Dominican Spanish

Variety (or varieties) of Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic

Dominican Spanish (español dominicano) is Spanish as spoken in the Dominican Republic; and also among the Dominican diaspora, most of whom live in the United States, chiefly in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Dominican Spanish, a Caribbean variety of Spanish, is based on the Andalusian and Canarian Spanish dialects of southern Spain, and has influences from Native Taíno and other Arawakan languages. Speakers of Dominican Spanish may also use conservative words that are similar to older variants of Spanish. The variety spoken in the Cibao region is influenced by the 16th and 17th century Spanish and Portuguese colonists in the Cibao valley, and shows a greater than average influence by the 18th century Canarian settlers. Despite the large share of African ancestry among Dominicans (see Afro Dominicans), the African element in the local Spanish is not as important as one might expect. There is also a significant influence from African languages in the Spanish spoken by Haitian and Afro Caribbean migrant descendants in the Dominican Republic, particularly in grammar and phonetics. However, second generation immigrants from Haiti use to speak very close to the Dominican standard speech, if not actually speaking it, assimilating into the mainstream speech.

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 speaking Taino people. Spanish, just as in other Latin American countries, completely replaced the indigenous languages (Taíno, Macorix and 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: ají, anón, batata, barbacoa, bejuco, bija, caiman, canoa, caoba, conuco, guanábana, guayaba, hamaca, hobo (jobo), hutía, iguana, jagua, maní, papaya (lechosa), sabana, yuca. Dominican Spanish also includes words indirectly borrowed from African languages via 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

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 hay arroz, and double negation, as in yo no voy no '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 future subjunctive verb forms (hablare, hubiere). Educated Dominicans never used the conditional in place of the imperfect subjunctive, as in Si yo habría visto 'If I had seen', nor did they ever use the imperfect subjunctive instead of the conditional, as in entonces yo hubiese dicho 'then I would have said'. Clitic object pronouns could often be placed after a finite verb, especially in narration, as in llega y vístese de prisa instead of the typical llega y se viste de prisa 'arrives and gets dressed quickly'.

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:

Dominican Spanish Standard Spanish English aposento (a Spanish archaism also meaning "chamber") habitación room Dominican slang: tató (shortened from "está todo (bien)") bien good, fine guapo/ a agresivo/ a or enojado/ a (in Spain apuesto/ a ) brave, combative or angry, upset chinola maracuyá passion fruit lechosa papaya papaya / pawpaw cuartos (archaism occasionally used in standard Spanish also; literally means "quarters") dinero money chin / chin chin (of Arawak origin) un poco a bit guagua (also used in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Canary Islands) autobús coach / bus motoconcho mototaxi motorbike taxi pasola (a generic term derived from a trademark) ciclomotor scooter yipeta (a generic term derived from a trademark) (vehículo) todoterreno jeep / SUV conuco (Arawak origin), finca (finca is also commonly used in Central America) granja farm/agricultural field colmado (this is an archaism seldom used in Spanish), and pulpería tienda de ultramarinos convenience store zafacón (possibly a corrupted anglicism of safety can) bote de basura trash can mata árbol tree conflé (possibly a corrupted anglicism of corn flakes) cereal cereal Pamper (also used in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Central America. It is believed to be a genericized term deriving from a trademark.) pañal desechable disposable diaper (Pampers) Vaporu (a generic term derived from a trademark) crema mentolada ointment (Vicks VapoRub)

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". In the Dominican Republic "vaina" is mainly a thing, a matter, or simply "stuff". For example, ¿Qué vaina es esa? means ¿Qué cosa es esa?, "What is that thing/stuff?". Anglicisms—due to cultural and commercial influence from the United States and the American occupations of the Dominican Republic during 1916–1924 and 1965–1966—are extremely common in Dominican Spanish, more so than in any other Spanish variant except for Puerto Rican and perhaps Northern Mexican Spanish. A prime example of this is "vaguada", which is a corruption of the English "bad weather", though in Dominican Spanish the term has come to mean storm or torrential downpour, rather than a spot of unpleasant climate. Hence, a common Dominican expression: "Viene una vaguada", "here comes a vaguada", or "here comes a storm". Another excellent example of this is "boche", a corruption of the English "bull shit", though in Dominican Spanish the term has come to mean a reprimanding, fulmination, or harangue in general terms. Hence, a common Dominican expression: "Me echaron un boche", "they threw me a boche", or "they reprimanded me". Furthermore, is the Dominican Spanish word for SUV, "yipeta", "jeepeta", or rarely "gipeta". This term is a corruption of the American "Jeep", which was the primary mode of transport for the GIs throughout the country during the occupation in the 1960s. Dominican license plates for SUVs are marked with a "G" for "gipeta", a variant of, and pronounced like, "yipeta", before their serial number. The word "tichel", from "T shirt", also refers to a rugby shirt, association football jersey, or undershirt, and similarly, "corn flakes" and its variant "con fléi" can refer to any breakfast cereal, in Dominican Spanish, be it puffed corn, bran flakes, or puffed wheat. The borrowing "polo shirt" is frequently pronounced polo ché. Another phenomenon related to Anglicisms is the usage of brand names as common names for certain objects. For example, "Gillette" and its derivative yilé refer to any razor, and while the machete is known as machete, this being originally a Spanish word, it is sometimes referred to as a "colín", derived from "Collins & Co.", name of a former Connecticut toolmaker.

Arawak Translation ají chili/hot pepper Anacaona golden flower arepa corn cake bara whip barbacoa barbecue ("barbecue" is a borrowing derived from barbacoa). A four legged stand made of sticks, used by the Taínos for roasting meat. batata sweet potato bohío small square house (typical countryside homes) cacata Hispaniolan giant tarantula ceiba silkcotton tree canoa small boat, canoe (canoe is a borrowing derived from canoa) Cibao rocky land cocuyo or cucuyo small click beetle with a blueish light cohiba tobacco/tobacco leaves guayo grater jaiba river crab (specifically Epilobocera haytensis) or freshwater crayfish jicotea aquatic turtle (most likely Trachemys decorata) maraca gourd rattle, musical instrument made of higuera gourd maco toad, bullfrog mime little insect, typically a fruit fly sabana savanna, treeless plain tobacco yagua a small palm native to Hispaniola