Andean Spanish is a dialect of Spanish spoken in the central

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

, from southern

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

, with influence as far south as northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

and Northwestern Argentina, passing through

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

, and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

. While similar to other Spanish dialects, Andean Spanish shows influence from Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous languages, due to prolonged and intense language contact. This influence is especially strong in rural areas.

Phonology

* In Andean Spanish, the is never aspirated in the final position and so is pronounced , not , but it is sometimes pronounced apical, rather than laminal, a trait characteristic of Northern Spain. The apical sound is sometimes perceived as transitional between and , and it is associated with a large number of northern Spanish settlers in Andean region. In southern Bolivia and northern Chile, syllable-final /s/ is mostly aspirated. * As in all American dialects of Spanish, Andean Spanish has ( is not distinguished from ). Thus, ("house") and ("hunt") are homophones. However, in

Cusco Region Cusco, also spelled Cuzco (; ), is a department and region in Peru and is the fourth-largest department in the country, after Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It borders the departments of Ucayali on the north; Madre de Dios and Puno ...

and Cajamarca, many speakers realize as in many words, particularly in . is common to all of America, the Canary Islands, and several areas in southern Spain. * Especially in the Ecuadorian variant, coda is often voiced to before a vowel or before a voiced consonant (including sonorants), but the latter is also a feature of most other Spanish dialects. In the Peruvian variant, it is palatalized before . * In Bolivia, Ecuador, and southern Peru, and do not merge (lack of

yeísmo (; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ). It is an examp ...

). In northern Ecuador, tends to be pronounced as a

voiced postalveolar fricative The voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describe ...

. However, yeísmo is on the rise among Ecuador's middle and upper classes. * Often the vowels and or and are merged because of the influence of the trivocal system of Quechua and Aymara. * and are assibilated to and , respectively. This is in decline among the middle and upper classes. * is velar rather than glottal . * is realised as bilabial , sometimes with an epenthetic following. *Emphasis is given to the consonants but the vowels are weakened, especially for unstressed syllables (like in

Mexican Spanish Mexican Spanish () is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in Mexico and its bordering regions. Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, more than double any other country in the world. Spanish is spo ...

, but not as marked). *The intonation patterns of some Andean accents, such as those of Cusco, have been influenced by those of Quechua. Even monolingual Spanish speakers can show Quechua influence in their intonation.

Syntax and morphology

Voseo In Spanish grammar, () is the use of as a grammatical person, second-person grammatical number, singular pronoun, along with its associated verbal forms, in certain regions where the language is spoken. In those regions it replaces , i.e. th ...

is common in the Bolivian and Ecuadorian Andes, largely among rural and poorer speakers. It is nearly extinct in Peru. Some speakers tend towards pronominal voseo, using with the conjugations of verbs, whereas more indigenous speakers tend to use the conjugations. Words like and are often used similarly to the modal suffixes of Quechua and Aymara. They can be stacked at the end of a clause:

"Just go ahead and tell him."

Andean Spanish also widely uses redundant "double possessives" as in:

"I'm going to Maria's house."

This also shows how can indicate "motion towards" in the Andes. may also be used "before a locative adverb, as in 'I live here' or 'Water is coming out there.'" Due to Aymara and Quechua influence, Andean Spanish often uses the pluperfect tense or clause-final "he/she says" to indicate

evidentiality In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...

. Evidential is more common in monolingual Peruvian Spanish. In upper Ecuador, a + gerund construction is common, ie:

"Pedro fixed my watch."

Vocabulary

Andean Spanish typically uses more loans from Aymara and Quechua than other Spanish varieties. In addition, some common words have different meanings. , meaning "foot," can refer to the whole leg, due to Aymara influence. ("always") can mean "still."

References

Bibliography

* * * Escobar, Alberto: ''Variaciones sociolingüísticas del castellano en el Perú''.- Lima 1978.- * Granda, German: ''Estudios de lingüística andina''.- Lima Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2001.- * * Lapesa, Rafael.: ''Historia de la lengua española''.- Madrid, 1986.- * Canfield, Delos Lincoln.: ''La pronunciación del español de América''.- Chicago, The University of Chicago, 1981.- * Mackenzie, Ian: ''A Linguistic Introduction to Spanish''.- University of Newcastle upon Tyne, LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 35.- . {{Spanish variants by continent Spanish dialects of South America