Canarian Spanish

Canarian Spanish
español canario
Estación de guaguas ("Bus station") at Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands.
Native to	Spain
Region	Canary Islands
Ethnicity	Canary Islanders, Isleños
Era	Modern, Contemporary
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Romance Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian languages Spanish language Canarian Spanish
Early forms	Old Latin Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Spanish alphabet
Official status
Official language in	Spain Canary Islands
Regulated by	Real Academia Española,
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguasphere	51-AAA-be
IETF	es-IC

Spanish language
A manuscript of the Cantar de mio Cid, 13th century
Overview
Pronunciation stress Orthography Names
History
Old Middle Influences Judaeo-Spanish
Grammar
Determiners Nouns gender Pronouns personal object Adjectives Prepositions Verbs conjugation irregular verbs
Dialects
Andalusian Andean Argentine Belizean Bolivian Canarian Caribbean Central American Chilean Colombian Costa Rican Cuban Dominican Ecuadorian Equatoguinean Guatemalan Honduran Mexican Murcian New Mexican Nicaraguan Panamanian Peninsular Peruvian Philippine Puerto Rican Rioplatense Saharan Salvadorian Standard Uruguayan
Dialectology
seseo yeísmo voseo leísmo loísmo
Interlanguages
Belgranodeutsch Llanito Portuñol Spanglish Castrapo Creoles Roquetas Pidgin Chavacano or Chabacano Palenquero or Palenque
Teaching
Hispanism RAE Instituto Cervantes
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Canarian Spanish (Spanish terms in descending order of frequency: español de Canarias, español canario, habla canaria, or dialecto canario^[1]) is a variant of standard Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands by the Canary Islanders. The variant is similar to the Andalusian Spanish variety spoken in Western Andalusia and (especially) to Caribbean Spanish and other Hispanic American Spanish vernaculars because of Canarian emigration to the Caribbean and Hispanic America over the years.^{[citation needed]} Canarian Spanish is one of those Spanish dialects in Spain to be called usually español, instead of castellano.^{[citation needed]}

Canarian Spanish heavily influenced the development of Caribbean Spanish and other Latin American Spanish vernaculars because Hispanic America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands were originally largely settled by colonists from the Canary Islands and Andalusia; those dialects, including the standard language, were already quite close to Canarian and Andalusian speech. In the Caribbean, Canarian speech patterns were never regarded as either foreign or very different from the local accent.^[2]

The incorporation of the Canary Islands into the Crown of Castile began with Henry III (1402) and was completed under the Catholic Monarchs. The expeditions for their conquest started off mainly from ports of Andalusia, which is why the Andalusians predominated in the Canaries. There was also an important colonising contingent from Portugal in the early conquest of the Canaries, along with the Andalusians and the Castilians from mainland Spain. In earlier times, Portuguese settled alongside the Spanish in the north of Gran Canaria, but they died off or were absorbed by the Spanish. The population that inhabited the islands before the conquest, the Guanches,^[3] spoke a variety of Berber (also called Amazigh) dialects. After the conquest, the indigenous Guanche language was rapidly and almost completely eradicated in the archipelago. Only some names of plants and animals, terms related to cattle ranching and numerous island placenames survive.^[4]

Their geography made the Canary Islands receive much outside influence, with drastic cultural and linguistic changes. As a result of heavy Canarian emigration to the Caribbean, particularly during colonial times, Caribbean Spanish is strikingly similar to Canarian Spanish.

Grammar[]

• As with most other varieties of Spanish outside Mainland Spain, the preterite is generally used instead of the perfect: hoy visité a Juan ("today I visited John") for hoy he visitado a Juan ("today I have visited John").^[5][6]
• Like most other varieties of Spanish outside central and northern Spain, ustedes is used for all second-person plurals: ustedes están is used for vosotros estáis. Only on a few parts of the islands of El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera is the pronoun vosotros still sometimes used, and even there, it is decreasingly and generally only by older speakers. In La Gomera and some parts of La Palma, ustedes vos vais is used. Archaic forms like vaivos are still used in some areas.^{[citation needed]}
• Like most other varieties of Spanish outside Mainland Spain, syllables are suppressed in some diminutives: cochito for cochecito ("small car") and florita for florecita.^{[citation needed]}
• As with many other varieties of Spanish outside Mainland Spain, de ("of") is deleted in some expressions: casa Marta for casa de Marta and gofio millo for gofio de millo.^{[citation needed]}

Pronunciation[]

• Seseo, the lack of distinction between the pronunciation of the letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ or "soft" ⟨c⟩, is the most distinctive non-mainland characteristic; caza ('hunt') is pronounced exactly like casa ('house'), which occurs in some parts of Andalusia as well.^[7] The feature is common to most parts of the Spanish-speaking world outside of the northern three quarters of Mainland Spain (Castile and the surrounding provinces have adopted the feature).^[8][9]
• /s/ is debuccalized to /h/ at the end of syllables, as is common in Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, the Caribbean, and much of lowland Latin America.^[10]
• /x/ (spelled as ⟨j⟩ or, before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩, as ⟨g⟩) is usually aspirated (pronounced [h]), as is common in Andalusia (especially in its west) as well as the Caribbean and some other parts of Latin America.
• Word-final /n/ is realized as a velar nasal [ŋ].

Vocabulary[]

Canarian vocabulary has its own regionalisms different from standard Castilian Spanish vocabulary. For example, guagua ("bus") differs from standard Spanish autobús. The word guagua is an onomatopoeia stemming from the sound of a Klaxon horn ("wawa"). An example of Canarian usage for a Spanish word is the verb fajarse ("to fight").^[11] In standard Castilian Spanish, the verb would be pelearse, while fajar exists as a non-reflexive verb related to the hemming of a skirt. The term of endearment socio is a very popular Canarian term. The Canarian vocabulary has a notable influence from the Guanche language, especially in the toponymy. In addition, many Canarian names come from the Guanche language, such as Airam, Gara, Acerina, Aydan, Beneharo, Jonay, Tanausú, Chaxiraxi, Ayoze, Yaiza and Zebenzuí. As Canarian Spanish was influenced by Andalusian Spanish, a few words of Andalusi Arabic origin are found, and there are some doublets of Arabic-Latinate synonyms with the Arabic form being more common in Canarian, such as alcoba for standard habitación or dormitorio ("bedroom"), alhaja for standard joya ("jewel"), or alacrán for standard escorpión ("scorpion"); Arabic influence in Canarian Spanish was also brought by returning Canarian settlers and their children from Spanish Sahara after its independence.

Similarities in Spanish dialects[]

The chart shows the similarities between Canarian Spanish and two minority languages spoken in Spain: Catalan (spoken in northeastern Spain) and Galician (spoken in northwestern Spain).

The chart shows the similarities and differences in the dialects of Canarian Spanish, Andalusian Spanish, Castilian Spanish, and Caribbean Spanish.

See also[]

• Nationalisms and regionalisms of Spain
• Silbo gomero

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Navarro Carrasco, Ana Isabel (2003), El atlas de Canarias y el diccionario académico, Publicaciones Universidad de Alicante, ISBN 978-8479082864