26 posts! Fascinating. Here is another one! The Mexican parent of one of the students I tutored ALWAYS added an "s" to second person preterite: fuistes, vistes, acabastes la tarea. Crisp, clear, and even emphasized. I'd read that some uneducated classes have evolved to do it as it sounds more "intelligent". It even had a name, this phenomenon. I'm interested in this sort of thing if anyone has good sources.
Adding /s/ to the second person singular verb form
t? in the preterit in my observation is not specific to any region because I have heard it from speakers from various Latin American countries. However, I can’t comment on Spain regarding this grammatical phenomenon.
It is believed that speakers make this error because it is the only
t? form out of all the verb tenses that does not have an /s/. Therefore, instinctively some speakers add /s/ to the preterit form of the second person singular and of course that is grammatically incorrect.
Educated and uneducated speakers alike make this error which I can’t understand because those who have education should have been corrected along the way by their teachers. I know several people with education beyond high school who say
venistes, acabastes, dijistes, hablastes etc. I also think to a certain extent it’s regional but the more I hear it the more I question the reason for this error.
Foreigners should not repeat it and unfortunately some do thinking that they sound more local or they will fit in with the group of speakers around them who speak this way. However, it’s one of the many incorrect forms of speech you will hear in the Spanish-speaking world. The more grammar you know in Spanish, the more empowered you are to recognize incorrect speech patterns and grammatical errors. In the DR, you will also hear people add /s/ to words where they do belong and even to some verb forms in the present tense for example the third person singular. A person once said to me (from San Pedro de Macoris)
'si ?l se vas'....
If you are interested in this aspect of language in Spanish, it falls under the specialization called sociolinguistics. If you study Spanish at a higher level and eventually specialize in one area, sociolinguistics is the one that analyzes speech patterns of society as they relate to language. There is plenty of reading material on sociolinguists in general and then references specific to this concept in Spanish. It’s still considered a relatively new discipline and as the language evolves there is more to observe and document. Anyone can make observations about language and the way people speak but sometimes it’s hard to understand why people speak a certain way.
If your focus is on Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic, you may want to read a book that was referenced here many years ago in the forum-
C?mo hablamos los dominicanos by Grupo Le?n Jimenes. It’s an excellent read. I read it thoroughly twice and it’s also serves as a good reference to go back to for details. It’s a well-researched sociolinguistic analysis of Spanish spoken in the DR and many of the lexical (vocabulary), syntax (sentence structure), verb forms, phonetic observations, expressions, etc are classic examples of what you will hear in the Dominican vernacular and some cases in the Caribbean in general (Cuba and PR) and Caribbean basin areas (Panama, coastal Colombia and coastal Venezuela) as well.
Article:
C?mo hablamos los dominicanos - Hoy Digital
The book:
http://www.glj.com.do/a/d/doc-comohablamos.pdf or the other link below
Grupo Le?n Jimenes | Biblioteca virtual | C?mo hablamos los dominicanos
If you like to observe the differences in the spoken language across the Spanish-speaking world not only is it interesting but it will make your Spanish even better. Keep observing and the way to do this is listen to all speakers speak, speak to any Spanish speaker and read Spanish from any country. It’s the same language just with many regional varieties. Another interesting short reference to read is
Sociolinguistics by Bernard Spolsky.
I am reading a novel right now and even if I wanted to overlook the regional differences I can’t because the book is full of regionalisms and sociolinguistics aspects of Spanish notably
el voseo which is not heard in the Caribbean but used in many parts of Spanish-speaking world specifically in the Southern Cone of South America and most of Central America (the pronoun
vos is not used in Spain and it should not to be confused with
vosotros which is used in Spain)
-MP.