Here is my response...
Quisqueya,
Your question is interesting. Let's see how I fair. First of all I am skeptical throughout your posts you keep saying Dominican Spanish so obviously you referring to the awkward speech patterns that go against the rules of grammar. We have a most interesting thread in the debates section called "el espa?ol de Sto. Domingo" where I discuss Dominican and Caribbean speech patterns and their complexities (meaning incorrect phrase structure). These speech patterns go back to the 17th century and are attributed to the African influence (slavery) and how the slaves spoke Spanish thus leaving various speech vestiges in today's Dominican Republic. I do not know anything about Creole so I could only use Spanish as a reference but you may have noticed similarities. Due to the imperfections of Spanish spoken by the slaves at that time those speech patterns penetrated into Spanish (in the DR and the Caribbean) thus changing some of the traditional Spanish syntax. Imperfect grammar as far I can observe did not leave as much of trademark as imperfect syntax but there are some noted grammar anomalies as well. My favorite example of these speech patterns are inverted questions. In Spanish the verb must come before the subject pronoun and all the aforementioned must be preceded by the question word.
Example:
Correct Spanish syntax:
1) ?Qu? crees t??
Incorrect Spanish syntax:
2) ?Qu? t? crees? - typical Caribbean Spanish (Cuba, DR, PR)
?Qu? t? piensas?
or
?Lesley t? crees que es posible que vengan ma?ana?. A phrase like this drives me crazy. s/b ?Lesley crees (t?) que es posible que vengan ma?ana?.
Note: this is heard daily, considered dialectal and mostly likely sounds normal to all native speakers from any of the above countries BUT it is definitely incorrect.
-Lesley D (I would love to hear your thoughts).
Quisqueya,
Your question is interesting. Let's see how I fair. First of all I am skeptical throughout your posts you keep saying Dominican Spanish so obviously you referring to the awkward speech patterns that go against the rules of grammar. We have a most interesting thread in the debates section called "el espa?ol de Sto. Domingo" where I discuss Dominican and Caribbean speech patterns and their complexities (meaning incorrect phrase structure). These speech patterns go back to the 17th century and are attributed to the African influence (slavery) and how the slaves spoke Spanish thus leaving various speech vestiges in today's Dominican Republic. I do not know anything about Creole so I could only use Spanish as a reference but you may have noticed similarities. Due to the imperfections of Spanish spoken by the slaves at that time those speech patterns penetrated into Spanish (in the DR and the Caribbean) thus changing some of the traditional Spanish syntax. Imperfect grammar as far I can observe did not leave as much of trademark as imperfect syntax but there are some noted grammar anomalies as well. My favorite example of these speech patterns are inverted questions. In Spanish the verb must come before the subject pronoun and all the aforementioned must be preceded by the question word.
Example:
Correct Spanish syntax:
1) ?Qu? crees t??
Incorrect Spanish syntax:
2) ?Qu? t? crees? - typical Caribbean Spanish (Cuba, DR, PR)
?Qu? t? piensas?
or
?Lesley t? crees que es posible que vengan ma?ana?. A phrase like this drives me crazy. s/b ?Lesley crees (t?) que es posible que vengan ma?ana?.
Note: this is heard daily, considered dialectal and mostly likely sounds normal to all native speakers from any of the above countries BUT it is definitely incorrect.
-Lesley D (I would love to hear your thoughts).
Quisqueya said:And Les,
Since you have done your research on the language and are very knowledgable about these issues. Can you explain to me why domincan spanish and haitian creole have the same style of grammar and syntax...I have an idea but maybe you've done some research on that issue as well...
Another thing I would like to mention is that haitians can communicate with Maritinicans, peope from Gaudeloupe, St Croix, Dominica(not DR), guyane francaise and many other countries in Creole
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