Peninsular Spanish
Peninsular Spanish (Spanish: español peninsular), also known as the Spanish of Spain (Spanish: español de España), European Spanish (Spanish: español europeo), or Iberian Spanish (Spanish: español ibérico), is the set of varieties of the Spanish language spoken in Peninsular Spain. This construct is often framed in opposition to varieties from the Americas and the Canary Islands.
From a phonological standpoint, there is a north-south gradient contrasting conservative and innovative pronunciation patterns. The former generally retain features such as /s/ – /θ/ distinction and realization of intervocalic /d/, whilst the latter may not. Processes of interaction and levelling between standard (a construct popularly perceived as based on northern dialects) and nonstandard varieties however involve ongoing adoption of conservative traits south and innovative ones north.[1] In line with Spanish language's rich consonant fluctuation, other internal variation within varieties of Peninsular Spanish is represented by phenomena such as weakening of coda position -/s/, the defricativization of /tʃ/, realizations of /x/ as [x] and [h] and weakening or change of liquid consonants /l/ and /r/.[2]
Variants
Variation in Peninsular Spanish, especially phonetic, largely follows a north-south axis, often imagined or characterized as Castilian versus Andalusian in the popular imagination. That said, different
The Spanish dialects of bilingual regions, such as Castrapo in Galicia or Catalan Spanish, have their own features due to language contact.A simple, north-south division is:[5]
- northern dialects (Castile (including Madrid), León, Cantabria, the Basque Country, Aragon, and Spanish-speaking Catalonia)
- southern dialects (Extremaduran Spanish, Murcian Spanish)
Another north-south division would include a central-northern, found north of Madrid and equated with Castilian Spanish, a southern or Andalusian dialect, and an intermediary zone. This division does not include the Spanish of bilingual regions.[6]
While a more narrow division includes the following dialect regions:[4]
- northern Castile, including Salamanca, Valladolid, Burgos, and neighboring provinces;
- northern Extremadura and Leon, including the province of Cáceres, parts of Leon, western Salamanca province, and Zamora
- Galicia, referring to the Spanish spoken both monolingually and in contact with Galician
- Asturias, especially inland areas such as Oviedo
- the interior Cantabrian region, to the south of Santander
- the Basque Country, including Spanish as spoken monolingually and incontact with Basque
- Catalonia, including Spanish spoken in contact with Catalan
- southeastern Spain, including much of Valencia, Alicante, Murcia, Albacete, and southeastern La Mancha
- eastern Andalusia, including Granada, Almería, and surrounding areas
- western Andalusia, including Seville, Huelva, Cádiz, and the Extremaduran province of Badajoz – the Spanish of Gibraltar is also included
- south-central and southwest Spain, including areas to the south of Madrid such as Toledo and Ciudad Real.
The related term Castilian Spanish is often applied to formal varieties of Spanish as spoken in Spain.[7][8]
According to folk tradition, the "purest" form of Peninsular Spanish is spoken in Valladolid, although the concept of "pure" languages has been rejected by modern linguists.[9][10]
Variation
Dialectal variation in the Peninsula follows both north-south and east-west axes.[11]
Leísmo is native to a large swath of western Castile, as well as Cantabria and neighboring parts of Leon and Extremadura.[12]
In much of eastern Castile, as well as Navarre, Aragon and Álava, the clitic pronoun se can express plural number, becoming sen, when it follows an infinitive, gerund, or subjunctive form used to express a command, as in casarsen 'to get married', siéntensen 'sit down'.[13]
In an area of northern Spain, centered on Burgos, La Rioja, Álava and Vizcaya and also including Guipúzcoa, Navarra, Cantabria and Palencia, the imperfect subjunctive forms tend to be replaced by conditional ones.[14]
In rural
In a chunk of northwestern Spain which includes Galicia and Bilbao and excludes Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville, the sequence /tl/ in words such as atleta 'athlete' and Atlántico 'Atlantic' is treated as an onset cluster, with both consonants being part of the same syllable. The same is true in the Canary Islands and most of Latin America, with the exception of Puerto Rico. On the other hand, in most of Peninsular Spanish, each consonant in /tl/ is considered as belonging to a separate syllable, and as a result the /t/ is subject to weakening. Thus, [aðˈlantiko], [aðˈleta] are the resulting pronunciations.[16][17]
Differences from American Spanish
The Spanish language is a
The variants of Spanish spoken in Spain and its former colonies vary significantly in
Dialects in central and northern Spain and
Additionally, all Latin American dialects drop the familiar (that is, informal) vosotros verb forms for the second person plural, using ustedes in all contexts. In most of Spain, ustedes is used only in a formal context.
Some other minor differences are:
- The widespread use of le instead of lo as the masculine direct object pronoun, especially referring to people. This morphological variation, known as leísmo, is typical of a strip of land in central Spain which includes Madrid, and recently it has spread to other regions.
- In the past, the sounds for ⟨y⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ were phonologically different in most European Spanish subvarieties, especially in the north, compared with only a few dialects in Latin America, but that difference is now beginning to disappear (yeísmo) in all Peninsular Spanish dialects, including the standard (that is, Castilian Spanish based on the Madrid dialect). A distinct phoneme for ⟨ll⟩ is still heard in the speech of older speakers in rural areas throughout Spain, however, most Spanish-speaking adults and youngsters merge ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩. In Latin America, ⟨ll⟩ remains different from ⟨y⟩ in traditional dialects along the Andes range, especially in the Peruvian highlands, all of Bolivia and also in Paraguay. In the Philippines, speakers of Spanish and Filipino employ the distinctionbetween ⟨ll⟩ /ʎ/ and ⟨y⟩ /ʝ/.
- In Spain, use of usted has declined in favor of tú;[19] however, in Latin America, this difference is less noticeable among young people, especially in Caribbean dialects.[citation needed]
- In Castilian Spanish, the letter ⟨j⟩ as well as the letter ⟨g⟩ before the letters ⟨i⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are pronounced as a stronger velar fricative /x/ and very often the friction is uvular [χ], while in Latin America they are generally guttural as well, but not as strong and the uvular realizations of European Spanish are not reported. In the Caribbean, Colombia, Venezuela, other parts of Latin America, the Canary Islands, Extremadura and most of western Andalusia, as well as in the Philippines, it is pronounced as [h].
- Characteristic of Spanish from Spain (except from Andalusia and the Canary Islands) is the Paisa region, and Andean Spanishdialects.
- Debuccalization of syllable-final /s/ to [x], [h], or dropping it entirely, so that está [esˈta] ("s/he is") sounds like [ehˈta] or [eˈta], occurs in both Spain and the Americas. In Spain, this is most common in southern Spain: Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, Community of Madrid, La Mancha, etc., as well as in the Canary Islands; in the Americas it is the general pronunciation in most coastal and lowland regions.
- The sequence /tl/ is not a valid onset in Castilian Spanish, unlike Latin American Spanish (particularly Mexican Spanish, where /tl/ is much more common). Thus, in Spain, words like Atlántico and atleta are pronounced according to the syllabication At-lán-ti-co and at-le-ta. Instead, in Mexico, the pronunciation follows the syllabication A-tlán-ti-co and a-tle-ta.[16][17]
- voseo is the use of the second person singular informal pronoun vos which comes with different verb forms compared to tú. There are several sub-varieties of voseo within Latin America and many Latin American varieties do not have any form of voseo at all.
Vocabulary
The meaning of certain words may differ greatly between all the dialects of the language: carro refers to
Speakers from Latin America tend to use words and polite-set expressions that, even if recognized by the
Iberian Spanish | Latin American Spanish[N 1] | English |
---|---|---|
vale | bien (universal), listo (Colombia), dale (Argentina) ya (Chile), (Peru) | okay |
gafas | anteojos/lentes | eyeglasses/spectacles |
patata | papa | potato (papa also means poppet or child) |
judía, alubia | frijol/frejol/caraota (Venezuela) / habichuela (Caribbean) / poroto | bean |
jersey/chaleco | suéter/saco/pulóver | sweater |
coche | auto/carro | car |
conducir | manejar | to drive |
aparcar | estacionar/parquear | to park |
fregona | trapeador, trapero, lampazo (Argentina, Uruguay), mopa, mapo (Puerto Rico) | mop |
tarta | torta/pastel (Mexico, El Salvador) / queque/bizcocho (Puerto Rico) | cake |
ordenador | computadora/computador | computer |
zumo | jugo | juice |
chulo/guay | chévere/chido/piola/copado/bacán/bacano | cool (slang) |
cabezal | cabeza | head (of an apparatus) |
- ^ Latin American Spanish consists of several varieties spoken throughout the Americas so the examples may not represent all dialects. They are meant to show contrast and comparing all variants of Latin America as a whole to one variant of Spain would be impossible as the majority of the vocabulary will be reflected in other variants.
References
- from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5.
- ISBN 978-3-11-022025-4.
- ^ ISBN 9781405198820.
- ^ a b
ISBN 9781118827550.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 9781108770293.
- ^ "Castilian Spanish". ncl.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2015.
- ^ "Castilian". Webcitation.org. Archived from the original on November 9, 2009. Retrieved 2015-08-11.
- ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
- ^ "Lingüista sostiene que no hablan mejor español en Valladolid que en Medellín". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). 2016-09-03. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez 2016, p. 387.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez 2016, pp. 388–390.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez 2016, pp. 390–391.
- ^ Fernández-Ordóñez 2016, pp. 392–393.
- ^ Penny 2000, p. 157.
- ^ a b "División silábica y ortográfica de palabras con «tl»". Real Académia Española (in Spanish). Retrieved 19 July 2021.
- ^ ISSN 1575-5533.
- ISBN 978-0-87840-094-2
- ^ Soler-Espiauba, Dolores (1994). "¿Tú o usted? ¿Cuándo y por qué? Descodificación al uso del estudiante de español como lengua extranjera" ['Tú' or 'usted'? When and why? Decoding for the use of the student of Spanish as a foreign language] (PDF). Actas (in Spanish) (V). ASELE: 199–208. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
Bibliography
- Fernández-Ordóñez, Inés (2016). "Dialectos del Español Peninsular" (PDF). In Gutiérrez-Rexach, Javier (ed.). Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9781315713441. Archived from the original(PDF) on July 12, 2020. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
- Penny, Ralph J. (2000). Variation and change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521780454. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
External links
- Constraint interaction in Spanish /s/-aspiration: three Peninsular varieties, Richard E. Morris
- Coda obstruents and local constraint conjunction in north-central Peninsular Spanish, Richard E. Morris
- (in Spanish) Jergas de habla hispana Spanish dictionary specializing in slang and colloquial expressions, featuring all Spanish-speaking countries.
- COSER, Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish