History
Most of the Spanish-speaking settlers came from Andalusia (southern Spain) and the Canary Islands. When they first arrived in what is now the Dominican Republic, the first native people they had contact with were the Arawak language, Arawak-speaking Taino people. Spanish, just as in other Latin American countries, completely replaced the indigenous languages (Taíno language, Taíno, Macorix language, Macorix and Ciguayo language, Ciguayo) of the Dominican Republic to the point where they became entirely extinct, mainly due to the fact that the majority of the indigenous population quickly died out only a few years after European contact. However, when the Spanish arrived, they found the flora and fauna of the island, as well as various cultural artifacts, very different from those of Spain, so many of the words used by the natives to name these things were conserved and assimilated, thereby enriching Spanish lexicon. Some of these words include: ''Chili pepper, ají, Annona squamosa, anón, sweet potato, batata, Barbecue, barbacoa, Guaco, bejuco, Bixa orellana, bija, Caiman (genus), caiman, Canoe, canoa, Mahogany, caoba, Subsistence agriculture, conuco, Soursop#Annona muricata, guanábana, Guava, guayaba, Hammock, hamaca, Spondias mombin, hobo (jobo), hutia, hutía, iguana, Genipa americana, jagua, Peanut, maní, Papaya, papaya (lechosa), Savanna, sabana, Manihot esculenta, yuca.'' Dominican Spanish also includes words indirectly borrowed from African languages via Portuguese language, Portuguese, such as ''cachimbo'', which was borrowed from the Portuguese word "cacimba", having the latter being borrowed from the Bantu "cazimba". Many of these African influences are quite distant and left a minor impact on modern day Dominican Spanish, and usually these words are also used in other Spanish-speaking countries as far-away as Argentina, therefore it is not just a phenomenon restricted to the Dominican Republic but common in the Latin American Spanish (compared to European Spanish). Dominican Spanish has also received some limited influence from Haitian Creole, due to the Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo and continuing cross-border contacts. Haitian influence is stronger in border regions. Haitian Creole and Samaná English have also influenced the speech of Samaná Province further adding to the African influence found in the dialect.Phonology
*Like most other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish features ''yeísmo'': the sounds represented by ''ll'' (the palatal lateral ) and ''y'' (historically the palatal approximant ) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a or (these are the sounds in English language, English ''York'' and ''John''). That is, in the Dominican Republic (as in most of Latin America and Spain), ''se cayó'' "he fell down" is homophonous with ''se calló'' "he became silent / he shut up". *Dominican Spanish has seseo (there is no distinction between and ). That is, ''caza'' ("hunt") is homophonous with ''casa'' ("house"). ''Seseo'' is common to nearly all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain. *Strong contraction in everyday speech is common, as in ''"voy a"'' into ''"vuá"'' or ''"voá"'', or ''"¿para adónde vas?"'' into ''"¿p'ónde va'?"''. Another example: ''"David 'tá 'co'ta'o"'', from ''"David está acostado"'' ("David is lying down / David is sleeping"), though vowel degemination is normal in most Spanish dialects, cf. Standard Peninsular ''"David est'acostado"'', normally pronounced with a single . *The fricative has a tendency to disappear or to become a voiceless glottal fricative, voiceless or voiced glottal fricative , the latter before voiced consonants, at the end of syllables. The 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 (or , with a degeminated ), but in ''las águilas azules'' "the blue eagles", syllable-final in ''las'' and ''águilas'' might be resyllabified into the initial syllable of the following vowel-initial words and remain (), or become (it varies by speaker). Spanish dialects and varieties#debuccalization of coda /s/, Aspiration or disappearance of syllable-final is common to much of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain. Syllable-final [s] is less frequently reduced in formal speech, like TV broadcasts. **Example 1: To say ''lo niño'' or ''los niño'', instead of ''los niños'' **Example 2: To say ''lluvia ailada'' or ''lluvias ailada'', instead of ''lluvias aisladas'' * Syllable-initial can occasionally be aspirated as well in rural parts of El Cibao. This occurs most often in the reflexive pronoun and in 'yes'. *In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final ''r'' sound in verb infinitives. The elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech. *Syllable-final ''r'' tends to be changed in many words by an ''i'' sound in the Northerly Cibao and in El Seibo Province and by an ''l'' (L) in the Eastern and in the capital city (Santo Domingo): the verb ''correr'' (to run) is pronounced ''correi'' and ''correl'' respectively, and ''perdón'' (forgiveness) becomes ''peidón'' and ''peldón''. Final is also merged into in El Cibao and El Seibo. This substitution with the ''i'' is delicately (almost mutely) present in Andalusian Spanish, and also the ''l'' use is prototypical, and more marked, in Puerto Rican Spanish. It is believed to be of Andalusian origin. *The "d" is silent in the common word-ending ''-ado''. For example, the words ''casado'' (married) and ''lado'' (side, way) are pronounced as ''casao'' and ''lao'' in Dominican Spanish. *In a few parts of the country, an "el" at the end of a word is pronounced as "err." For example, ''Miguel'' may be pronounced as ''Miguer'' in Dominican Spanish, a feature shared with Andalusian Spanish and in contrast to Puerto Rican Spanish, where the reverse occurs, e.g. pronouncing the name ''Arturo'' (Arthur) as ''Alturo''. * Word-final Spanish dialects and varieties#Word-final -n, is typically velarized at the end of a phrase or before another word starting in a vowel. Final may also be velarized word internally. In rural El Cibao, final may also be completely elided, typically nasalizing the preceding vowel, but occasionally it can be dropped entirely with no trace of nasalization. That total elision is most common among children. * The alveolar trill and even the tap can be replaced with an uvular trill among some rural speakers from El Cibao. * In rural parts of El Cibao, final unstressed vowels are often reduced in intensity and length, and post-tonic can be raised to , thus 'rooster' can be pronounced like . In , third person singular preterite form of 'to hear', the initial is often also raised to by rural Cibaeños: . Other differences with Standard Spanish include adding the ''s'' erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it. Example 1: *standard: ''administraciones públicas'' [public administrations] *vernacular: ''aminitracione pública'' *hypercorrected: ''asministracione púsblica'' Example 2: *standard: ''jaguar'' [jaguar] *vernacular: ''jagual'' / ''jaguai'' *hypercorrected: ''jasguar'' The hypercorrected form is often part of a blatantly sarcastic mode of speech, commonly used for joking rather than everyday speech. It's often called 'speaking finely', with an extra 's' in . Among rural children in El Cibao, s-insertion is still common, which calls into question its status as a hypercorrection since these children have little exposure to standard forms of speech. Word-internally, s-insertion is most common before voiceless stop consonants, especially , and almost never occurs before nasals. Rural residents of El Cibao frequently insert an s after function words, as in 'of everything'. This is typically before stop consonants but can occasionally be before vowels, as in 'of animals'. Some speakers also use final s-insertion as a prosodic boundary marker. There are also hypercorrections of the merger of and into . For example, 'Haiti' may be pronounced .Grammar
Voseo is unknown in Dominican Spanish. Some well-known grammatical features of Dominican Spanish include the use of overt dummy pronouns, as in 'there is rice', especially prominent in El Cibao, instead of , and double negation, as in 'I am not going'. Both of those are associated with more marginalized sociolects. Pedro Henríquez Ureña claims that, at least until 1940, the educated population of the Dominican Republic continued to use the Spanish verbs#Future subjunctive (futuro (simple) de subjuntivo), future subjunctive verb forms (). Educated Dominicans never used the Spanish verbs#Simple conditional (condicional simple or pospretérito)), conditional in place of the Spanish verbs#Imperfect subjunctive (imperfecto de subjuntivo), imperfect subjunctive, as in 'If I had seen', nor did they ever use the imperfect subjunctive instead of the conditional, as in 'then I would have said'. Clitic Spanish object pronouns, object pronouns could often be placed after a finite verb, especially in narration, as in instead of the typical 'arrives and gets dressed quickly'. Like in other Caribbean Spanish, Caribbean varieties of Spanish, explicit, redundant subject pronouns are frequent in Dominican Spanish. Pronominal 'one' may be frequently used, in cases where speakers of other varieties would use impersonal or reflexive constructions. Personal subject pronouns can be used to refer to inanimate objects: 'She (the community) is big'. Dominican Spanish allows for "preverbal placement of subjects with interrogatives and with non-finite clauses". In more normative speech, the subject would typically go after the verb instead. Some examples are: 'What do you guys want to eat?' and 'That's for Odalis to take it to Lari'. Other prominent aspects of Dominican Spanish include focalizing constructions, and clause-final negation and affirmation: * 'You had to come earlier (it was)' * 'French, I don't know if it's easy to learn' * 'Mom knew a lot'Rural El Cibao
In addition to these traits, the following has been found in rural speech in El Cibao, among people who are functionally illiterate, by : * A change from to in the first-person plural () endings with Stress (linguistics), antepenultimate stress, as in the past subjunctive, imperfect, and conditional tenses, ie: to , to , to . This is likely due to the influence of the clitic , and analogy with standard forms such as 'call us'. * Subjunctive forms used instead of the imperative, as in 'we're bringing five hundredweights of product', or 'something here that we call yagua'. * Substitution of 'he/she/it has' for 'I have', for example, 'I gave them a beating for that'. * General archaic, nonstandard forms of common verbs: 'There could be Haitians over there', with instead of , or 'I wanted to go' with instead of . * As in many other dialects, impersonal and may show third person plural agreement. What's more peculiar is that they may also be conjugated in other persons as well: ** 'It's been three months since it last rained' ** 'There were some who knew' ** 'It's been some time since I've gone over there' ** 'There are few of us families in Los Compos' ** 'There are two or three of us' * and , when modifying adjectives, often are inflected for gender, thus 'I have a half-bad belly'. * and can be used as adverbs without the suffix. Also, when used as adjectives, they don't always agree with plural subjects: 'it's learned easily', 'they're very difficult'. * The plural forms of nouns ending in stressed vowels typically are formed with or , instead of the standard : 'I don't go to the cabarets'. This is likely due to an analogy with words like 'happy', 'pen', pronounced and in the singular but and in the plural. * Those same -final words may receive a plural interpretation: 'those are pens'. * 'well' may be used as a predicate adjective, as in 'they're good'. * and , typically meaning 'to know' and 'to cost', have acquired a modal meaning: 'It used to last up to 25 days', 'I'll have to go to the clinic'. * 'anyone' can be used in reference to a first person subject, as in for 'I must go'. Likely related to the frequent use of subject pronouns, in the Cibao region 'it/there' may be used as a dummy pronoun with "impersonal and meteorological verbs, unaccusative verb, unaccusative predicates, impersonal passives, and other constructions in which transitives are used intransitively": * 'There are people who learn it (English) well' * 'It's not raining here' * 'Haitians come here' * 'There's still a lot of time left' * 'Because if some people from outside arrive' * 'Haitians come here' It's been suggested that functions as a discourse marker. Also, among rural Cibaeño speakers at least, Thematic_relation#Experiencer, experiencers tend to become the subject rather than the object of certain verbs such as , , and : * , instead of 'I'd like to be a teacher' * for 'None of that's happened to me' * for 'Although I'll need that' * for 'The hummingbirds like coming to these flowers' Cibaeños often drop the should occur before a definite animate direct object: * 'Hearing Haitians' * 'To understand people from France' They also use a unique pattern of cliticization: * for 'We will have to give it to them' * for 'Go sow it'Vocabulary
Dominican vocabulary
As in every dialect, Dominican Spanish has numerous vocabulary differences from other forms of the language. The Dominican Academy of Letters (Academia Dominicana de la Lengua) published in November 2013 a dictionary of Dominican terms (''Diccionario del español dominicano'') containing close to 11,000 words and phrases peculiar to the Dominican dialect. Here are some examples: A slightly pejorative slang expression also common around most of the Caribbean basin is ''vaina''. The Castilian meanings are "sheath", "pod", "shell", "shell casing", and "hull" (of a plant). It is descended from the Latin word "vāgīna", which meant "sheath".Similarities in Spanish dialects
Below are different vocabulary words to demonstrate the similarities between the dialects of the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries, including Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. The dialects of Andalusia and the Canary Islands, two regions of Spain that have been highly influential on the dialects of these countries, are also included.Some words and names borrowed from Arawakan
References
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