Caribbean Spanish

Caribbean Spanish ("español caribeño") is the general name of the Spanish language dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. It closely resembles the Spanish spoken in Andalusia and the Canary Islands.

More precisely, the term refers to the Spanish language as spoken in the Caribbean islands of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and in the Caribbean mainland along the coast of Mexico, Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama), Colombia and Venezuela.

Phonetics and phonology

*IPA|/s/ at the end of a syllable or before a consonant may be debuccalized to IPA| [h] or elided. This can cause homophones to occur, such as "pecao" meaning 'sin' or 'fish', whereas other dialects might make the distinction: "'pecado" ('sin') and "pescado" ('fish'). This homophony rarely causes semantic confusion, however, as the meaning is usually determined by context.
*Intervocalic IPA|/d/ is often deleted (at times causing diphthongs): "cansado" IPA|/kanˈsau/ ('tired'), "nada" IPA|/na/ ('nothing'), and "perdido" IPA|/pɛrˈdio/ ('lost').
* /x/ (the soft 'g' pronunciation), is softer than in other Spanish dialects as the IPA|/h/ in English
* Nasals are pronounced IPA| [ŋ] at the end of words ("con" IPA| [koŋ] 'with')
* is often confused with IPA|/ɾ/ at the end of a syllable especially in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.
* is often pronounced as IPA| [x] and aspirated, especially in Puerto Rico: eg. "revolucion" IPA| [xeβoluˈsjoŋ] ('revolution')

Many of these traits are inventoried and quantitatively analyzed in the theses of Henrietta Cedergren "The Interplay of Social and. Linguistic Factors in Panama" Cornell University (1973) and Shana Poplack "Function and process in a variable phonology" University of Pennsylvania (1979).

Syntax

* Heavy usage of the pronouns "tú" and "usted" (or "vos" in Central America), often put before a phrase ("tú estas hablando" instead of "estás hablando")