or become [h] (the exact pronunciation is largely an individual choice).
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final r sound in verb infinitives. This elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech.
• The weak r, final or not, tends to be changed in many words by an i sound in the Northerly Cibao region and by Ls in the Eastern and capital city (Santo Domingo), i.e., the verb correr (to run) is pronounced correi and correl, "perdón (forgiveness): peidón and peldón. This substitution for i is delicately (almost mutely) present in Andalusian Spanish, and also the L use is prototypical, and more marked, in Puerto Rican Spanish, and is believed to be of Andalusian and/or African origin.
• In the Southwestern region, the R sound turns sometimes into an L, with the classical example being mardito (damned) turned into maldito.
• The creation of diphthongs in everyday speech is common, like the phonetic contraction of "voy a" into "vuá" or "voá", or "¿para adónde vas?" into "¿p'ónde va'?". Another great example of strong contraction is the following phrase: "Taco 'tá 'co'ta'o", from "Taco está acostado" ("Taco is lying down").
• Almost exclusively Dominican in use, is the placing of the second person singular pronoun tú before the verb in the question form: "¿Cómo tú estás?" instead of "¿Cómo estás tú?". Unless that person is from Santiago then they use the more formal usted, instead of tú, the conventional word order is used.

Other differences with "standard" Spanish include subtleties like hypercorrection, in particular, adding the s erroneously, thus over-compensating the habit of omitting it (i.e., correct: administraciones públicas [public administrations]; vernacular: aministracione pública; hyper-corrected: asministracione púsblica).

Anglicisms (due to cultural and commercial influence from the United States), as well as the American occupations of the Dominican Republic during the 1930s and 1960s, are extremely common in Dominican Spanish, more so than in any other Spanish variant, save for Puerto Rican and perhaps Northern Mexican Spanish. A prime example of this is "baguada", 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 baguada", "here comes a baguada", 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 a boche", or "they reprimanded me". The word "they" in Dominican Spanish generally refers to anyone who is not him or herself, so that when saying that he or she heard something from another individual, one would say "they told me", rather than "a man told me", or "a woman told me", or "the young boy by the lemon tree told me". Furthermore, and perhaps the most common, is the Dominican Spanish word for SUV: "gipeta", which is pronounced "yipeta". This term is a corrpution of the American Jeep, which was the primary mode of transport for the GI's throghout the country during the occupation in the 1960s. The term has now evolved into referring to any SUV, and as a matter of fact, Dominican license plates for SUV's are marked with a "G" before their serial number, so that an SUV's license plate will read, for example, "G 12345", G for gipeta.

Another curious phenomenon related to Anglicisms is that of the usage of brand names to refer to any object which is of the same type that that particular brand produces. For example, in Dominican Spanish, "Corn Flakes", or "con fléi" refers to any cereal, be it puffed corn, bran flakes, or puffed wheat. Similarly, "Polo Shirt", which sounds more like polo ché when spoken colloquially, refers to a polo shirt, and the term "Tichel" refers to any type of t-shirt, rugby shirt, soccer jersey, or undershirt. Other curious examples are those of "Gillette", yilét, which refers to any razor, and the Dominician word for machete, "Colin", derived from Collins & Co., a historic Connecticut toolmaker.

Despite all the particularities, speakers of the Dominican variant of Spanish usually have no trouble understanding speakers of other Spanish dialects thanks to the use of such dialects in media and the fact that standard Spanish is promulgated through the educational system; the opposite is often more difficult, particularly due to the speed of vernacular Dominican speech.

Dominican vocabulary

As in every dialect, Dominican Spanish has numerous vocabulary differences from other forms of the language. Here are some examples.

• room-Spanish: habitación, cuarto - Dominican also: aposento (Spanish archaism also meaning "chamber")
• good, fine-Spanish: bien - Dominican also: tato
• wild - Spanish: agresivo/-a, bravo/-a - Dominican also: guapo/-a
• pretty - Spanish: guapo/-a - Dominican: lindo/-a, bonito/-a

Una chica guapa: in Spain "a pretty girl", in the Dominican Republic "an angry girl"

• the passion fruit – Spanish: la maracuyá – Dominican: la chinola
• the papaya / pawpaw – Spanish: la papaya – Dominican: la lechoza
• the money - Spanish: el dinero - Dominican also: los cuartos or "los cuaitos" if you're cibaeño (this is an archaism seldom used in standard Spanish also)
• a bit – Spanish: un poco – Dominican also: un chin/"chin chin" (possibly of Arawak or African origin)
• the coach / bus - Spanish: el autobús - Dominican: la guagua (this term is also used in the Canary Islands (Spain), Cuba, Puerto Rico, but originating in the Canary Islands)
• the motorbike taxi - does not exist in Spain - Dominican: el motoconcho
• the scooter - Spanish: ciclomotor - Dominican: pasola (a genericized term deriving from a trademark)
• the jeep / SUV - Spanish: el (vehículo) todoterreno - Dominican: la yipeta (a genericized term deriving from a trademark).
• the farm/agricultural field - Spanish: la granja - Dominican also: el conuco (Arawak origin), "la finca".
• the convenience store - Spanish: "tienda de ultramarinos" - Dominican also: "colmado"(this is an archaism seldom used in Spanish also) "Pulperia".
• trash can - Spanish: "bote de basura" - Dominican also: "zafacón" (used also in Puerto Rico; possibly a corrupted anglicism of "safety can")
• the tree - Spanish: "el árbol" - Dominican also: "la mata"
• disposable diaper: Spanish: "Pañal desechable" - Dominican also: "Pamper" (a genericized term deriving from a trademark) [also Salvadoran]

A curious, and rather un-translatable expression also common around most of the Caribbean basin, is la vaina. The Castilian meanings may be "sheath", "pod", "shell", "shell casing" or "hull" (plant). In the Dominican Republic "vaina" is mainly a thing, a matter or simply "stuff". For example, instead of saying ¿Qué cosa es esa? (What is that?) you would say ¿Qué vaina es esa?.

A proposed translation of the word "vaina" and its uses would be the American slang word shit, when used as a noun to describe any object. For example, "Pasame esa vaina" = "Pass that shit," meaning "Pass that [object]," as used in urban vernacular.

African influence

The syntax patterns in Dominican Spanish have characteristics that stem from the African influence dating back to the 17th century. The characteristic word order in questions like ‘como tú estás’ as opposed to the standard Spanish ‘como estás (tú)’ is the most common. In typical Dominican Spanish, this is pronounced ‘Como tu ’ta’. Most questions are inverted in this way. For example - ‘que tú crees’, ‘como tú te llamas’, and ‘que tú piensas’.

A small number of words that can be traced back to African languages are also present, mainly surviving in names for foodstuffs like ‘mondongo’ (stewed tripe) and ‘casabe’ (cassava bread). Also the accent has similarities to the African accent.

Some common Dominican words borrowed from the Arawak language

Arawak Word	Translation
Ají	Hot pepper
Anacaona	Golden Flower
Arepa	Corn Cake
Bara	Whip
Barbacoa	Four-legged stand, made of sticks, used in the cooking process of roasting meat.
Batata	Sweet potato
Bohío	Small square house (typical countryside homes)
Cacata	Tarantula
Cana	Any number of palmetto trees (A type of palmetto are the palms that line the malecon of Santo Domingo)
Ceiba	Silkcotton tree
Canoa	Small boat
Cibao	Stoned Mountains
Cocuyo or Cucuyo	Small Lighting Bug with a blueish light
Cohiba	Tobacco/tobacco leaves
Guagua	Bus or car; a form of transit
Guayo	Crater
Jaiba	River Crab or Freshwater Crayfish River
Jicotea	Turtle
Maraca	Gourd rattle, musical instrument made of Higuera gourd
Maco	Frog; in sports it can also mean someone who doesn't throw a ball accurately
Mime	Little insect, typically a fruit fly
Nana or Nena	Little girl
Sabana or Zabana	Savanna; A flat grassland of tropical or subtropical regions
Tabacu or Tabaco	Tobacco; plants in the Caribbean
Yagua	A small palm native to Hispaniola
Yola	Small boat

Sources

• El español en la República Dominicana - Alvar Gómez, Manuel (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Servicio de Publicaciones) ISBN 8481384186. ISBN 9788481384185.
• 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
• [1]

Other links

• Words of Taino origin used in the Dominican Republic that have become generally accepted in Standard Spanish
• Pérez Guerra, Irene: "El arcaismo del espańol dominicano"
• Dominican Words borrowed from the Taino Language
• Jergas de habla hispana Spanish dictionary specializing in slang and coloquial expressions, featuring all Spanish-speaking countries, including the Dominican Republic.