I enjoy reading another message board regularly and I came across an interesting thread about socio-linguistic aspects and stereotypes in
PR culture that thoroughly caught my attention. It is known, it has also been proven and researched by many linguists etc. that there are certain elements of speech that are attributed to speakers of the Caribbean region and those elements are attributed to speech patterns of African slaves during colonization. Without a doubt these linguistic features survived in the Caribbean for diverse reasons, the primary reason being that certain areas have been rural up until fifty years ago approx. and secondly isolation has enabled speech patterns to remain and pervade rather than evolve.
The socio-linguistic critique in a thread on
zonai.com identified the same erroneous speech patterns that I have mentioned many times before in two key threads in particular- Como hablamos los dominicanos and Dialectology Issues. What I found interesting was the self- critique of Puerto Ricans of their own erroneous speech patterns and the fact that they are identical to Dominican speech patterns that are still heard today and remain unchallenged.
Here are a few from the thread that in my opinion are important to note, analyze and some are also heard in many areas of Latin America:
From zonai.com/foros
1.
Cuídese de sustituir la "M" por la "N". Decir estábanos, habíanos, decíanos, andábanos, etc., no es correcto.
There is not much to comment here other than these forms are incorrect. In Spanish {M} is not substituted for {N}. Verb forms in particular should not be altered. The only correct forms are: estábamos, habíamos, decíamos, andábamos.
2.
También cuídese de agregar una "S" al final de las palabras. NO diga: hicistes, vistes, trajistes, comistes, dormistes, fuistes, etc.
This is the ultimate when it comes to 'non- cultured' forms of Spanish IMO. Adding [s] to the
tú form of the preterit tense is more common than it should be even among Spanish speakers who speak very well. In my experience there is not a pattern that is conclusive or associated with one country or region because I have heard the above examples from the best and worst of speakers. This definitely is not a speech pattern that should be adopted and one should know that it is absolutely incorrect. Unfortunately it is prevalent in Latin America.
3.
Más común y errado es sustituir la "R" por una "L" como en peldón, palking, mejol, o hasta al pedir las "culs lai" (Coors Light).
I don’t need to go into depth about this speech pattern, which is a coined trademark of
PR Spanish and parts of the DR. However, these forms are considered substandard from a linguistic point of view.
4.
Evite también usar palabras acuñadas en los campos de nuestro país como; haiga, diferiencia, pior, alevántate, naidien, arrempújalo, dispués, estijeras, díceselo, mai o pai, legartijo, etc.
I think this was well stated 'acuñadas en los campos de nuestro país'. This definitely supports my statement in my opening paragraphs above the fact that some LA countries were rural and only recently (the last fifty years +) began to urbanize. This factor prevented inherent rural patterns from evolving combined with the lack of education of the populace. The examples above are what are called 'vulgarismos' in linguistics terms (not the traditional English meaning). Vulgarismo is defined as:
-los hablantes que no han recibido una educación suficiente utilizan un código restringido y deficiente, y como están poco familiarizados con el lenguaje escrito, cometen abundantes incorrecciones. (Source: Gramática Práctica-A.Mozas).
5.
Ni se le ocurra usar adaptaciones "hechas en casa" del inglés al español como lonche (almuerzo), rufo (techo), boila (caldera), marqueta (colmado), y otras.
We have had many discussions in the past about angliscims (the most recent one is the thread titled
Anglicismos). Anyone who has read any of my posts on this subject knows my position. Anglicisms pose a threat to the authenticity of the Spanish language. Anglicized words used in Spanish show evidence of the co-existence of the two languages in a region, the strong influence of the English in Spanish, lack of vocabulary knowledge in Spanish by the speaker and the biggest impact is the fact that some anglicized words used in Spanish don’t have the intended Spanish meaning but continue to be used in Spanish.
Here are some examples of this concept:
-carpeta –with the intended meaning of carpet but
carpeta means
cartera para archivar cosas in Spanish.
- tomar acción- with the intended meaning of take action the correct Spanish equivalent would be
actuar.
(There are many more examples in the day-to-day speech of many that evidence this influence of English in Spanish and a change of semantics).
6.
Los superlativos redundantes no van. "Más mejor" y "más peor" no hacen mayor lo que ya es mejor o peor.
I have heard this too and this is strictly a grammatical issue. If something is in the superlative form it is the highest degree it cannot be any higher. The equivalent of good/ better/ best in English is what is being critiqued above. The Spanish version is: bueno/ mejor/ el/la mejor. I too am puzzled by the usage of 'más major' etc.
7.
Otras redundancias incluyen frases como: Métete pa' dentro, Súbete pa'rriba, Se le salió pa' afuera, Bájate pa' bajo.
These forms just make no sense because of the redundancy. Every now and then I do hear these forms used and I truly believe the speaker is not aware that what s/he is saying is redundant and incorrect. Can you imagine-
Súbete pa'rriba. Once again I was having an interesting language discussion recently with a Cuban friend of mine and she said to me: 'Lesley son ejemplos de su incultura'. I completely agree. Her short phrase summarized it all.
Other speech patterns, grammatical flaws etc were critiqued in the thread on
zonai.com however, these are the ones I thought were the most interesting to analyze. Some patterns are inherent that date back to the 17thC as discussed in my thread on Dialectology Issues and others patterns are recent influences and trends such as anglicisms which will continue to challenge those who speak Spanish and governing bodies such as the RAE and its affiliates.
-LDG.
(83)
Dígalo bien...
Macocael-
