Costa Rican Spanish

Costa Rican Spanish () is the form of the Spanish language spoken in Costa Rica. It is one of the dialects of Central American Spanish. Nevertheless, because the country was more remote than its neighbors, the development of this variety of Spanish followed a distinct path.

Today, despite the relatively small size of the country, each province maintains unique characteristics in pronunciation and lexicon. For instance, Guanacaste Province's variety bears similarity to that of Nicaragua, while the ''tú'' form can be found more toward the border with Panama.

Phonetics and Phonology

The distinguishing characteristics of Costa Rican phonetics include the following:
* Assibilation of the "double-R" phoneme in some speakers (spelled word-initially and intervocalically), especially in rural areas, resulting in a voiced alveolar approximant ()—thus ("clothing"), ''carro'' ("car"). Assibilation also affects the sequence , giving it a sound that is similar to .
* The double-R phoneme and the single-R phoneme after a t, can also be realized as voiced alveolar approximant � by the majority of speakers, with a sound similar to the of American English. Thus ''ropa'' ("clothing"), ''carro'' ("car") and ''cuatro'' ("four"). Except before a consonant (this does not apply to all speakers) in which case is pronounced as a voiced alveolar trill . Thus ''puerta'' ("door"), ''guardar'' ("to save").
''Note: This does not apply to the single-R phoneme which is typically pronounced as an alveolar tap � as in most varieties of Spanish.''
* Velarization of word-final (before a pause or a vowel), i.e. pronunciation as the velar nasal .
* can be lost in contact with the front vowels and .
*The Costa Rican dialect adopted the voiceless alveolar affricate and the cluster (originally ) represented by the respective digraphs and in loanwords of Nahuatl origin, for example ''quetzal'' and ''tlapalería'' ('hardware store'). Even words of Greek and Latin origin with , such as and , are pronounced with : , (compare , in Spain and other dialects in Hispanic America).
*Syllable-final is only infrequently aspirated, or pronounced as an , among middle-class speakers in central Costa Rica. It may be aspirated most often at the end of a word and before another word which begins in a vowel, but still occurs most of the time. Costa Rica's border regions with Panama show higher rates of -reduction (syllable-final /s/ is pronounced in border regions of Costa Rica and Nicaragua).
*Between vowels, is frequently voiced. This is most common in faster, spontaneous speech, before unstressed vowels, and word-finally, and is also more common among men than women.
*The phoneme represented by , , is typically just a weak aspiration, like . In words like 'work', it can barely be heard.

Second person singular pronouns

Usted

''Usted'' is the predominant second person singular pronoun in Costa Rican Spanish. Young men have been leading a trend in addressing close friends and peers with , which is not typical of other Spanish dialects. Some speakers use only ''usted'' in addressing others, never ''vos'' or . Others use both ''usted'' and ''vos'', according to the situation.

Vos

''Vos'' is a second person singular pronoun used by many speakers in certain relationships of familiarity or informal contexts. Voseo is widely used between friends, family, people of the same age, etc. It is also commonly used in the university context between students. Some adults use ''vos'' to address children or juveniles, but other adults address everyone regardless of age or status with ''usted''. Costa Ricans tend to use ''usted'' with foreigners. has become less popular in adults below the age of thirty, as of 2016.

Tú

''Tú'' is occasionally used in Costa Rican Spanish. However, due in part to the influence of Mexican television programming, Costa Ricans are familiar with tuteo, and some television viewers, especially children, have begun to use it in limited contexts. It used to be much rarer, and is often considered not really "Costa Rican." As of 2016, young adults use as infrequently as do older adults.

Tiquismos

Costa Ricans are colloquially called "ticos" (based on the frequent use of the diminutive ending ''-ico'' following a /t/, as in ''momentico''), and thus colloquial expressions characteristic of Costa Rica are called ''tiquismos''. ''Tiquismos'' and ''pachuquismos'' are used frequently in Costa Rica. The latter are expressions of popular street Spanish which can be considered vulgar and offensive if used in the wrong context. Many of these words, even when found in a standard Spanish dictionary, do not have the same meaning there as in Costa Rica. Learning colloquial expressions can be a guide to understanding the humor and character of the Costa Rican culture.Guide to Costa Rican Spanish
(blog).

Here are some examples of Costa Rican slang.
* ''Mae, ese chante es muy tuanis'': "Dude, that house is pretty cool".
* ''Esta panta no me cuadra porque me chima las piernas'': "I don’t like these shorts because they chafe my legs".
* ''¡Qué taco me dio esa vara!'': "That thing really scared me!"

References

Bibliography

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External links

Jergas de habla hispana
(Spanish dictionary specializing in slang and colloquial expressions, featuring all Spanish-speaking countries, including Costa Rica).

See also

* Latin American Spanish

{{Languages of Costa Rica

Central American Spanish
Spanish