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Andean Spanish is a dialect of Spanish spoken in the central Andes, from southern Colombia, with influence as far south as northern Chile and Northwestern Argentina, passing through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. While similar to other Spanish dialects, Andean Spanish shows influence from Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous languages, due to prolonged and intense language contact. This influence is especially strong in rural areas. [1]
Voseo is common in the Bolivian and Ecuadorian Andes, largely among rural and poorer speakers. It is nearly extinct in Peru. Some speakers tend towards pronominal voseo, using vos with the tú conjugations of verbs, whereas more indigenous speakers tend to use the vos conjugations. [1]
Words like pues, pero and nomás are often used similarly to the modal suffixes of Quechua and Aymara. They can be stacked at the end of a clause:
Dile nomás pues pero. "Just go ahead and tell him." [1]
Andean Spanish also widely uses redundant "double possessives" as in:
De María en su casa estoy yendo. "I'm going to Maria's house." [1]
This also shows how en can indicate "motion towards" in the Andes. En may also be used "before a locative adverb, as in Vivo en acá 'I live here' or En allá sale agua 'Water is coming out there.'" [1]
Due to Aymara and Quechua influence, Andean Spanish often uses the pluperfect tense or clause-final dice "he/she says" to indicate evidentiality. [1] Evidential dice is more common in monolingual Peruvian Spanish. [1]
In upper Ecuador, a dar + gerund construction is common, ie:
Pedro me dio componiendo mi reloj. "Pedro fixed my watch." [1]
Andean Spanish typically uses more loans from Aymara and Quechua than other Spanish varieties. [1] In addition, some common words have different meanings. Pie, meaning "foot," can refer to the whole leg, due to Aymara influence. Siempre ("always") can mean "still." [1]
In northwest Argentina and northern Chile today, it is possible to say that there is a certain fusion in the dialects of both countries, but the local dialects are more dominant.
The Andean dialect can be heard in the northwest, with respect to the pronunciation and lexicon. The Rioplatense dialect provides some of the pronunciation, a variety of modes, and the Argentine dialect.
Rioplatense replaces the Andean use of "tú" as the second person singular familiar pronoun with "vos". It is very similar in Chile, but "tú" and "vos" are there both used as the singular familiar second-person pronoun. Also, there is influence of Chilean Spanish and some Andean Spanish.
Quechua, usually called Runasimi in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers as of 2004. Approximately 25% of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language.
Spanish is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula. Today, it is a global language with about 486 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico.
The different varieties of the Spanish language spoken in the Americas are distinct from each other as well as from those varieties spoken in the Iberian peninsula, collectively known as Peninsular Spanish and Spanish spoken elsewhere, such as in Africa and Asia. There is great diversity among the various Latin American vernaculars, and there are no traits shared by all of them which are not also in existence in one or more of the variants of Spanish used in Spain. A Latin American "standard" does, however, vary from the Castilian "standard" register used in television and notably the dubbing industry. Of the more than 469 million people who speak Spanish as their native language, more than 422 million are in Latin America, the United States and Canada.. The total amount of native and non-native speakers of Spanish is approximately 592 million.
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Bolivian Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over one million speakers. Aymara, along with Spanish and Quechua, is an official language in Bolivia and Peru. It is also spoken, to a much lesser extent, by some communities in northern Chile, where it is a recognized minority language.
Some of the regional varieties of the Spanish language are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar.
In Spanish grammar, voseo is the use of vos as a second-person singular pronoun, along with its associated verbal forms, in certain regions where the language is spoken. In those regions it replaces tuteo, i.e. the use of the pronoun tú and its verbal forms. Voseo can also be found in the context of using verb conjugations for vos with tú as the subject pronoun, as in the case of Chilean Spanish, where this form coexists with the ordinary form of voseo.
Rioplatense Spanish, also known as Rioplatense Castilian, is a variety of Spanish spoken mainly in and around the Río de la Plata Basin of Argentina and Uruguay. It is also referred to as River Plate Spanish or Argentine Spanish. It is the most prominent dialect to employ voseo in both speech and writing. Many features of Rioplatense are also shared with the varieties spoken in south and eastern Bolivia, and Paraguay. This dialect is often spoken with an intonation resembling that of the Neapolitan language of Southern Italy, but there are exceptions.
Yeísmo is a distinctive feature of certain dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (listen) and its merger into the phoneme (listen), usually realized as a palatal approximant or affricate. It is an example of delateralization.
Chilean Spanish is any of several varieties of the Spanish language spoken in most of Chile. Chilean Spanish dialects have distinctive pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and slang usages that differ from those of Standard Spanish. Formal Spanish in Chile has recently incorporated an increasing number of colloquial elements.
A pinkillu, pinkuyllu or pinqullu is a flute found throughout the Andes, used primarily in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. It is usually played with one hand, leaving the other one free to accompany oneself on a drum like the tinya. It is used in a variety of public festivals and other kinds of communal ceremonies.
Peruvian Ribereño Spanish or Peruvian Coastal Spanish is the form of the Spanish language spoken in the coastal region of Peru. The Spanish spoken in Coastal Peru has four characteristic forms today: the original one, that of the inhabitants of Lima near the Pacific coast and parts south, ; the inland immigrant sociolect ; the Northern, in Trujillo, Chiclayo or Piura; and the Southern. The majority of Peruvians speak Peruvian Coast Spanish, as Peruvian Coast Spanish is the standard dialect of Spanish in Peru.
Spanish is the de facto official and administrative language of Chile. Spoken by 99.3% of the population in the form of Chilean Spanish, as well as Andean Spanish and Chilean Catalan, Spanish in Chile also receives the title of "castellano." Although an officially recognized Hispanic language does not exist at the governmental level, the Constitution itself- as well as all official documents- is written in this language.
Colombian Spanish is a grouping of the varieties of Spanish spoken in Colombia. The term is of more geographical than linguistic relevance, since the dialects spoken in the various regions of Colombia are quite diverse. The speech of the northern coastal area tends to exhibit phonological innovations typical of Caribbean Spanish, while highland varieties have been historically more conservative. The Caro and Cuervo Institute in Bogotá is the main institution in Colombia to promote the scholarly study of the language and literature of both Colombia and the rest of Spanish America. The educated speech of Bogotá, a generally conservative variety of Spanish, has high popular prestige among Spanish-speakers throughout the Americas.
The aguayo, or also quepina is a rectangular carrying cloth used in traditional communities in the Andes region of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Aymara and Quechua people use it to carry small children or various other items in it on their backs. It is similar to a lliklla and sometimes regarded as a synonym.
Paraguayan Spanish is the set of dialects of the Spanish language spoken in Paraguay. In addition, it influences the speech of the Argentine provinces of Misiones, Corrientes, Formosa, and, to a lesser extent, Chaco. Paraguayan Spanish possesses marked characteristics of Spanish previously spoken in northern Spain, because the majority of the first settlers were from Old Castile and the Basque Country.
Uruguayan Spanish is the variety of Spanish spoken in Uruguay and by the Uruguayan diaspora. Uruguayan Spanish is recognized as a variety of Rioplatense Spanish.
Spanish is the most-widely spoken language in Ecuador, though great variations are present depending on several factors, the most important one being the geographical region where it is spoken. The three main regional variants are:
Peruvian Spanish is a family of dialects of the Spanish language that have been spoken in Peru since brought over by Spanish conquistadors in 1492. There are four varieties spoken in the country, by about 94.4% of the population. The four Peruvian dialects are Andean Spanish, Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Andean-Coastal Spanish, and Amazonic Spanish.
Equatorial Spanish, also called Coastal Colombian-Ecuadorian dialect or Chocoano, is a dialect of Spanish spoken mainly in the coastal region of Ecuador, as well as in the bordering coastal areas of northern Peru and southern Colombia. It is considered to be transitional between the Caribbean dialects and the Peruvian Coast varieties. The major influential linguistic centers are Guayaquil and Buenaventura. There is an important subvariety of this dialect which is spoken by most of the communities of African descent dwelling on the border between coastal Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and which is said to reflect African influence in terms of intonation and rhythm.
Bolivian Spanish is the variety of Spanish spoken by the majority of the population in Bolivia, either as a mother tongue or as a second language. Within the Spanish of Bolivia there are different regional varieties. In the border areas, Bolivia shares dialectal features with the neighboring countries.