Spanish dialects and varieties

Some of the regional varieties of the Spanish language are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar.

While all Spanish dialects adhere to approximately the same written standard, all spoken varieties differ from the written variety, to different degrees. There are differences between European Spanish (also called Peninsular Spanish) and the Spanish of the Americas, as well as many different dialect areas both within Spain and within the Americas. Chilean and Honduran Spanish have been identified by various linguists as the most divergent varieties.

Prominent differences of pronunciation among dialects of Spanish include:
# the maintenance or lack of distinction between the phonemes and (''distinción'' vs. ''seseo'' and '' ceceo'');
# the maintenance or loss of distinction between phonemes represented orthographically by ''ll'' and ''y'' ('' yeísmo'');
# the maintenance of syllable-final vs. its weakening to (called aspiration, or more precisely debuccalization), or its loss; and
# the tendency, in areas of central Mexico and of the Andean highlands, to reduction (especially devoicing), or loss, of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with voiceless consonants.
Among grammatical features, the most prominent variation among dialects is in the use of the second-person pronouns. In Hispanic America the only second-person plural pronoun, for both formal and informal treatment, is , while in most of Spain the informal second-person plural pronoun is with used only in the formal treatment. For the second-person ''singular'' familiar pronoun, some American dialects use (and its associated verb forms), while others use either (see '' voseo'') or both ''tú'' and (which, together with ''usted'', can make for a possible three-tiered distinction of formalities).

There are significant differences in vocabulary among regional varieties of Spanish, particularly in the domains of food products, everyday objects, and clothes; and many American varieties show considerable lexical influence from Native American languages.

Sets of variants

While there is no broad consensus on how American Spanish dialects should be classified, the following scheme which takes into account phonological, grammatical, socio-historical, and language contact data provides a reasonable approximation of Latin American dialect variation:

* Mexican (except coastal areas) and southwestern US (including New Mexican).
* Central American, including southwestern Mexico.
* Caribbean (Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Caribbean Colombia, and Caribbean and Pacific Coasts of Mexico).
* Inland Colombia and the speech of neighboring areas of Venezuela.
* Pacific coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru
* Andean regions of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, southwestern Colombia, northwestern Argentina, and northeastern Chile.
* Chilean, including western Argentina.
* Paraguayan, including northeastern Argentina, and eastern Bolivia.
* Rioplatense (coastal Argentina and Uruguay).

The greatest division in Old World varieties is from north to south:

* Northern Peninsular (Asturias, Castilla y León, Cantabria, Basque country, Navarre, Aragón, Rioja, Provinces of Guadalajara and Cuenca).
* Central-Southern Peninsular (Madrid, Toledo, La Mancha).
* Southern Peninsular (Andalusia, Extremadura, and Murcia).
* Canarian (Canary Islands).

The non-native Spanish in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara) has been influenced mainly by varieties from Spain. Spanish is also an official language in Equatorial Guinea, and many people speak it fluently.

Though no longer an official language in the Philippines, Philippine Spanish has had a tremendous influence on the native tongues of the archipelago, including Filipino.

The Spanish spoken in Gibraltar is essentially not different from the neighboring areas in Spain, except for code-switching with English and some unique vocabulary items. It is frequently blended with English as a sort of Spanglish known as Llanito.

Judaeo-Spanish, a " Jewish language", encompasses a number of linguistic varieties based mostly on 15th-century Spanish; it is still spoken in a few small communities, mainly in Israel, but also in Turkey and a number of other countries. As Jews have migrated since their expulsion from Iberia, the language has picked up several loan words from other languages and developed unique forms of spelling, grammar, and syntax. It can be considered either a very divergent dialect of Spanish, retaining features from Old Spanish, or a separate language.

Pronunciation

Distinción vs. seseo and ceceo

The distinction between and is maintained in northern Spain (in all positions) and in south-central Spain (only in syllable onset), while the two phonemes are not distinguished in the Americas, the Canary Islands, and much of Andalusia. The maintenance of phonemic contrast is called ''distinción'' in Spanish. In areas that do not distinguish them, they are typically realized as , though in parts of southern Andalusia the realization is closer to ; in Spain uniform use of is called '' ceceo'' and uniform use of ''seseo''.

In dialects with ''seseo'' the words ('house') and ('hunt') are pronounced as homophones (generally ), whereas in dialects with ''distinción'' they are pronounced differently (as and respectively). The symbol stands for a voiceless sibilant like the ''s'' of English ''sick'', while represents a voiceless interdental fricative like the ''th'' of English ''think''.

In some cases where the phonemic merger would render words homophonic in the Americas, one member of the pair is frequently replaced by a synonym or derived form—e.g. ''caza'' replaced by , or ('to boil'), homophonic with ('to sew'), replaced by . For more on ''seseo'', see González-Bueno.

Yeísmo

Traditionally Spanish had a phonemic distinction between (a palatal lateral approximant, written ''ll'') and (a voiced palatal approximant, written ''y''). But for most speakers in Spain and the Americas, these two phonemes have been merged in the phoneme . This merger results in the words ('silenced') and ('fell') being pronounced the same, whereas they remain distinct in dialects that have not undergone the merger. The use of the merged phoneme is called " yeísmo".

In Spain, the distinction is preserved in some rural areas and smaller cities of the north, while in South America the contrast is characteristic of bilingual areas where Quechua languages and other indigenous languages that have the sound in their inventories are spoken (this is the case of inland Peru and Bolivia), and in Paraguay.

The phoneme can be pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on the dialect. In most of the area where ''yeísmo'' is present, the merged phoneme is pronounced as the fricative or approximant , and also, in word-initial positions, affricates and (the latter is also used in other positions as variants of ). In the area around the Río de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay), this phoneme is pronounced as a palatoalveolar sibilant fricative, either as voiced or, especially by young speakers, as voiceless .

Variants of

One of the most distinctive features of the Spanish variants is the pronunciation of when it is not ''aspirated'' to or elided. In northern and central Spain, and in the Paisa Region of Colombia, as well as in some other, isolated dialects (e.g. some inland areas of Peru and Bolivia), the sibilant realization of is an apico-alveolar retracted fricative , a sound transitional between laminodental and palatal . However, in most of Andalusia, in a few other areas in southern Spain, and in most of Latin America it is instead pronounced as a lamino-alveolar or dental sibilant. The phoneme is realized as or before voiced consonants when it is not aspirated to or elided; is a sound transitional between and . Before voiced consonants, ~ is more common in natural and colloquial speech and oratorical pronunciation, ~ is mostly pronounced in emphatic and slower speech.

In the rest of the article, the distinction is ignored and the symbols are used for all alveolar fricatives.

Debuccalization of coda

In much of Latin America—especially in the Caribbean and in coastal and lowland areas of Central and South America—and in the southern half of Spain, syllable-final is either pronounced as a voiceless glottal fricative, that is commonly voiced to before voiced consonants ( debuccalization, also frequently called "aspiration"), or not pronounced at all. In some varieties of Hispanic American Spanish (notably Honduran and Salvadoran Spanish) this may also occur intervocalically within an individual word—as with , which may be pronounced as —or even in initial position. In southeastern Spain (eastern Andalusia, Murcia and part of La Mancha), the distinction between syllables with a now-silent ''s'' and those originally without ''s'' is preserved by pronouncing the syllables ending in ''s'' with (that is, the open/closed syllable contrast has been turned into a tense/lax vowel contrast); this typically affects the vowels , and , but in some areas even and are affected, turning into . For instance, '' '' ('all the swans are white'), can be pronounced , or even (Standard Peninsular Spanish: , Latin American Spanish: ) (the sequence is commonly degeminated to a short regardless of the dialect). This vowel contrast is sometimes reinforced by vowel harmony, so that ''casas'' 'houses' differs from ''casa'' not only by the lack of the final in the former word but also in the quality of both of the vowels. For those areas of southeastern Spain where the deletion of final is complete, and where the distinction between singular and plural of nouns depends entirely on vowel quality, the case has been made to claim that a set of phonemic splits has occurred, resulting in a system with eight vowel phonemes in place of the standard five. is more common in natural and colloquial speech, whereas tends to be pronounced in emphatic and slower speech. In oratorical pronunciation, it depends on the country and speaker; if the Spanish speaker chooses to pronounces all or most of syllable-final it is mostly voiced to [] before voiced consonants.

Vowel reduction

Although the vowels of Spanish are relatively stable from one dialect to another, the phenomenon of vowel reduction—devoicing or even loss—of unstressed vowels in contact with voiceless consonants, especially , can be observed in the speech of central Mexico (including Mexico City). For example, it can be the case that the words ('pesos oney), ('weights'), and ('fish l.) sound nearly the same, as . One may hear ('well (then)') pronounced . Some efforts to explain this vowel reduction link it to the strong influence of Nahuatl and other Native American languages in Mexican Spanish.

Pronunciation of ''j''

In the 16th century, as the Spanish colonization of the Americas was beginning, the phoneme now represented by the letter ''j'' had begun to change its place of articulation from palato-alveolar to palatal and to velar , like German ''ch'' in ''Bach'' (see History of Spanish and Old Spanish language). In southern Spanish dialects and in those Hispanic American dialects strongly influenced by southern settlers (e.g. Caribbean Spanish), rather than the velar fricative , the sound was backed all the way to , like English ''h'' in ''hope''. Glottal is nowadays the standard pronunciation for ''j'' in Caribbean dialects (Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican) as well as in mainland Venezuela, in most Colombian dialects excepting Pastuso dialect that belongs to a continuum with Ecuadorian Spanish, much of Central America, southern Mexico, the Canary Islands, Extremadura and western Andalusia in Spain; in the rest of the country, alternates with a "raspy" uvular fricative , sometimes pronounced with a simultaneous voiceless uvular trill. In the rest of the Americas, the velar fricative is prevalent. In Chile, is fronted to (like German ''ch'' in ''ich'') when it precedes the front vowels and : , ; in other phonological environments it is pronounced or

For the sake of simplicity, these are given a broad transcription in the rest of the article.

Word-final ''-n''

In standard European Spanish, as well as in many dialects in the Americas (e.g. standard Argentine or Rioplatense, inland Colombian, and Mexican), word-final is, by default (i.e. when followed by a pause or by an initial vowel in the following word), alveolar, like English in ''pen''. When followed by a consonant, it assimilates to that consonant's place of articulation, becoming dental, interdental, palatal, or velar. In some dialects, however, word-final without a following consonant is pronounced as a velar nasal (like the ''-ng'' of English ''long''), and may produce vowel nasalization. In these dialects, words such as ('bread') and ('well') may sound like ''pang'' and ''byeng'' to English-speakers. Velar ''-n'' is common in many parts of Spain (Galicia, León, Asturias, Murcia, Extremadura, Andalusia, and Canary Islands). In the Americas, velar ''-n'' is prevalent in all Caribbean dialects, Central American dialects, the coastal areas of Colombia, Venezuela, much of Ecuador, Peru, and northern Chile.
This velar ''-n'' likely originated in the northwest of Spain, and from there spread to Andalusia and then the Americas.
Loss of final ''-n'' with strong nasalization of the preceding vowel is not infrequent in all those dialects where velar ''-n'' exists. In much of Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela (except for the Andean region) and Dominican Spanish, any pre-consonantal or can be realized ; thus, a word like ''ambientación'' can be pronounced .

''R'' sounds

All varieties of Spanish distinguish between a "single-R" and a "double-R" phoneme. The single-R phoneme corresponds to the letter ''r'' written once (except when word-initial or following ''l'', ''n'', or ''s'') and is pronounced as , an alveolar flap—like American English ''tt'' in ''better''—in virtually all dialects. The single-R/double-R contrast is neutralized in syllable-final position, and in some dialects these phonemes also lose their contrast with , so a word such as may sound like ''altesanía''. This neutralization or "leveling" of coda and is frequent in dialects of southern Spain, the Caribbean, Venezuela and coastal Colombia.

The double-R phoneme is spelled ''rr'' between vowels (as in ''carro'' 'car') and ''r'' word-initially (e.g. ''rey'' 'king', ''ropa'' 'clothes') or following ''l'', ''n'', or ''s'' (e.g. ''alrededor'' 'around', ''enriquecer'' 'enrich', ''enrollar'' 'roll up', ''enrolar'' 'enroll', ''honra'' 'honor', ''Conrado'' 'Conrad', ''Israel'' 'Israel'). In most varieties it is pronounced as an alveolar trill , and that is considered the prestige pronunciation. Two notable variants occur additionally: one sibilant and the other velar or uvular. The trill is also found in lexical derivations (morpheme-initial positions), and prefixation with ''sub'' and ''ab'': ''abrogado'' (also pronounced , or ), 'abrogated', ''subrayar'' (also pronounced , or ), 'to underline'. The same goes for compound word ''ciudadrealeño'' (from ''Ciudad Real''). However, after vowels, the initial ''r'' of the root becomes ''rr'' in prefixed or compound words: ''prorrogar, infrarrojo, autorretrato, arriesgar, puertorriqueño, Monterrey.'' In syllable-final position, inside a word, the tap is more frequent, but the trill can also occur (especially in emphatic or oratorical style) with no semantic difference, especially before ''l'', ''m'', ''n'', ''s'', ''t'', or ''d''—thus ''arma'' ('weapon') may be either (tap) or (trill), ''perla'' ('pearl') may be either or , ''invierno'' ('winter') may be or , ''verso'' ('verse') may be or , and ''verde'' ('green') or . In ''word''-final position the rhotic will usually be: either a trill or a tap when followed by a consonant or a pause, as in ''amo'' ''paterno'' 'paternal love') and ''amo'', with tap being more frequent and trill before ''l'', ''m'', ''n'', ''s'', ''t'', ''d'', or sometimes pause; or a tap when followed by a vowel-initial word, as in ''amo'' ''eterno'' 'eternal love') (Can be a trill or tap with a temporary glottal stop in emphatic speech: ''amo'' ''eterno'', with trill being more common). Morphologically, a word-final rhotic always corresponds to the tapped in related words. Thus, the word ''olor'' 'smell' is related to ''olores, oloroso'' 'smells, smelly' and not to ''*olorres, *olorroso'', and the word ''taller'' 'workshop' is related to ''talleres'' 'workshops' and not to ''*tallerres''. When two rhotics occur consecutively across a word or prefix boundary, they result in one trill, so that ''da rosas'' ('s/he gives roses') and ''dar rosas'' ('give roses') are either neutralized, or distinguished by a longer trill in the latter phrase, which may be transcribed as or (although this is transcribed with in Help:IPA/Spanish, even though it differs from purely by length); ''da rosas'' and ''dar rosas'' may be distinguished as vs. , or they may fall together as the former.

The pronunciation of the double-R phoneme as a voiced strident (or sibilant) apical fricative is common in New Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay; in western and northern Argentina; and among older speakers in highland areas of Colombia.
Some linguists have attempted to explain the assibilated ''rr'' (written in IPA as []) as a result of influence from Native American languages, and it is true that in the Andean regions mentioned an important part of the population is bilingual in Spanish and one or another indigenous language. Nonetheless, other researchers have pointed out that sibilant ''rr'' in the Americas may not be an autonomous innovation, but rather a pronunciation that originated in some northern Spanish dialects and then was exported to the Americas. Spanish dialects spoken in the Basque Country, Navarre, La Rioja, and northern Aragon (regions that contributed substantially to Spanish-American colonization) show the fricative or postalveolar variant for ''rr'' (especially for the word-initial ''rr'' sound, as in ''Roma'' or ''rey''). This is also pronounced voiceless when the consonants after the trill are voiceless and speaking in emphatic speech; it is written as [], it sounds like a simultaneous and . In Andean regions, the alveolar trill is realized as an alveolar approximant or even as a voiced apico-alveolar , and it is quite common in inland Ecuador, Peru, most of Bolivia and in parts of northern Argentina and Paraguay. The alveolar approximant realization is particularly associated with the substrate of Native American languages, as is the assibilation of to in Ecuador and Bolivia. Assibilated trill is also found in dialects in the /sr/ sequence wherein /s/ is unaspirated, example: ''las rosas'' ('the roses'), ''Israel'' . The assibilated trill in this example is sometimes pronounced voiceless in emphatic and slower speech: ''las rosas'' ('the roses'), ''Israel'' .

The other major variant for the ''rr'' phoneme—common in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic—is articulated at the back of the mouth, either as a glottal followed by a voiceless apical trill [] or, especially in Puerto Rico, with a posterior articulation that ranges variously from a velar fricative to a uvular trill . Canfield describes it as a voiceless uvular trill . These realizations for ''rr'' maintain their contrast with the phoneme , as the latter tends to be realized as a soft glottal : compare ''Ramón'' ('Raymond') with ''jamón'' ('ham').

In Puerto Rico, syllable-final can be realized as (probably an influence of American English), aside from , , and , so that ''verso'' ('verse') becomes , alongside , , or ; ''invierno'' ('winter') becomes , alongside , , or ; and ''parlamento'' (parliament) becomes , alongside , , or . In word-final position, the realization of depends on whether it is followed by a consonant-initial word or a pause, on the one hand, or by a vowel-initial word, on the other:

* Before a consonant or pause: a trill, a tap, an approximant, the lateral , or elided, as in ''amo'' ''paterno'' ('paternal love').
* Before a vowel: a tap, an approximant, or the lateral , as in ''amo'' ''eterno'' ('eternal love').

The same situation happens in Belize and the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, in these cases an influence of British English.

In Paraguay, syllable-final is pronounced as before ''l'' or ''s'' and word-final position, influenced by a substrate from Native American languages.

In Chile, as in Andalusia, the archiphoneme in the sequence is sometimes assimilated to in lower-class speakers, and sometimes in educated speakers. Thus, ''jornada'' 'workday' may be pronounced .

Pronunciation of ''x''

The letter ''x'' usually represents the phoneme sequence . An exception to this is the pronunciation of the ''x'' in some place names, especially in Mexico, such as and the name itself, reflecting an older spelling (see "Name of Mexico"). Some personal names, such as ''Javier'', ''Jiménez'', ''Rojas'', etc., also are occasionally spelled with ''X'': ''Xavier'', ''Ximénez'', ''Roxas'', etc. and the pronunciation of ''x'' is either . A small number of words in Mexican Spanish retain the historical pronunciation, e.g. .

There are two possible pronunciations of in standard speech: the first one is , with a voiceless plosive, but it is commonly realized as instead (hence the phonemic transcription ). Voicing is not contrastive in the syllable coda.

In dialects with ''seseo'', ''c'' following ''x'' pronounced is deleted, yielding pronunciations such as for .

Adoption of the affricates ''tz'' and ''tl''

Mexican Spanish and some other Latin American dialects have adopted from the native languages the voiceless alveolar affricate and many words with the cluster (originally an affricate ) represented by the respective digraphs and , as in the names Atzcapotzalco and Tlaxcala. is a valid onset cluster in Latin America, with the exception of Puerto Rico, in the Canary Islands, and in the northwest of Spain, including Bilbao and Galicia. In these dialects, words of Greek and Latin origin with , such as and , are also pronounced with onset : , . In other dialects, the corresponding phonemic sequence is (where is the onset), with the coda realized variously as and . The usual pronunciation of those words in most of Spain is and .

The sound also occurs in European Spanish in loanwords of Basque origin (but only learned loanwords, not those inherited from Roman times), as in '' abertzale''. In colloquial Castilian it may be replaced by or . In Bolivian, Paraguayan, and Coastal Peruvian Spanish, also occurs in loanwords of Japanese origin.

Other loaned phonetics

Spanish has a fricative for loanwords of origins from native languages in Mexican Spanish, loanwords of French, German and English origin in Chilean Spanish, loanwords of Italian, Galician, French, German and English origin in Rioplatense Spanish and Venezuelan Spanish, Chinese loanwords in Coastal Peruvian Spanish, Japanese loanwords in Bolivian Spanish, Paraguayan Spanish, Coastal Peruvian Spanish, Basque loanwords in Castilian Spanish (but only learned loanwords, not those inherited from Roman times), and English loanwords in Puerto Rican Spanish and all dialects.

Pronunciation of ''ch''

The Spanish digraph ''ch'' (the phoneme ) is pronounced in most dialects. However, it is pronounced as a fricative in some Andalusian dialects, New Mexican Spanish, some varieties of northern Mexican Spanish, informal and sometimes formal Panamanian Spanish, and informal Chilean Spanish. In Chilean Spanish this pronunciation is viewed as undesirable, while in Panama it occurs among educated speakers. In Madrid and among upper- and middle-class Chilean speakers, it can be pronounced as the alveolar affricate .

Open-mid and open front vowels

In some dialects of southeastern Spain (Murcia, eastern Andalusia and a few adjoining areas) where the weakening of final leads to its disappearance, the "silent" continues to have an effect on the preceding vowel, opening the mid vowels and to and respectively, and fronting the open central vowel toward . Thus the singular/plural distinction in nouns and adjectives is maintained by means of the vowel quality:
* ''libro'' 'book', but ''libros'' 'books'.
* ''libre'' 'free, ''singular'' ', but ''libres'' 'free, ''plural.
* ''libra'' 'pound', but ''libras'' 'pounds'.

Furthermore, this opening of final mid vowels can affect other vowels earlier in the word, as an instance of metaphony:

* ''lobo'' 'wolf', but ''lobos'' 'wolves'.

(In the remaining dialects, the mid vowels have nondistinctive open and closed allophones determined by the shape of the syllable or by contact with neighboring phonemes. See Spanish phonology.)

Post-tonic ''e'' and ''o''

Final, non-stressed and may be raised to and respectively in some rural areas of Spain and Latin America. Examples include 'night', . In Spain, this is mainly found in Galicia and other northern areas. This type of raising carries negative prestige.

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish (often called ''Ladino'') refers to the Romance dialects spoken by Jews whose ancestors were expelled from Spain near the end of the 15th century.

These dialects have important phonological differences compared to varieties of Spanish proper; for example, they have preserved the voiced/voiceless distinction among sibilants as they were in Old Spanish. For this reason, the letter , when written single between vowels, corresponds to a voiced —e.g. ('rose'). Where is not between vowels and is not followed by a voiced consonant, or when it is written double, it corresponds to voiceless —thus ('to sit down'). And due to a phonemic neutralization similar to the ''seseo'' of other dialects, the Old Spanish voiced and the voiceless have merged, respectively, with and —while maintaining the voicing contrast between them. Thus ('to make') has gone from the medieval to , and ('town square') has gone from to .

A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.
Tetuani Ladino was brought to Oran in Algeria.

Grammar

Variation in second-person pronouns and verbs

Spanish is a language with a " T–V distinction" in the second person, meaning that there are different pronouns corresponding to "you" which express different degrees of formality. In most varieties, there are two degrees, namely "formal" and "familiar" (the latter is also called "informal").

For the second person ''formal'', virtually all Spanish dialects of Spain and the Americas use and (singular and plural respectively). But for the second person ''familiar'', there is regional variation—between and for the singular, and, separately, between and for the plural. The use of ''vos'' (and its corresponding verb forms) rather than ''tú'' is called '' voseo''.

Each of the second-person pronouns has its historically corresponding verb forms, used by most speakers. Most speakers use both the pronoun ''vos'' and its historically corresponding verb forms (e.g. ''vos '', 'you have'). But some dialects use the pronoun ''tú'' with "''vos'' verb forms" (verbal ''voseo''—''tú ''), while others use ''vos'' with "''tú'' verb forms" (pronominal ''voseo''—''vos '').

Second person singular

In most dialects the familiar second person singular pronoun is ''tú'' (from Latin ''tū''), and the formal pronoun is ''usted'' (usually considered to originate from '' '', meaning 'your grace' or, literally, 'your mercy'). In a number of regions in the Americas, ''tú'' is replaced by another pronoun, ''vos'', and the verb conjugation changes accordingly (see details below). Spanish ''vos'' comes from Latin ''vōs'', the second person ''plural'' pronoun in Latin.

In any case, there is wide variation as to when each pronoun (formal or familiar) is used. In Spain, ''tú'' is familiar (for example, used with friends), and ''usted'' is formal (for example, used with older people). In recent times, there has been a noticeable tendency to extend the use of ''tú'' even in situations previously reserved for ''usted''. Meanwhile, in several countries (in parts of Middle America, especially, Costa Rica and Colombia), the formal ''usted'' is also used to denote a closer personal relationship. Many Colombians and some Chileans, for instance, use ''usted'' for a child to address a parent and also for a parent to address a child. Some countries, such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic, prefer the use of ''tú'' even in very formal circumstances, and ''usted'' is seldom used.

Meanwhile, in other countries, the use of formal rather than familiar second-person pronouns denotes authority. In Peru, for example, senior military officers use ''tú'' to speak to their subordinates, but junior officers use only ''usted'' to address their superior officers.

Using the familiar ''tú'', especially in contexts where ''usted'' was to be expected, is called . The corresponding verb is (a transitive verb, the direct object being the person addressed with the pronoun). The verb ''tutear'' is used even in those dialects whose familiar pronoun is ''vos'' and means 'to treat with the familiar second-person pronoun'.

Pronominal voseo, the use of the pronoun ''vos'' instead of ''tú'', is the prevalent form of the familiar second person singular pronoun in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay. In those countries, it is used by many 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 Guatemala and Uruguay, ''vos'' and ''tú'' are used concurrently, but ''vos'' is much more common. Both pronouns use the verb forms normally associated with ''vos'' (''vos '' / ''tú querés'', 'you want').

The name ''Rioplatense'' is applied to the dialect of Spanish spoken around the mouth of the Río de la Plata and the lower course of the Paraná River, where ''vos'', not ''tú'', is invariably used, with the ''vos'' verb forms (''vos tenés''). The area comprises the most populous 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 the most prominent form throughout the Sierra region of the country, though it does coexist with ''usted'' and the lesser-used ''tú''. In this region, ''vos'' is regarded as the conversational norm, but it is not used in public discourse or the mass media. The choice of pronoun to be used depends on the participants' likeness in age and/or social status. Based on these factors, speakers can assess themselves as being equal, superior, or inferior to the addressee, and the choice of pronoun is made on this basis, sometimes resulting in a three-tiered system. Ecuadorians of the Highlands thus 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. In the more-populated coastal region, the form ''tú'' is used in most situations, ''usted'' being used only for unfamiliar and/or superior addressees.

''Vos'' can be heard throughout most of Chile, Bolivia, and a small part of Peru as well, but in these places it is regarded as substandard. It is also used as the conversational norm in the Paisa Region and the southwest region of Colombia, in Zulia State (Venezuela), in Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the state of Chiapas in Mexico.

In Chile, even though ''tú'' is the prestige pronoun among educated speakers, the use of "verbal voseo", i.e. "''tú'' + verb conjugation of ''vos''" (e.g. ''tú '') is widespread. On the other hand, "pronominal voseo", the use of the pronoun ''vos''—pronounced with aspiration of the final —is used derisively in informal speech between close friends as playful banter (usually among men) or, depending on the tone of voice, as an offensive comment.

In Colombia, the choice of second person singular varies with location. In most of inland Colombia (especially the Andean region), ''usted'' is the pronoun of choice for all situations, even in speaking between friends or family; but in large cities (especially Bogotá), the use of ''tú'' is becoming more accepted in informal situations, especially between young interlocutors of opposite sexes and among young women. In Valle del Cauca ( Cali), Antioquia ( Medellín) and the Pacific coast, the pronouns used are ''vos'' and ''usted''. On the Caribbean coast (mainly Barranquilla and Cartagena), ''tú'' is used for practically all informal situations and many formal situations as well, ''usted'' being reserved for the most formal environments. A peculiarity occurs in the Altiplano Cundiboyacense and among some speakers in Bogotá: ''usted'' is replaced by for formal situations (it is relatively easy to identify a ''Boyacense'' by his/her use of this pronoun). ''Sumercé'' comes from ''su merced'' ('your mercy').

In parts of Spain, a child used to use not ''tú'' but ''usted'' to address a parent. Today, however, this usage is unusual. Among the factors for the ongoing replacement of ''usted'' by ''tú'' are the new social relevance of youth and the reduction of social differences. In particular, it has been attributed to the egalitarianism of the right-wing Falange party. By contrast, Spanish leftists of the early 20th century would address their comrades as ''usted'' as a show of respect and workers' dignity.

According to Joan Coromines, by the 16th century, the use of ''vos'' (as a second person ''singular'' pronoun) had been reduced to rural areas of Spain, which were a source of many emigrants to the New World, and so ''vos'' became the unmarked form in many areas of Latin America.

A slightly different explanation is that in Spain, even if ''vos'' (as a singular) originally denoted the high social status of those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.), the people never used the pronoun themselves since there were few or no people above them in society. Those who used ''vos'' were people of the lower classes and peasants. When the waves of Spanish immigrants arrived to populate the New World, they primarily came from these lower classes. In the New World, wanting to raise their social status from what it was in Spain, they demanded to be addressed as ''vos''.

Through the widespread use of ''vos'' in the Americas, the pronoun was transformed into an indicator of low status not only for the addresser but also for the addressee. Conversely, in Spain, ''vos'' is now considered a highly exalted archaism virtually confined to liturgy.

Speakers of Ladino still use ''vos'' as it was used in the Middle Ages, 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 so ''vos'' is still used in Ladino much as ''usted'' is used in modern Spanish.

A variant of ''usted'', '' vusted'', can be heard in Andean regions of South America. Other, less frequent forms analogous to ''usted'' are (short for '' ''), and ''usía'' (from ''vuestra '').

There is a traditional assumption that Chilean and River Plate ''voseo'' verb forms are derived from those corresponding to ''vosotros''. This assumption, however, has been challenged, in an article by —in the theoretical framework of classical generative phonology—as synchronically inadequate, on the grounds that it requires at least six different rules, including three monophthongization processes that lack phonological motivation. Alternatively, the article argues that the Chilean and River Plate ''voseo'' verb forms are synchronically derived from underlying representations that coincide with those corresponding to the non-honorific second person singular ''tú''. The proposed theory requires the use of only one special rule in the case of Chilean ''voseo''. This rule—along with other rules that are independently justified in the language—makes it possible to derive synchronically all Chilean and River Plate ''voseo'' verb forms in a straightforward manner. The article additionally solves the problem posed by the alternate verb forms of Chilean ''voseo'' such as the future indicative (e.g. ''vay a bailar'' 'will you dance?'), the present indicative forms of ''haber'' (''habih'' and ''hai'' 'you have'), and the present indicative of ''ser'' (''soi'', ''eríh'' and ''erei'' 'you are'), without resorting to any ad hoc rules.

Second person plural

In Standard European Spanish the plural of ''tú'' is ''vosotros'' and the plural of ''usted'' is ''ustedes''. In Hispanic 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'', while a Latin American Spanish-speaker will use ''ustedes''. Although ''ustedes'' is semantically a second-person form, it is treated grammatically as a third-person plural form because it originates from the term '' '' ('your l.mercies,' sing. ''vuestra merced'').

The only vestiges of ''vosotros'' in the Americas are / in Papiamento and the use of ''vuestro/a'' in place of '' ( ustedes)'' as second person plural possessive in the Cusco region of Peru.

In very formal contexts, however, the ''vosotros'' conjugation can still be found. An example is the Mexican national anthem, which contains such forms as and .

The plural of the Colombian (Cundi-Boyacense Plateau) ''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'': the pronoun ''ustedes'' is combined with the verb forms for ''vosotros''. However, this sounds extremely colloquial and most Andalusians prefer to use each pronoun with its correct form.

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

Second-person verb forms

Each second-person pronoun has its historically corresponding verb forms. The formal ''usted'' and ''ustedes'', although semantically second person, take verb forms identical with those of the third person, singular and plural respectively, since they are derived from the third-person expressions ''vuestra merced'' and ''vuestras mercedes'' ('your grace ). The forms associated with the singular ''vos'' can generally be derived from those for the plural ''vosotros'' by deleting the palatal semivowel of the ending (''vosotros habláis'' > ''vos hablás'', 'you speak'; ''vosotros coméis'' > ''vos comés'', 'you eat').

General statements about the use of ''voseo'' in different localities should be qualified by the note that individual speakers may be inconsistent in their usage, and that isoglosses rarely coincide with national borders. That said, a few assertions can be made:
* "Full" ''voseo'' (involving both pronoun and verb—''vos comés'', 'you eat') is characteristic of two zones: that of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay and that of Central America and the Mexican state of Chiapas.
* Pronominal ''voseo'' (''vos tienes'', ''vos dices'', etc. but ''vos sos'') is common in Santiago del Estero Province, Argentina
* "Full" ''voseo'' coexists with the use of ''tú'' and its verb forms (e.g. ''tú comes'') in Colombia and Ecuador, and in parts of Colombia also with ''usted'' (with its standard verb forms) as a familiar form.
* In Chile there is coexistence of three usages:
** ''tú'' and its verb forms (''tú comes'');
** "full" ''voseo'' with uniquely Chilean ''voseo'' verb endings (''-ái'', ''-ís'', and ''-ís'' respectively for ''-ar'', ''-er'', and ''-ir'' verbs: ''vos hablái''—'you speak', ''vos comís''—"you eat", ''vos vivís''—'you live'); and
** verbal ''voseo'' with the Chilean verb endings (''tú hablái'', ''tú comís'', etc.).
* "Full" ''voseo'' coexists with verbal ''voseo'' (''tú comés'') in Uruguay.
* In Venezuela's Zulia State and parts of the state of Falcón there is no deletion of the palatal semivowel, creating ''vos coméis'', ''vos habláis'', and ''vos seáis''. In Trujillo State, the "voseo" is like that of Argentina, with the exception of the imperative mood, which is like that of the standard ''tú''.
* ''Voseo'' is absent from the Spanish of Spain, and from most of Mexico, Peru, and the islands of the Caribbean.

As for the second person familiar ''plural'', it can be said that northern and central Spain use ''vosotros'' and its verb forms (''vosotros habláis'', 'you l.speak'), while the rest of the Spanish-speaking world merges the familiar and formal in ''ustedes'' (''ustedes hablan''). Usage in western Andalusia includes the use of ''ustedes'' with the traditional ''vosotros'' verb form (''ustedes habláis'').

In Ladino, the second-person pronouns are quite different from those of Spain and Latin America. The forms ''usted'' and ''ustedes'' had not yet appeared in 1492 when the Jews were expelled from Spain. Speakers of Ladino still use ''vos'' as it was used in the Middle Ages (as a singular) to address people higher on the social ladder. And ''vosotros'' is the only second person plural pronoun. In Ladino the formal singular for 'you speak' is ''vos avláis'' (pronounced , and the same verb form serves for the plural, both formal and familiar: ''vosotros avláis'' (). The subjunctive 'that you lose (formal singular)' is ''que vos pedráis'' (), while the plural (both formal and familiar) is ''que vosotros pedráis'' (). The formal ''singular'' imperative ('come') is ''venid'' or ''vení'', and the same form serves as the ''plural'' imperative, both formal and familiar.

Verb tenses for past events

In a broad sense, when expressing an action viewed as finished in the past, speakers (and writers) in most of Spain use the perfect tense—e.g. ''he llegado'' *'I have arrived')—more often than their American counterparts, while Spanish-speakers in the Americas more often use the preterite (''llegué'' 'I arrived').

The perfect is also called the " present perfect" and, in Spanish, ''pasado perfecto'' or ''pretérito perfecto compuesto''. It is described as a "compound" tense (''compuesto'' in Spanish) because it is formed with the auxiliary verb ''haber'' plus a main verb.

The preterite, also called the "simple past" and, in Spanish, ''pretérito indefinido'' or ''pretérito perfecto simple'', is considered a "simple" tense because it is formed of a single word: the verb stem with an inflectional ending for person, number, etc.

The choice between preterite and perfect, according to prescriptive grammars from both Spain and the Americas, is based on the psychological time frame—whether expressed or merely implied—in which the past action is embedded. If that time frame includes the present moment (i.e. if the speaker views the past action as somehow related to the moment of speaking), then the recommended tense is the perfect (''he llegado''). But if the time frame does not include the present—if the speaker views the action as only in the past, with little or no relation to the moment of speaking—then the recommended tense is the preterite (''llegué''). This is also the real spontaneous usage in most of Spain.

Following this criterion, an explicit time frame such as ''hoy'' ('today') or ''este año'' ('this year') includes the present and thus dictates the compound tense: ''Este año he cantado'' ('I have sung this year'). Conversely, a time frame such as ''ayer'' ('yesterday') or ''la semana pasada'' ('last week') does not include the present and therefore calls for the preterite: ''La semana pasada canté'' ('I sang last week').

However, in most of the Americas, and in the Canary Islands, the preterite is used for all actions viewed as completed in the past. It tends to be used in the same way in those parts of Spain where the local languages and vernaculars do not have compound tenses, that is, the Galician-speaking area and the neighbouring Astur-Leonese-speaking area.

In most of Spain, the compound tense is preferred in most cases when the action described is close to the present moment:
*''He viajado a (los) Estados Unidos.'' ('I have (just) traveled to the USA')
*''Cuando he llegado, la he visto.'' ('when I arrived, I saw her')
*''¿Qué ha pasado?'' ('What has happened?')
Prescriptive norms would rule out the compound tense in a ''cuando''-clause, as in the second example above.

Meanwhile, in Galicia, León, Asturias, Canary Islands and the Americas, speakers follow the opposite tendency, using the simple past tense in most cases, even if the action takes place at some time close to the present:
*''Ya viajé a (los) Estados Unidos.'' ('I ave alreadytraveled to (the) USA')
*''Cuando llegué, la vi.'' ('when I arrived, I saw her')
*''¿Qué pasó?'' ('what happened?')

For some speakers of American Spanish, the compound tense can sound affected, bookish, or foreign.

In Latin America one could say, "''he viajado a España varias veces''" ('I have traveled to Spain several times'), to express a repeated action, as in English. But to say ''El año pasado he viajado a España'' would sound ungrammatical (as it would also be in English to say "last year, I have traveled to Spain", as ''last year'' implies that the relevant time period does not include the present). In Spain, speakers use the compound tense when the period of time considered has not ended, as in ''he comprado un coche este año'' ('I have bought a car this year'). Meanwhile, an American Spanish-speaker is more likely to say, "''compré un carro este año''" ('I bought a car this year').

Vocabulary

Different regional varieties of Spanish vary in terms of vocabulary as well. This includes both words that exist only in certain varieties (especially words borrowed from indigenous languages of the Americas), and words that are used differently in different areas. Among words borrowed from indigenous languages are many names for food, plants and animals, clothes, and household object, such as the following items of Mexican Spanish vocabulary borrowed from Nahuatl.

In addition to loan words, there are a number of Spanish words that have developed distinct senses in different regional dialects. That is, for certain words a distinct meaning, either in addition to the standard meaning or in place of it, exists in some varieties of Spanish.

Mutual comprehension

The different dialects and accents do not block cross-understanding among the educated. Meanwhile, the basilects have diverged more. The unity of the language is reflected in the fact that early imported sound films were dubbed into one version for the entire Spanish-speaking market. Currently, films not originally in Spanish (usually Hollywood productions) are dubbed separately into two accents: one for Spain and one for the Americas (using a neutral standardized accent without regionalisms). Some high-budget productions, however, such as the ''Harry Potter'' film series, have had dubs in three or more of the major accents. On the other hand, productions from another Spanish-language country are seldom dubbed. Exceptionally, the made-in-Spain animated features '' Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds'' and '' The World of David the Gnome'', as well as TV serials from the Andean countries such as ''Karkú'' (Chile), have had a Mexican dub. The popularity of ''telenovelas'' and music familiarizes the speakers with other accents 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.

See also

Cants and argots

*Bron of migrant merchants and artisans of Asturias and León
* Caló language of Gitanos
* Caló of Chicanos
*Coa of Chilean criminals
* Cheli of Madrid
*Gacería of Cantalejo, Spain
* Germanía of Spanish Golden Century criminals
* Lunfardo of Porteño Spanish
* Parlache originated in the city of Medellin

Mixes with other languages

* Spanish-based creole languages
*Annobonese language of Annobón Province and Bioko, Equatorial Guinea
* Belgranodeutsch of Buenos Aires
*Castrapo of Galicia
* Amestao of Asturias
*Chavacano of the Philippines
* Cocoliche of Buenos Aires
* Frespañol of French–Spanish contact
*Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews
* Llanito of Gibraltar
* Palenquero of Colombia
* Papiamento of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire
* Pichinglis of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea
*Portuñol of the Brazilian border
*Spanglish of the United States of America
* Jopara language in Paraguay with Guarani language

Other

*History of the Spanish language
*Spanish phonology
* Andalusian Spanish
** Andalusian language movement
*Castilian Spanish
* Central American Spanish
*South American Spanish
* Equatoguinean Spanish
* Philippine Spanish

Notes

Bibliography

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Further reading

* Alonso Zamora Vicente, ''Dialectología Española'' (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1960) is highly detailed.

External links

Isogloss maps of phonetic variants in the Iberian PeninsulaMap of Spanish dialects in the Iberian PeninsulaCosta Rican Spanish DictionarySpanish learning site with Argentinian speakersHispanic American Dictionary with variants for every countryCOSER
Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spanish Dialects And Varieties

Dialects And Varieties