Cuban Spanish

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The Cuban Spanish is a variation of Spanish which in, Cuba is used. It is a sub- dialect of Caribbean Spanish with minor regional peculiarities, especially in terms of intonation , between the western and eastern regions of the island. Because of its pronunciation, which is often incomprehensible to other Spanish-speaking native speakers, it is also jokingly called Cubañol .

history

The history of Cuban Spanish is very important in understanding the evolution of the various Hispanic American dialects. Cuba, along with Santo Domingo, the historical name of the island of Hispaniola , and Puerto Rico, was the first American territory in which Spanish colonists lived and from where they made their first expeditions to the continent. In the past, many colonists settled on the Caribbean islands before moving permanently to the continental mainland. As a result, they took over some of the linguistic peculiarities of the Caribbean region, sometimes more, sometimes less .

These characteristic features of Caribbean Spanish were shaped by the first waves of emigration from Spaniards who had their origins in Andalusia or the Canary Islands , which explains the affinity of Caribbean Spanish to that spoken in southern Spain: the Seseo , the similar pronunciation of the consonants / s / and / z /, as well as swallowing the -s or -n at the end of the word, the soft j or the non-existence of the 2nd person plural vosotros are linguistic characteristics that are related to the peculiarities of Sevillian and southern Spanish.

The late independence and the strong Spanish emigration movement in the 19th century (half of the Cubans were still born on the Iberian Peninsula in 1850) could have had important linguistic consequences for the language on the island, but in the course of the 20th century traditional Cuban won Dialect struggled against the influence of the mother country, mainly because the new immigrants came from different areas of Spain (Galicians, Catalans, Asturians, Andalusians, Canaries, etc.), whose characteristic dialects were no longer homogeneous: the Galicians and Catalans had their own language ( Galician and Catalan ) and had a mediocre or even minimal command of Castilian Spanish and therefore adapted to the language used there when they immigrated to Cuba. The Asturians did not speak standard Spanish either , but used various dialects that differed greatly from it, so that while they were adopting Spanish in Cuba, they learned the local dialect there. Finally, immigration from the Canary Islands and from Andalusia increased the influence of the southern Spanish language. The Castilian presence, although not negligible, was not sufficient to have a lasting influence on linguistic habits on the island, even if in the 19th and early 20th centuries there were quite a few people who made a distinction between the / s / - and used the / z / sounds or the personal pronoun of the 2nd person plural vosotros ("her").

As in the rest of the West Indies, the influence of the languages that is pre-Columbian , indigenous population largely non-existent, except for words that have the input into the standard Spanish found ( barbacoa - Barbecue , canoa - canoeing , huracán - Hurricane ). The extermination of the indigenous population, the Taínos and mixed marriages with them have erased every trace of them. The disappearance of the indigenous population went hand in hand with the arrival of thousands of slaves of African origin. In the middle of the 19th century the number of Africans in Cuba peaked, only comparable to Santo Domingo, where the white population was in the minority.

Despite their large numbers, the influence of Africans on local Spanish was minimal. It is assumed that the exchange of / l / and / r / (mejor → mejol, caldo → cardo), the doubling of the / r / in a stronger consonant (cerdo → ceddo, puerta → puetta) or the emphasis of African origin could be. However, none of these theses could be conclusively proven. The exchange of / r / and / l / can also be found in Murcia and in remote regions of Andalusia, the Cuban tone is comparable to areas of the Canary Islands and Andalusia.

The Cuban revolution also left its mark on the linguistic landscape and produced a linguistic division in Cuba . Everyday language has alienated itself from the official language, which is still characterized by military vocabulary and an uncompromising tone that leaves neither space for nuances nor for dialogue. In addition, the official ideology has established itself in patterns of thought and constraints, against which the Cuban population defends itself with pre-revolutionary cultural techniques and everyday expressions such as the choteo , which reveal contradictions between the official ideology and everyday reality.

morphology

Cuban Spanish shares most of the characteristics with Caribbean Spanish, some of which stand out:

  • The Duzen dominates, i.e. the address with tú (“you”), although there is also a remnant of the vos ( vos hablái ) in the eastern regions of Cuba . The personal pronoun of respect usted (“you”) is used as everywhere else in Spanish-speaking countries as an expression of respect and distance to a person. As in Spain , one can observe a decline in the use of the polite form in favor of the dozen, which is more to express equality and not suffer from the burden of hierarchy, which the polite usted implies.
  • The pronoun of the 2nd person plural vosotros (“you”) has been lost in current usage, although in the 19th century it was by no means unknown to most of the emigrants from Spain at the time. Instead, the plural form of politeness ustedes is also used as the plural of tú .
  • As in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico , it is customary to insert actually redundant subject pronouns into the sentences: Susana dice que mañana ella no va a venir ("Susana says that she will not come tomorrow") and the subject is found in questions before the verb: ¿cómo tú estás? (“How are you?”), ¿Dónde ella va? ("Where is she going?").
  • The pretérito indefinido , roughly comparable to the German past tense ( él fue - "he went") and pretérito compuesto ( él ha ido - "he went"), comparable to the German perfect , is just like in the rest of Latin America and the western regions Spain (the Canaries, Galicia, León, Asturias), so the past tense is always used for events that have just taken place: ¿Qué pasó? Ví un rayo. - "What happened? I saw lightning. " In Spain you would use the perfect form here. The perfect is reserved exclusively for situations that continue to affect the current moment: he trabajado aquí todo el día (“I've worked here all day” - but the day is not over yet).

phonetics

  • Cuban Spanish uses the Seseo . So there is no distinction between the sounds / θ / ( English th ) and / s /.
  • The / d / between two vowels is only indicated very weakly: perdi (d) o, gana (d) o, de (d) o, mone (d) a. This pronunciation variant is often found in the colloquial language of the Spanish lowlands. The intervowels / b / and / g / are also often "swallowed": Cu (b) a, jue (g) o. The weakening of the “hard” consonants / k /, / p / and / t / in the direction / g /, / b / and / d / is typical for Havana and the west of the country: equipo → eguibo, pelota → beloda, muñequito → muñeguido.
  • The / s / that follows or concludes a vowel has largely disappeared from daily use, especially in the southeastern part of the country: los tomates → lo tomate, basta → bata. In the middle and in the western part of Cuba, as well as in general at a higher social level of speech, this creates a slight hint or an extension of the vowel: bosque → bohque, bo: que. Outside of the formal language, the lack of the ending -s is almost as common in the Dominican Republic and Andalusia.
  • The sound ll is pronounced like y (→ Yeísmo ). The Cubans do not make a phonetic distinction between the words “pollo” (chicken) and “poyo” (stone bench) or between “cayó” (from caer - to fall) and “calló” (from callar - to be silent). The distinction between the two sounds has been lost throughout the Caribbean, although it was still in use by the majority of Spanish immigrants in the 19th century. The current form was only found in a few cities in Andalusia. In Havana, the corresponding sound is pronounced weaker (roughly like a German / j /), in the southeast it is more pronounced (/ dj /).
  • The voiceless velar fricative / x / does not exist in Cuban pronunciation, in clear contrast to Standard Castilian Spanish and various variants of Latin America, but is replaced by / h / as in Canary Spanish (e.g. the j in trabajo or the g in gente ).
  • In the western part of the country, especially in Havana and Matanzas , the assimilation of the / r / and the / l / with the following consonant is common: carbón → cab-bón, ardentía → ad-dentía, argolla → ag-golla, Alberto → Ab -bed-to etc. This pronunciation variant is also found in parts of the Dominican Republic and the Colombian Caribbean.
  • Another peculiarity Cuban shares with the rest of the Antilles Spanish dialects is the exchange of / l / and / r /. One pronounces alma (soul) like arma (weapon) and (much less often) vice versa. Sometimes you can also hear a mixture of both consonants: a sound beginning with a weak / r / followed by a / l /. This consonant change does not take place at the beginning of the word and after a / s / ( lanzar - toss, isla - island).

See also

literature

  • Roquelina Beldarraín Jiménez: The Cubaspanic. Lexical development since the revolution and its German equivalents. Peter Lang International Publishers of Science, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna, 2002, ISBN 3-631-35569-6
  • Cornelius Griep: The Effect of Official Discourse on Everyday Language in Cuba . Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-58903-8 (numerous figures, tables and graphics, 1 CD with documentary Rincón )
  • Matthias Perl: The language situation in Cuba in: Ottmar Ette , Martin Franzbach (Hrsg.): Cuba today: Politics, economy, culture , Vervuert Verlagsges. (2001), ISBN 978-3-89354-575-9
  • Argelio Santiesteban: El habla popular cubana de hoy , Editorial Gente Nueva, Ciudad Habana, Cuba, 1997, 456 pages, ISBN 959-06-0086-7
  • Jens Sobisch: Cuba SLANG . 144 pages, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89416-353-4 (backgrounds, detailed word lists, over 1000 keywords)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelius Griep: The effect of the official discourse on the everyday language in Cuba , page 125-129
  2. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel Satire Against Tyranny , August 13, 2011
  3. ^ TU intern love-hate relationship to the revolution and two languages. Retrieved April 8, 2019 . , "TU intern", 7/2011
  4. ↑ John M. Lipski: Varieties of Spanish in the United States. P. 111, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC 2008 (English)