El espa?ol de Santo Domingo.

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Pib

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[B]andy a[/B] said:
I disagree though about Dominican ebonics. I think that is part of what keeps them backward. I once had a cabbie trying to find a street for me with a "6" in the name. He asked someone for directions pronouncing six as "se". He was misunderstood several times. Rather than say "seis" and lose the macho game, he actually spent several minutes repeating se many times. Of course, being stubborn is one of their weaknesses.
Since I had no intention of hijacking this thread I decided to open a new one.

It is pretty common to hear non-native speakers criticize Dominican Spanish as uncultured. In my view, Dominicans are not alone in this, if you have trully mastered the little nuisances of the language, and you can figure out other accents you will see that every Spanish-speaking country has its own version of "uncultured Spanish". Educated people in all these countries tend to speak a more homogenous Spanish.

What do you say? Can we honestly say that our Spanish is any better or worse than that of rural Mexicans, uneducated Venezuelans, and Spanish gipsies? I think not. andy a seems to be ignorant of this fact, however I would like to hear other fluent Spanish-speaking posters' take on this.

I offer this to you as reference:
http://culturitalia.uibk.ac.at/hispanoteca/Kulturkunde-LA/El español americano.htm
http://szamora.freeservers.com/zonas.htm
 
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Chirimoya

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This issue definitely does merit a thread in itself.

My husband, a reasonably well-educated Dominican speaks clear and well-accentuated Spanish, and is even complimented on his accent by Spanish people, who are usually notorious for looking down on Latin American Spanish accents. His Spanish is unmistakably Dominican though, even though he has lived in other parts of the Spanish speaking world he has never shed its particular Dominican idioms and turns of phrase.

Unlike me: I am a linguistic chameleon when it comes to Spanish, using Dominicanisms and Latin American grammar (e.g. never using 'vosotros') when in the DR and going back to Andalusian Spanish usage when on the other side of the pond. I sometimes wonder about this, should I speak the Spanish I was brought up with, or should go on I applying the 'when in Rome' rule?

I don't do this with English although I would try to avoid terms that might confuse the non-British English speaker. On my first visit to the US I got blank stares by asking the women waiting in a 'restroom' if 'this was the queue for the loo'. Translation provided upon request.

Speaking of the regional Spanish in southern Spain, if you spent a limited amount of time there you would come away from there convinced that the Spaniards speak awful Spanish - if you spent all your time in certain areas limited yourself to certain circles. There are many Andalusians who speak beautiful Spanish but they are never included in the stereotype held by most Spaniards who often cast an Andalusian in the role of a stupid person in movies, jokes etc.

As for gypsies, I agree about the accent but I have been impressed by 'gitano' eloquence several times: I once saw a Spanish gypsy man lose his temper with another person and the stream of insults that he unleashed spared no one connected with the target of his fury: ancestors, descendants, family pets and anyone who happened to be near him at the time!

Chiri
 

Chirimoya

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Sorry to post twice in a row, but something else occurred to me which is also to do with taste and what you are used to. Before I crossed the Atlantic for the first time, Latin American accents sounded strange to my Iberian ears. Now that I spend most of my time on this side of the ocean, I find Castillian Spanish - supposedly the standard Spanish - in particular incredibly grating, and heavy on the ear with all its 'th' and 'sh' sounds.

Uneducated Andalusians sound comical to me now, and difficult to understand compared to most Dominican accents. Having said that, some Dominicans still defeat me, and part of this is to do with the speed at which some people speak, swallowing consonants at a record rate.

I remember years ago on Spanish TV they ran an animation based on the Don Quixote cartoon series of the time, where they played the same scene between Quixote and Sancho Panza, each time in a different accent from across the Spanish speaking world. It was brilliant!

Chiri
 

RandyE

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NO! My brother in law is from rural Mexico. Try to practice spainish when we meet up and believe me, what I pronounce from a book is not always the same, sometimes not even close. Every region has different dialects, even here in USA. Try to get someone from N E PA to say Scranton- always Scranun. Agree with Pib on this. Should add that am not fluent, but read and practice as often as possible. Maybe someday.
 
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La Reyna

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I'am native Dominicana but I'am living in Switzerland since I was
2 years old. So what I wanted to say is: The "Dominican Spanish" is a kind of Dialect, which every Country has (for Example in Brasil they speak Portugues and in Portugal aswell, but its diffrent dialects, which not means that one is better, more educated than the other one)

And here in Switzerland we have around 12 diffrent German-Dialects, but do we speak worser than the Germans, I don't think so.

Even Dominicans don't speak all the same "Spanish" !

Vete pal Cibao y tu vas a ver como the llaman "Mi amoi" y que the dicen "ven a comei" or if you go somewhere else they say
"mi amol" y "ven a comel".

So I don't think we speak badly Spanish, its just diffrent, and somebody who lernt Spanish in an Language School or something like that for sure will not understand all the words we use.
 

mkohn

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I've always been interested in language. I agree with Pib 100%. I used to convert software in English to several different languages, Spanish being one of them. As in English, there will always be accents and variations in vocabulary and pronunciation. I met a man from India who knows about 9 different dialects.
Searching for the origin of a word can be enlightening. Another cool thing about language is finding the words that don't have an exact translation.
Those closest to the source will understand the variations.
Great thread, Pib.
mk
 

ERICKXSON

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Dominican Republic has lots of accents and speaking ways it all depends on your location People from Samana' speak very different from People that live in Santiago or Santo Domingo my Mom speaks perfect Spanish however i used have problems while living in New York due to the fact that my spanish was taking a Tiguere or Chopo sort of style and my mom had a daily battle with me and after afew COCOTASOS i was able to stop the bad habits. Here in the DR people think im from another Latin Country they say my accent is not Dominican (I'm a Marcian/American) lol!
 

hansbert

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Dominican Ppoken Spanish is a dialect

I agree that Dominicans have their own oral dialects as in many other countries. But when it comes to the written language it is Castellano (High Spanish) Nevertheless I must say (without taking into account the "orgullo Dominicano")) that in most of the dayly newspapers and in some news websites the language style is very simple and you will find a lot of orthographic errors. In my opinion that is due to the low standards in education, a result of unsufficient investments in the education sector. A lot of journalists (who should be educated) do not know well their own language. To read Listin Diario or Hoy is much different from reading papers like e.g. "El Mercurio" (Chile), "El Universal" (Venezuela), "El Espectador" (Colombia).
 
The idea of what is good spanish or bad spanish, good english bad english amazes me. I'm been told by many latinos in the States "Dominicans speak bad spanish". My God, language is a form of communication, simple as that. You can pick up a spanish book and learn how to speak like a Spaniard all you want, but if you live in DR you going to speak like a Dominican to COMMUNICATE.

The same issue with Black Americans who are told they speak Bad English. If most of there time is spent speaking the Dialect in there community, they are COMMUNICATING with people who speak like them.

I guess all Americans speak bad english because they are not speaking like a British person. You can say England would be the standard, right?
 

Pib

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[B]sancochojoe[/B] said:
You can say England would be the standard, right?
And here we arrive to the center of this dilemma: the standard. There is the Spanish that is stamped and approved by the RAE, and there's what everybody else speaks. The more educated people EVERYWHERE speak the closest to the standard (at least in Spanish we do have a standard) accents notwithstanding. That may be why I get the "where are you from?" all the time here, even though I am full-blooded Dominican. I tend to speak a slighty (I hope) better Spanish than most people, but I am capable of understanding even the worse Spanish, from anywhere. It comes with been fluent.
 
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I have the opposite problem, Pib. I learned to speak in Barahona - meaning I don't pronounce the "s" after a vowel. In the finer parts of La Capital, the classy people usually ask me to kindly stop talking like that.

A tangental point is "youth-speak". I saw the movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien" not too long ago. I couldn't understand much of the lingo - not because it was rural or lower class (it wasn't at all), but because it was youth-speak.

In that movie, I also heard plenty of profanity that really cannot be repeated in the DR without being very offensive. Yet it's sociable to say "chinga to mama cabron" among youths in Mexico. Similarly, you can't say "conyo!" in Mexico, though people exclaim it here when they stub their toes.

BTW, wouldn't you say that there is a "standard" Latin American Spanish and a "standard" Iberian Spanish, and that the "standard" is not the same - much like standard American English and BBC English are not the same?
 
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Pib

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[B]Porfio_Rubirosa[/B] said:
I have the opposite problem, Pib. I learned to speak in Barahona - meaning I don't pronounce the "s" after a vowel. In the finer parts of La Capital, the classy people usually ask me to kindly stop talking like that.

A tangental point is "youth-speak". I saw the movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien" not too long ago. I couldn't understand much of the lingo - not because it was rural or lower class (it wasn't at all), but because it was youth-speak.

In that movie, I also heard plenty of profanity that really cannot be repeated in the DR without being very offensive. Yet it's sociable to say "chinga to mama cabron" among youths in Mexico. Similarly, you can't say "conyo!" in Mexico, though people exclaim it here when they stub their toes.

BTW, wouldn't you say that there is a "standard" Latin American Spanish and a "standard" Iberian Spanish, and that the "standard" is not the same - much like standard American English and BBC English are not the same?
You raise a few interesting points.

First, what you call "youth-speak" I usually refer to as "urban lingo". And yes, sometimes it sounds like an entirely different language to our old ears. It is usually spoken by urban, little-educated youth from the poorest neighborhoods. It usually goes out of date and leaves behind a few words in the mainstream language. I recall that jevi, sanki and other words were "urban slang" when I was a teenager.

Another interesting point is that you seem to believe that there are two Spanish. I differ. There is only one Spanish. The RAE is like the pope of Spanish. What it says goes. Latin American countries have such a variety of accents and vocabulary that I don't think we can speak of "a Latin American Spanish" I dare to say there's as much difference between the Dominican Spanish and the Argentinian Spanish as there is between the Dominican Spanish and that of "la madre patria".

Speaking the language doesn't make me an expert, but that's how I see it.
 

MaineGirl

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We did the good vs. bad Spanish debate awhile back on a different thread.

I want to respond to the "urban lingo." I live in a very rural area, and it seems to me that our rural youth have developed their own slang. It wouldn't compare to a kid from the Bronx talking to his friends, but if you took that kid from the Bronx and stuck him here, he would need a dictionary as well. I like "youth speak" better. The youngsters tend to find words that fit situations quickly. When the word catches on, it is overused to death, but people understand what it means. New words arrive via MTV and clever young people in the community who understand the value of words. To the uninitiated it sounds bad. But for communication purposes, it's great.

In a recent survey of my classes, the kids overwhelmingly wanted me to teach them Spanish for communication, more so than the Pope's spanish, because they saw that as being infinitely more valuable to their generation.

The other valuable point is that there ARE differences between the Latin countries in how they speak Spanish. I am no expert, but have been exposed at length to at least three different ways of speaking (Venezuelan, Dominican and Argentine). I am careful to point out these differences to my students. 20+ countires speak Spanish! I use this analogy: take a person from Scotland and a person from West Virginia and put them in a room. Do they both speak English? can they understand each other? Perhaps in Spanish the examples do not reach that extreme. But you see the point.

My kids want to know "To a Spanish person, what do we sound like?" and usually I am honest: "An American trying to speak Spanish." But sometimes we do fun drills where I speak quickly and as if I was talking to my Venezuelan girlfiends on the phone. They parrot me excatly and you know what, they sound like any punk chama from Valencia! And that is what they beg me for--real Spanish. They want to sound authentic. On some of our other drills I speed it up and slur the words together for them. They get it--this is how people really talk.

Here in the US we have no queen's English--most everyone is marked by a regional accent. Only newscasters speak the bland English of mass communication. We have no RAE either, no language police. Our universities are filled with professors, some of whom speak terrible English (I'll never forget the Indian professor of mathematics who talked about "sex" for an hour--later he wrote it on the board and it was "sets"). It seems more up for grabs here. I love the internet because it eliminates accents and when written, you can really tell how people think in the language.

Great thread. I've rambled enough already.

BTW Pib you did a great job cleaning up my horrible translation.
 
I see more beauty in the variety of the language. As you all have written, the manner in which you talk helps identify what region of DR the person is from, I see that as wonderful.

If the first thing people think about is the level of education when Communicating, than shame on the listener.

When you look at the negative side of how someone speaks, you are only marginalizing yourself from the person, and putting them in a category.

We all know, no matter what part of the world, youth for the most part are going to speak in the "Urban Tougue" :cool:

As far as newspapers, they do that in the united states. Most newspapers are written at a 6th or 7th grade level. Thats common practice around the world. You don't want to disconnect yourself from the masses of people.
 

TCIDR

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seem to have taken the word out of my mouth

I read the DR1 forum regularly. What I've noticed is that people are more interested in separating themselves into categories. Pointing fingers is the normal. No sincere appreciation. Lots of surface value!

Everyone is so interested in being in the "in-group" that alot of the more important aspects of life goes by unnoticed.

I see flexibility and diversity as a required discipline therefore being able to be comfortable in all and everygroup. Only when one is not comfortable within oneself is he/she is always trying to attract the attention of a particular group.
Now, we all know the group that are praised daily in the DR: Class, Popularity, wealth, skin color.

I graciously open up myself for all the criticism that is out there because rejection just makes me a better man.

.....TCIDR
 

Moniki

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The dialects are ok to deal with as long as you understand spanish - however what completely cinfused me was when a taxi driver asked Minni and I if we like our hostel?!?!

I was like what??????

I didn't get it until Minni explained to me that they add and "s" in the middle of a word so that they sound more "fisno"

Where did the add an "s" in the middle of the word originate anyways?
 

Jane J.

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It comes from what you just referred to: trying to sound "fisno".

Because the habit of dropping the "s" is generally scorned by the more literate, the less literate equate the usage of the "s" with culture. However, being less literate, they are unsure where the essess properly go and so fit them in where they think approspriate.

Whoops, I mean, appropriate.
 

Chirimoya

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I don't know if there's a technical term for this in linguistics, but it happens in other languages too: it's when uneducated speakers overcompensate for mispronuniations by adding something where it should not go. 'Fino' becomes 'fisno' because the speaker is overcompensating for dropped s's, as in 'depue' for despues, 'bucar' for buscar, etc.

Of course, 'fisno' is used ironically now, by those who know exactly where their s's go!

In Andalucia (sorry to go on about this but it is one of my main points of reference) speakers overdo the Castillian 'th' sound in a misfired attempt to sound posh. In Castillian Spanish 'z' and 'c' are pronounced 'th' - e.g. cerveza is pronounced 'thervetha' - so the Andaluces, who speak like we do in the DR, where z, c and s are all pronounced as 's' will overcompensate by pronouncing all three as 'th'. So, they would say "Andalutheth" instead of Andaluthesh (real Castilians pronounce the s as 'sh' just to confuse matters and to fill their mouths with even more cotton wool)!

In England, some accents in the south, especially London, tend to drop the h, so attempts at speaking posh often tack on redundant h's to words beginning with vowels, this is often done hironically as an hexaggerated himitation of genteel hupward mobility.

Chiri

Hedited to hadd those last few haitches, hinspired by the hinimitable Jane J. who beat me to this with a post that was much shorter and to the point!
 
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I'm trying to understand the point of this discussion anyway.

Are you all praising the variety of dialects on the Island and how it compares to other spanish speaking countries and its comparison with English

or

discovering how many people believe how illiterate Dominicans are.

just curious
 

Forbeca

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sancochojoe said:
I'm trying to understand the point of this discussion anyway.

Are you all praising the variety of dialects on the Island and how it compares to other spanish speaking countries and its comparison with English
or
discovering how many people believe how illiterate Dominicans are.
just curious




This thread is supposed to point out how all Spanish speaking countries have their own version of uncultured Spanish. This is a very common problem and not just DR related.
 
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