- Thread starter El_Uruguayo
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H, the not so silent letter...
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People are being nice today - distinguished, no less
Yes, the 'j' for 'h' sound is used in the south of Spain, maybe other areas as well, and in exactly the same way as in the DR - by less educated folks and for emphasis. "!Estoy JARTA de limpiar!"
And can anyone explain why 'jamaca' and not 'hamaca" in the banner ad?
you need a Taino diccionary to find it!
JJ
Jamaca is the phonetic pronunciation of the word by a specific group of speakers
Going back to my second post the spelling with /j/ which represents an aspirated /h/ sound because this letter is truly silent in Spanish as you know. There are no separate phonetic rules for each Spanish-speaking country. This is an example of a speech pattern once again that has permeated the Dominican and PR vernacular to a certain degree associated with campesions or rural speech. The origin of this aspirated /h/ sound when pronouncing words such as 'hamaca' and thus the inclination to write 'jamaca' accordingly is another level of study. Perhaps you can do the research if you are truly curious. All Tainos dictionaries I have looked at have 'hamaca' as an indigenous word and the alternate spelling that one may see as 'jamaca'. One dictionary even gave an explanation (which I was surprised because it's the first time I browsed in it and it gave the one line response that I know it to be, I could have written it myself):
-As I mentioned before it just takes one person in the DR/ PR to start writing words like 'jamaca', 'jablador', etc. and then it permeates and is possibly considered correct on a regional level until some kind of academic review is done and then the pot begins to stir. The Spanish language has rules and a governing body aka the RAE. A country's speakers can not change the rules of spelling to accommodate their vernacular. Those forms 'jamaca' and 'jablador' etc. will only be seen in the DR (PR in some examples) and definitely not accepted spellings in standard Spanish, even with an intended change of meaning. The OP hit the nail on the head in his post 20. This also addresses the pronunciation inconsistencies because the rules in Spanish have been altered by a speech population or a particular group.
In academic circles these forms with /j/ are considered 'uneducated' or a representation thereof.
-Marianopolita.
Going back to my second post the spelling with /j/ which represents an aspirated /h/ sound because this letter is truly silent in Spanish as you know. There are no separate phonetic rules for each Spanish-speaking country. This is an example of a speech pattern once again that has permeated the Dominican and PR vernacular to a certain degree associated with campesions or rural speech. The origin of this aspirated /h/ sound when pronouncing words such as 'hamaca' and thus the inclination to write 'jamaca' accordingly is another level of study. Perhaps you can do the research if you are truly curious. All Tainos dictionaries I have looked at have 'hamaca' as an indigenous word and the alternate spelling that one may see as 'jamaca'. One dictionary even gave an explanation (which I was surprised because it's the first time I browsed in it and it gave the one line response that I know it to be, I could have written it myself):
-As I mentioned before it just takes one person in the DR/ PR to start writing words like 'jamaca', 'jablador', etc. and then it permeates and is possibly considered correct on a regional level until some kind of academic review is done and then the pot begins to stir. The Spanish language has rules and a governing body aka the RAE. A country's speakers can not change the rules of spelling to accommodate their vernacular. Those forms 'jamaca' and 'jablador' etc. will only be seen in the DR (PR in some examples) and definitely not accepted spellings in standard Spanish, even with an intended change of meaning. The OP hit the nail on the head in his post 20. This also addresses the pronunciation inconsistencies because the rules in Spanish have been altered by a speech population or a particular group.
In academic circles these forms with /j/ are considered 'uneducated' or a representation thereof.
-Marianopolita.
Hola,
I'm new on this forum, but I read all the reactions here and I couldn't help but to make an account and share my thoughts.
I'm dominican myself and a language lover. I grew up speaking Dutch, English and Spanish and have been learning French and Lation for over six yours now in high school. I also studie quite some languages and linguistic subjects in my spare time.
As some of you may know the Spanish language is part of the Romance Language Family and as such has genetic similarities to languages like French, Italian and Portugues. All these languages come from Vulgar Latin. Latin was a language spoken by many peoples in Europe during the Roman Empire and developed into different languages in different places. That's why when one who speaks Spanish studies these languages, he will notice a remarkable ressemblence between them in grammar, vocabulary and syntaxis.
This is just to show you guys that I know what I'm talking about. As for the 'not so silent h', here it comes.
One thing I love about having studied Latin is knowing now where Spanish comes from and I now know what the etymology is for most words ( 'eternidad' comes from 'aeternitas', 'padre' comes from 'pater' and 'siglo' from 'saeculum' and I can go on for hours.) and the origin of most syntactical and grammatical constructions.
As for the silent 'h'. The silent 'h' was still being pronounced in Middle Spanish. And it came from words that began with an 'f' (this has not happened to the same words in French, Italian and Portuguese, that's why in cognate words (words with the same etymological origin) in these languages you still see the 'f'). 'hablar' comes from 'fabulare' (telling stories > talking - think of Portugues 'falar'), 'hacer' comes from 'facere' (to do> maybe now you start thinking about French 'faire', Italian 'fare' or Portugues 'fazer' ). Other exemples are : hoja > folia (french : foeil, italian : foglia) and hijo > filius (french : fils, italian : figlio and Portuguese : filho) The 'f' lost it's strong pronunciation in word-initial positions and so came more to be pronounced like an 'h' or jota. (Another beautiful exemple is 'hecho' what comes from 'factum' wich means 'something that has been done (that's true)' > a fact (the English word 'fact' also has this origin.) Later on this h-sound disappeared but the 'h' was still written
The Spanish that came to the Carribean is Andaluz Spanish that still had, in the period it came to RD, a lot of archaic caracteristics and so in that region the 'h' sound was still being pronounced in word-initial position. When you read books or threads or studies on Dominican Spanish you will often read that one of the caractaristics of Dominican Spanish is the use of archaisms, even though this has been diminishing. Think of words as 'cuarto' and a lot of others. So the use of the pronounced 'h' is an archaic feature, that in most words of Latin origin is still a mark of the old 'f' and ofcourse when the 'h' was being pronounced, people may have figured that words like 'hamaca' that does not have a Latin origin were also to be pronounced with a not so silent 'h'. So it's mostly due to historical factors and ofcourse social factors.
I hope some of you can appreciate this information, don't know if someone's gonna see this, 'cos I see here this thread has been abandoned for quite some time.
Que queden con Dios todos y buenas noches
I'm new on this forum, but I read all the reactions here and I couldn't help but to make an account and share my thoughts.
I'm dominican myself and a language lover. I grew up speaking Dutch, English and Spanish and have been learning French and Lation for over six yours now in high school. I also studie quite some languages and linguistic subjects in my spare time.
As some of you may know the Spanish language is part of the Romance Language Family and as such has genetic similarities to languages like French, Italian and Portugues. All these languages come from Vulgar Latin. Latin was a language spoken by many peoples in Europe during the Roman Empire and developed into different languages in different places. That's why when one who speaks Spanish studies these languages, he will notice a remarkable ressemblence between them in grammar, vocabulary and syntaxis.
This is just to show you guys that I know what I'm talking about. As for the 'not so silent h', here it comes.
One thing I love about having studied Latin is knowing now where Spanish comes from and I now know what the etymology is for most words ( 'eternidad' comes from 'aeternitas', 'padre' comes from 'pater' and 'siglo' from 'saeculum' and I can go on for hours.) and the origin of most syntactical and grammatical constructions.
As for the silent 'h'. The silent 'h' was still being pronounced in Middle Spanish. And it came from words that began with an 'f' (this has not happened to the same words in French, Italian and Portuguese, that's why in cognate words (words with the same etymological origin) in these languages you still see the 'f'). 'hablar' comes from 'fabulare' (telling stories > talking - think of Portugues 'falar'), 'hacer' comes from 'facere' (to do> maybe now you start thinking about French 'faire', Italian 'fare' or Portugues 'fazer' ). Other exemples are : hoja > folia (french : foeil, italian : foglia) and hijo > filius (french : fils, italian : figlio and Portuguese : filho) The 'f' lost it's strong pronunciation in word-initial positions and so came more to be pronounced like an 'h' or jota. (Another beautiful exemple is 'hecho' what comes from 'factum' wich means 'something that has been done (that's true)' > a fact (the English word 'fact' also has this origin.) Later on this h-sound disappeared but the 'h' was still written
The Spanish that came to the Carribean is Andaluz Spanish that still had, in the period it came to RD, a lot of archaic caracteristics and so in that region the 'h' sound was still being pronounced in word-initial position. When you read books or threads or studies on Dominican Spanish you will often read that one of the caractaristics of Dominican Spanish is the use of archaisms, even though this has been diminishing. Think of words as 'cuarto' and a lot of others. So the use of the pronounced 'h' is an archaic feature, that in most words of Latin origin is still a mark of the old 'f' and ofcourse when the 'h' was being pronounced, people may have figured that words like 'hamaca' that does not have a Latin origin were also to be pronounced with a not so silent 'h'. So it's mostly due to historical factors and ofcourse social factors.
I hope some of you can appreciate this information, don't know if someone's gonna see this, 'cos I see here this thread has been abandoned for quite some time.
Que queden con Dios todos y buenas noches
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