Dominican Spanish

Dominican Spanish
Dominican Spanish
Español dominicano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol dominiˈkano]
Native to	Dominican Republic
Native speakers	13 million (Including Dominican diaspora in other countries and immigrants living in Dominican Republic) (2014); 9 million (only including Dominicans in DR)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian Spanish South American Spanish Caribbean Spanish Dominican Spanish; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Spanish alphabet (Latin script)
Official status
Official language in	Dominican Republic
Regulated by	Academia Dominicana de la Lengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	es-DO

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.^[3]^[4]

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.^[5]

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.^[6] 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.

^ Spanish → Dominican Republic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ "ISO 639-2 Language Code search". Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
^ Henríquez Ureña (1940)
^ Del Caribe, Números 28-33 (in Spanish). Casa del Caribe. 1998. p. 84.
^ Lipski, John M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. Longman. p. 237: Unlike what happened in Cuba and to a lesser extent in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic did not see an upsurge in the importation of African slaves around the turn of the nineteenth century. The cultural and linguistic roots of most Afro-Dominicans go much further back, and these groups have spoken Spanish for so long that only a few lexical Africanisms are found.
^ John Lipski (May 1994). "A New Perspective on Afro-Dominican Spanish: the Haitian Contribution". Research Papers. digitalrepository.unm.edu.

[1] Spanish → Dominican Republic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

[2] "ISO 639-2 Language Code search". Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 September 2017.

[HenriquezUrenna-3] Henríquez Ureña (1940)

[4] Del Caribe, Números 28-33 (in Spanish). Casa del Caribe. 1998. p. 84.

[5] Lipski, John M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. Longman. p. 237: Unlike what happened in Cuba and to a lesser extent in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic did not see an upsurge in the importation of African slaves around the turn of the nineteenth century. The cultural and linguistic roots of most Afro-Dominicans go much further back, and these groups have spoken Spanish for so long that only a few lexical Africanisms are found.

[Lipski1-6] John Lipski (May 1994). "A New Perspective on Afro-Dominican Spanish: the Haitian Contribution". Research Papers. digitalrepository.unm.edu.

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