Language in the USA Part 5 ppsx

Spanish in the Northeast 193

great bulk of the vocabulary of the Caribbean, however, is shared with the entire

Spanish-speaking world.

The frequency with which Caribbean vocabulary items are heard throughout

the Northeast has led to some lexical leveling. In New York City, for example,

Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Colombians maintain their regional

dialect, especially for in-group conversations, but almost everyone has picked up

words from one or more of the other dialects (Zentella 1990a). Those that are not

easily forgotten are learned the hard way, as a result of embarrassing moments

caused when a common term, like the words for “insect” or “papaya,” turn out to

have a taboo meaning in another dialect. Words that are not taboo, but are very

common, become popular in almost everyone’s Spanish. If you want to find a local

bus or grocery, ask about la guagua and la bodega; if you are offered a china,

expect an orange – not a Chinese female; and if you hear chevere, ´ something

is ‘terrific.’ A few Caribbean words become generalized, but Caribbean Spanish

speakers often make an effort to avoid or translate regionalisms that Latinos

from other regions may not understand, and the same courtesy is extended to

them. Ultimately, the Spanish vocabulary that is heard in the Northeast descends

from the Ta´ıno–African–Spanish mix that took place five hundred years ago

in the Caribbean, which is now mixing with dialects from other parts of the

Spanish-speaking world. This inter-dialectal mix is further enriched by words

that are borrowed from English, as when the competing ways of saying “kite”

in at least four dialects of Spanish are neutralized by the widespread adoption of

kite (Zentella 1990).

The regional origin of Spanish speakers is given away by intonation patterns

and pronunciation, even before they are identified by lexical items. The way

each group canta ‘sings’ – referring to the customary rise and fall of voices in

declarative sentences, or questions, or exclamations, and so on – is distinctive.

Both the specific “songs,” or intonation contours, and the consonants and vowels

of the Spanish of an area, are rooted in the indigenous languages of the origi￾nal inhabitants, the dialect(s) from Spain spoken by those who settled the area,

and the slaves’ African languages. Little is known about Ta´ıno and other Indian

languages of the Caribbean because the native peoples of that region were vir￾tually exterminated by the middle of the sixteenth century. As a result, scholars

believe that the impact of Indian languages on the Spanish of the area was lim￾ited. To replace the Indians, Africans were enslaved in large numbers to carry

on with the work, especially in the cane fields of lowland areas. Reportedly,

the Africans learned Spanish and accommodated quickly to their European mas￾ters’ culture (Rosario 1970: 13), but stigmatized pronunciations are often falsely

assumed to have originated with them. Lipski (1994: 96) maintains that speakers

of west African languages, particularly KiKongo, Kimbundu/Umbundu, Yoruba,

Efik, Igbo, Ewe/Fon, and Akan, accelerated or reinforced Spanish pronunciations

that corresponded to their own, but they originated very few features, which are

now rare. As for the origin of the Spaniards who settled the Caribbean colonies,

immigration figures point to southern Spain (Andalusia), as do the characteristics

194 ana celia zentella

of present day Andalusian Spanish. The colonists and sailors who came from

Andalusia had a greater impact on Spanish in the Caribbean and ports all along

the coasts of Central and South America than did speakers of Castilian, the prin￾cipal dialect of north central Spain (Canfield 1981, Cotton and Sharp 1988). The

Castilian-speaking clerics and administrators sent by the crown to the predom￾inantly inland seats of power left their mark on the Spanish of those cities –

Mexico, Lima, and Cuzco, for example – as did the principal Indian languages

and cultures that were not exterminated. In any case, as is true of the dialects of

Latin America and Spain today, Andalusian and Castilian varieties of Spanish

were enough alike during colonization that “few Castilians or Andalusians had

to significantly modify their speech in order to communicate with one another”

(Lipski 1994: 46).

The regular and extended contact of Andalusian Spanish with African lan￾guages and with the remnants of Indian languages and cultures in Latin Amer￾ica’s ports during the colonial era explains why dialects in very distant countries,

for example, Guayaquil, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, resemble each

other today. “Coastal/lowland dialects show a homogeneity over vast geographi￾cal expanses . . . ,” and “the phonetic similarities between coastal Latin American

Spanish and Andalusian Spanish are striking . . .” (Lipski 1994: 8). The expanse

referred to includes Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Atlantic

and Pacific coasts of Mexico, Central America’s Pacific coast, Venezuela, and

the Pacific coast of South America from Colombia to northern Chile. The pho￾netic similarities that speakers from this region share in their informal, popular

Spanish, and that distinguish them from speakers raised in the interior highlands

of Mexico, Central and South America, are few and primarily affect consonants.

The principal phonetic markers, which are heard every day in the Northeast, are

the following:

(1) /s/ (which may be written with an <s> or <z>) may be aspirated

(pronounced like the /h/ in her) or deleted altogether when it is at the

end of a syllable or a word:

andaluz /andaluh/ or /andalu/ ‘Andalusian’

estos costenos ˜ /ehtoh kohte˜noh/ or /eto kote˜no/ ‘these coastal

people’

(2) the letters <g> (before <e>, <i>), and <j> are aspirated, not pro￾nounced as a fricative, as in the German pronunciation of “Bach”:

gente joven /hente hoven/ ‘young people’

(3) /-n/ at the end of words sounds like the final sound in “sing” /siŋ/.

It may be deleted and the vowel that remains becomes nasalized:

sin ton ni son /siŋ toŋ ni soŋ/ or /s˜ı t˜o ni s˜o/ ‘without rhyme or

reason’

(4) syllable-final and word-final /l/ and /r/ are often difficult to distinguish,

particularly in the speech of the least educated. (Many Asians who

speak English as a second language also neutralize /l/ and /r/, but

Spanish in the Northeast 195

in Spanish this occurs in final position only.) Sometimes final /l/ is

realized as [r] but, more frequently, syllable final /r/ is realized as [l],

for example:

delantal /delantar/ ‘apron’; reportar /repoltal/ ‘to report’

(5) /d/ between vowels is deleted: almidonado /almionao/ ‘starched’.

Of these variations, the deletion or aspiration of syllable-final or word-final /-s/

(see (1), hereafter referred to as “final /s/”) is most commented on, and the debate

reveals contrasting cultural attitudes toward the pronunciation of /s/. Spanish

speakers who are not from the coastal areas of Latin America criticize the aspi￾ration or loss of /s/ so mercilessly that I refer to the phenomenon as “the tyranny

of –s.” Their insistence that “the best Spanish” is one that pronounces every

word as it is written is their basis for arguing that Colombia deserves that honor.

Ignorant of the Andalusian origin and African strengthening of the aspirated or

deleted final /s/ in Caribbean Spanish – or perhaps because of it – and of the Castil￾ian and Indian roots of its maintenance in Bogot´a and other highland dialects,

they view deletion or aspiration as the sloppy habits of low-status speakers. In

fact, the widespread instability of final /s/ throughout the coastal areas and, in

particular, the high rates of aspiration among Cubans and Puerto Ricans and of

deletion among Dominicans (Terrell 1982a, b) are maintained as a consequence

of negative attitudes towards the stressing of final /s/, especially in informal

speech.

In formal settings, like judicial proceedings or poetry readings, educated speak￾ers in the Caribbean tend to pronounce final /s/. But otherwise, rapid fire pronunci￾ations of final /s/ communicate vanity, self-importance, or – in males – effeminacy

(Rosario 1970: 81, Nu˜nez Cede˜no 1980). Dominicans, in particular, ridicule com￾patriots who emphasize final /-s/, accusing them of “hablando fiSno,” (‘talking

fine,’ with an intrusive /s/ in fino) or of “comiendo eSpaguettiS” (‘eating spaghetti,’

said stressing each /s/). In the Northeast, then, the Caribbean preference for the

aspiration or deletion of final /s/, which has meaningful cultural implications for

them, is stigmatized by speakers from Colombia and the interior regions of South

America. Since many of the critics enjoy higher academic, racial, and socioe￾conomic status than those they criticize, speakers of Caribbean Spanish suffer

heightened feelings of linguistic insecurity, which encourage the loss of Spanish

and exacerbate their social and educational problems (Zentella 1990a). The irony

is that while the aspiration or deletion of final /s/ is discredited, the aspiration

of /s/ at the beginning of a syllable or between vowels (hereafter referred to as

“initial /s/”), which occurs in the central highlands of Colombia but not in the

Caribbean, is ignored. Even highly educated cachacos(Colombians from the cen￾tral highlands) say /pahamos/ instead of /pasamos/ for pasamos ‘we pass,’ and

aspirate the first /s/ in words with more than one, for example, asesino /ahesino/

‘assassin.’ In fact, “. . . central Colombia is unique in the Spanish-speaking world

in reducing /s/ more frequently in syllable-initial than in syllable-final position”

(Lipski 1994: 209). Nor is Colombia free of final /s/ aspiration or deletion, both

196 ana celia zentella

of which are common in the costeno˜ ‘coastal’ Spanish spoken in Cartagena and

Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast, and along the Pacific coast.

The details about consonants and vowels in Spanish dialects are important

because they prove that judgments concerning linguistic correctness are actually

social judgments, that is, they are not based on linguistic facts but on group

fears, involving class and racial prejudices. An educated Latino elite can attack

pronunciations of the poor that deviate from the written standard, but ignore their

own deviations conveniently. It is not the aspiration or deletion of /s/ in itself that

is “good” or “bad,” but the way it is evaluated by those in authority. The /r/ after

vowels suffers a similar fate in Northeast English. Pronouncing hunter or New

York without the /r/, for example, is stereotyped as working-class “New Yawkese”

and looked down upon. But /r/ after vowels is also deleted in the “King’s English”

in England, which enjoys high prestige, and in New England the Kennedys and

other wealthy families are proud to be alumni of Ha:vad. The fact that the same

feature can be a source of humiliation in one community and a source of pride in

another proves that rules about how to speak “correctly” always favor the more

powerful.

When Latinos are asked to imitate members of their own or other Spanish￾speaking groups, they produce the same few items consistently. The stereotypical

markers that identify Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Mexicans some￾times incite feelings of linguistic incompetence, but most continue to be popular

because they communicate the uniqueness of each group.

The velar R in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS): arrastrar la doble rr

In PRS, the pairs corro ‘I run’ and cojo ‘I take,’ Ramon´ (man’s name) and jamon´

‘ham’ can sound similar. The Spanish trilled r, which is written as a single <r> at

the beginning of words and as a double <rr> in the middle of words, sounds like

a drum roll in most varieties of Spanish. Speakers of PRS sometimes have a velar

R instead, akin to the raspy German ch in Bach, which some refer to as arrastrar

la doble rr ‘to drag the double <rr>.’ Sometimes it can be less raspy and sound

closer to the English <h> as in ‘her,’ in which case the distinction between <rr>

or initial <r> and <j> may be lost, as in corro and cojo, Ramon´ and jamon´ .

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the velar R was more prevalent in the

northwest and southeast of the island, and among the lower working class. By

the 1960s it had spread to about half the population in all municipalities and

social classes (Navarro Tom´as 1948, Rosario 1970); urban sprawl since then has

undoubtedly extended its domain. Velar R is often regarded as unique to PRS, but

Canfield (1981: 44) cites it for the extreme southeast of the Dominican Republic,

and Varela (1992: 54) assures us that it is “un habito ling ´ u¨´ıstico general” ‘a general

linguistic habit’ in Cuban Spanish. Negative attitudes toward velar R in Spanish

run high and contribute to its users’ feelings of linguistic insecurity, but that is

not the case in other languages that have a similar R, for example, French and

Brazilian Portuguese. It may be that the trilled /r/ in Spanish is in the process of

Spanish in the Northeast 197

becoming more like the velar R of other Romance languages, with Puerto Ricans

and other Caribbean Spanish speakers in the vanguard of that change.

Syllable final /r/ and /1/ in Dominican Spanish: hablar con la i

El Cibao, the impoverished agricultural region of the Dominican Republic that

was home to the bulk of Dominicans now in the USA, is stereotyped as replac￾ing the /r/ in syllable final position with /i/, for example, cantar> cantai ‘to

sing,’ cuarto> cuaito ‘room,’ ‘money’ (this is called “vocalization”). Because,

as explained earlier, final /r/ and /l/ can be neutralized in Caribbean Spanish – or

/r/ can be realized as /l/ – some working-class speakers extend the vocalization

of /r/ to words with an /l/ at the end of a syllable, for example, maldito > maid￾ito ‘damned,’ capital > capitai ‘capital city.’ These pronunciations, which were

heard throughout the Caribbean up to the nineteenth century, are archaisms that

remain in the north central Cibao region, particularly in the speech of its older,

less educated, and more rural inhabitants (Jorge Morel 1974). Since many poor

immigrants came from that economically hard hit area, hablar con la i‘to talk with

the i’ is an expression mistakenly used to stereotype all Dominicans. Syllable￾final /r/ and /l/ are unstable in much of the Caribbean, but they undergo different

changes in different regions of the Dominican Republic. The word carne ‘meat,’

for example, can be pronounced four different ways in the Dominican Repub￾lic: North /kaine/, Capital area in South /kalne/, Southeast /kanne/, Southwest

/karne/ (Canfield 1981: 44). Educated speakers in all areas maintain the traditional

Spanish pronunciation, the one favored in the Southwest.

Cuban Spanish gemination

Cubans are known for dropping syllable final /l/ and /r/ and doubling the following

consonant (a process called gemination), for example, porque > /pokke/ (where

indicates a long vowel), Alberto > /abbetto/. The island’s regional and class

variations are not represented fully in the USA because the early post-revolution

immigrants were predominantly middle class, and because Cubans have not had

regular contact with the dialects of their island for forty years as a result of hostile

US–Cuba relations. No communities in the Northeast can match Dade County –

where Miami is – in size, power, or the viability of its Spanish. But many of the

darker skinned Cubans who left Cuba beginning in 1980 did not feel welcome

in Miami, and some chose to join the Cubans in New Jersey and New York. As

a result, “the majority of Cuban nonwhites live in the northeastern Unites States,

where the reputation for racial tolerance is better than in the South” (Boswell

and Curtis 1984: 103). The Spanish of the late twentieth-century arrivals revealed

recent innovations in Cuban Spanish, especially in the speech of males of “low

socioeconomic extraction.” Guitart (1992) claims that these Cheos (a nickname

like “Mac”), round the front vowels /i/ and /e/ and lower their pitch, and that

these features represent a “defiant Macho talk” that separates its speakers from