Bolivian Spanish (or Castilian) is the variety of Spanish spoken by the majority of the population in

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

, either as a mother tongue or as a second language. Within the Spanish of Bolivia there are different regional varieties. In the border areas, Bolivia shares dialectal features with the neighboring countries. Throughout Bolivia the preservation of phonemic contrast between and the lateral (i.e. the absence of yeísmo) is the norm.Lipski 1994:188 Aspiration of syllable-final is frequent in the lowlands, while in the highlands the sibilant tends to be preserved, realized either as a laminal or, frequently, an apical .Canfield 1981:29 In highland dialects, the "trill" phoneme (orthographic or word-initial ) is often assibilated, realized as a voiced apicoalveolar fricative, or alveolar approximant, which pronunciation is similar to the sound of () in English. In highland Bolivian Spanish there is "intense reduction" of unstressed vowels in contact with , often resulting in syllables with as their nucleus, e.g. ''pues'' ("well,...") pronounced .Canfield 1981:29–30

Dialects of Spanish in Bolivia

Andean Spanish

Camba Spanish

This variety of Spanish is spoken on the Chaco-Beni plain and in the Santa Cruz valleys, a region that includes the departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando.Coimbra Sanz Spanish is spoken by almost the entire population of these regions, and—like Spanish throughout the Americas—has its basis in

Andalusian Spanish The Andalusian dialects of Spanish ( es, andaluz, , ) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varietie ...

and Canarian Spanish, but with influences of native languages such as Chiquitano, Chané and Guarani, as well as Old World languages including Portuguese and Arabic. And although it is fairly uniform across regions and social classes, there are subtle geographical differences. This dialect is characterized by the debuccalization ("aspiration") of final . For example, the word ''pues'' is pronounced . For the second-person-singular pronoun and verb forms, the use of " voseo" is dominant. The use of

diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...

''-ingo'' and the

augmentative An augmentative (abbreviated ) is a morphological form of a word which expresses greater intensity, often in size but also in other attributes. It is the opposite of a diminutive. Overaugmenting something often makes it grotesque and so in so ...

''-ango'' is unique to this dialect. For example: ''chiquitingo'' ("very small") and ''grandango'' ("very large"). Loanwords from Chiquitano or from an extinct variety close to Chiquitano include ''bi'' 'genipa', ''masi'' 'squirrel', ''peni'' 'lizard', ''peta'' 'turtle, tortoise', ''jachi'' '

chicha ''Chicha'' is a fermented (alcoholic) or non-fermented beverage of Latin America, emerging from the Andes and Amazonia regions. In both the pre- and post-Spanish conquest periods, corn beer (''chicha de jora'') made from a variety of maize land ...

leftover', ''jichi'' 'worm; jichi spirit', among many others.

Chapaco Spanish

This dialect is spoken mainly in the valleys and the Gran Chaco of the department of Tarija, but also in the region of

Villa Abecia Villa Abecia, also Camataqui, is a small town in Bolivia. References Populated places in Chuquisaca Department {{Chuquisaca-geo-stub ...

and Camargo (in the department of Chuquisaca), in the province of

Sud Chichas Sud Chichas (or: ''Sur Chichas'') is a province in the Bolivian department of Potosí. Its seat is Tupiza. Location Sud Chichas province is one of sixteen provinces in the Potosí Department. It is located between 20° 51' and 21° 50' South and ...

(capital Tupiza), and in the Chaco regions of Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz. The second-person-singular voseo is in full use in Tupiza, in the west of Tarija, and in the rest of the aforementioned areas. The Chapaco accent has an intonation similar to that of Jujuy, Salta, and Tucumán in Argentina, as the territory where it was spoken before was the Río de la Plata Province of Tarija. It has similar intonation throughout the Bolivian Chaco, Tupiza (Sud Chichas) and the Chuquisaca valleys of Camargo, Villa Abecia, Azurduy, Alcalá, etc.

Valluno Spanish

This variety is spoken in the departments of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca. It is somewhat similar to Andean Spanish but differs in intonation and the use of idiomatic expressions, due to the mixture of Spanish and Quechua spoken in the valleys of Bolivia.

Tuteo or voseo

Because many institutions and companies use "tú" and the "tuteante" verb forms for the familiar second-person singular, it is common to encounter the erroneous statement that "tuteo" rather than "voseo" is the usual form in the speech of Bolivia.

Similarities in dialects

This chart shows the similarities between the dialects of Spanish spoken in

and those spoken in its neighboring Spanish-speaking countries Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Paraguay, as well as Portuguese spoken in neighboring Brazil.

References

Bibliography

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External links

Languages of Bolivia (Radboud University of Nijmegen)
{{authority control Spanish dialects of South America Bolivian culture Spanish