For the lovely Miranda /mi.rán.da/
PUERTO RICO
Originally called Borikén or Borinquén (Tierra del Gran Señor) by the indigenous taíno people, the island was visited by Christopher Columbus on his second trip. He named the island San Juan Bautista and the city Puerto Rico because of the large amount of gold offered to him when he arrived, but the names switched in 1521. (Then the military decided to make the official name "Porto Rico," but I don't know when it switched back, if it ever technically did.) The Spanish conquerors mixed somewhat with the indigenous people and the African slaves they brought over, so there haven't ever been many racial problems in Puerto Rico. The languages mixed as well, especially since for a while there the majority of the population was of African descent.
There's some discrepancy over who's a "real" Puerto Rican and who's not, so the islanders call themselves boricuanos from the original name of the island, and the ones living in the US are called nuyorkinos because most of them live right here in the northeast.
The language is not, as many people believe, very heavily influenced by English, and there are no sintactic influences except in the newspapers and on TV. Puerto Rican islanders don't ask ¿Cómo te gustó la playa? or say El sabe cómo hablar inglés or insist they'll call you back with Te llamo p’atrás. That's all in the media (or so I read). There are a lot of anglicisms, though, like palkin ("parking"), wikén ("weekend"), chilear ("to chill out"), and even chonkear, which comes from "chunk" but means "to vomit" (I would say it's the equivalent of the vulgar English expression "to blow chunks").
There are also lexical (related to vocabulary) influences from the taíno language, including hamaca, hurakán, and cucubano ("firefly"), as well as from the African languages, including words about food, like burundanga and gandinga. Don't ask me what these mean, 'cause I have no idea except that the first one is a mix of something.
There're also influences in pronunciation from the Canary Islands and Andalusia (south of Spain) like the suffixes -ado/-ada pronounced without the "d" (pescao; estoy cansá) and how they "eat" the "s"s (má o meno).
Phonetics and Phonology:
- "y" or "ll" is pronounced like G in George at the beginning of a word/phrase. Jo soy Alison.
- The "d" sound is either weak or disappears entirely, especially between vowels.
- Same with the "s" sound, but sometimes it's aspirated, so más o menos would be máhomeno.
- The "n" sound is pronounced like the "ng" in "walking" at the end of a word/phrase. Quiero un limóng. El avióng vuele.
- Sometimes "ch" is pronounced like "sh" between vowels. Buena' noshe'.
- "r"s tend to sound like "l"s at the end of a syllable. Puelto Rico. Abre la puelta.
- "rr" or the "r" at the beginning of a word sounds sort of like the French "r". It's pronounced at the back of the throat and also sort of sounds like the "j" in jamón. It's a frequent joke that Ramón and jamón are pronounced the same in Puerto Rican Spanish.
Sintax:
- Puerto Ricans use pronouns a lot more than necessary, and in questions the pronouns go before the verbs. ¿Qué tú quieres? This is typical of the Caribbean in general.
- Pronouns are used even before infinitives, like Para yo hacer eso, which would be redundant in context.
- Sometimes the subjunctive isn't used when it normally is. For example, Puerto Ricans might say Es posible que llueve instead of Es posible que llueva. It's not a big deal from a linguistic point of view, but a lot of people think it's "incorrect" to not use it there.
Lexicon:
- aguinaldo "Christmas carol"
- ay bendito instead of ay dios mío
- chavos "money"
- china "sweet orange"
- escrachao "broken"
- frajlai "flashlight"
- petiyanqui "American (US) wannabe"
- zafacón "garbage can"
I'm kind of exhausted now, so I'll get back to you on Dominican Spanish later, okay? It's very similar to Puerto Rican Spanish, so I'll probably just mention the differences...
Originally called Borikén or Borinquén (Tierra del Gran Señor) by the indigenous taíno people, the island was visited by Christopher Columbus on his second trip. He named the island San Juan Bautista and the city Puerto Rico because of the large amount of gold offered to him when he arrived, but the names switched in 1521. (Then the military decided to make the official name "Porto Rico," but I don't know when it switched back, if it ever technically did.) The Spanish conquerors mixed somewhat with the indigenous people and the African slaves they brought over, so there haven't ever been many racial problems in Puerto Rico. The languages mixed as well, especially since for a while there the majority of the population was of African descent.
There's some discrepancy over who's a "real" Puerto Rican and who's not, so the islanders call themselves boricuanos from the original name of the island, and the ones living in the US are called nuyorkinos because most of them live right here in the northeast.
The language is not, as many people believe, very heavily influenced by English, and there are no sintactic influences except in the newspapers and on TV. Puerto Rican islanders don't ask ¿Cómo te gustó la playa? or say El sabe cómo hablar inglés or insist they'll call you back with Te llamo p’atrás. That's all in the media (or so I read). There are a lot of anglicisms, though, like palkin ("parking"), wikén ("weekend"), chilear ("to chill out"), and even chonkear, which comes from "chunk" but means "to vomit" (I would say it's the equivalent of the vulgar English expression "to blow chunks").
There are also lexical (related to vocabulary) influences from the taíno language, including hamaca, hurakán, and cucubano ("firefly"), as well as from the African languages, including words about food, like burundanga and gandinga. Don't ask me what these mean, 'cause I have no idea except that the first one is a mix of something.
There're also influences in pronunciation from the Canary Islands and Andalusia (south of Spain) like the suffixes -ado/-ada pronounced without the "d" (pescao; estoy cansá) and how they "eat" the "s"s (má o meno).
Phonetics and Phonology:
- "y" or "ll" is pronounced like G in George at the beginning of a word/phrase. Jo soy Alison.
- The "d" sound is either weak or disappears entirely, especially between vowels.
- Same with the "s" sound, but sometimes it's aspirated, so más o menos would be máhomeno.
- The "n" sound is pronounced like the "ng" in "walking" at the end of a word/phrase. Quiero un limóng. El avióng vuele.
- Sometimes "ch" is pronounced like "sh" between vowels. Buena' noshe'.
- "r"s tend to sound like "l"s at the end of a syllable. Puelto Rico. Abre la puelta.
- "rr" or the "r" at the beginning of a word sounds sort of like the French "r". It's pronounced at the back of the throat and also sort of sounds like the "j" in jamón. It's a frequent joke that Ramón and jamón are pronounced the same in Puerto Rican Spanish.
Sintax:
- Puerto Ricans use pronouns a lot more than necessary, and in questions the pronouns go before the verbs. ¿Qué tú quieres? This is typical of the Caribbean in general.
- Pronouns are used even before infinitives, like Para yo hacer eso, which would be redundant in context.
- Sometimes the subjunctive isn't used when it normally is. For example, Puerto Ricans might say Es posible que llueve instead of Es posible que llueva. It's not a big deal from a linguistic point of view, but a lot of people think it's "incorrect" to not use it there.
Lexicon:
- aguinaldo "Christmas carol"
- ay bendito instead of ay dios mío
- chavos "money"
- china "sweet orange"
- escrachao "broken"
- frajlai "flashlight"
- petiyanqui "American (US) wannabe"
- zafacón "garbage can"
I'm kind of exhausted now, so I'll get back to you on Dominican Spanish later, okay? It's very similar to Puerto Rican Spanish, so I'll probably just mention the differences...