Dominican spanish dialect

[dan333]

I am doing a paper on the dominican dialect of spanish and would greatly appreciate any suggestions of papers on the topic or native speakers willing to be interviewed over the phone for my class. thanks for any and all of your help.

[Chris]

I'm going to send this enquiry to Spanish 101. It is sure to get more attention there.

[ssasy]

Does the book has to be in English?

[Hillbilly]

Dominican Spanish is NOT a dialect. Dialects are distinct variants of a language, often times not understood by speakers of the base language. Dominicans can be understood anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world.

If you are doing a paper on Dominican Spanish, look up Arturo Jimenez' works.

You will find some archaic usages and strange words, but the same is true in Colombia and other parts.

Cordially,

HB

[dan333]

1 thanks for moving it I didn't realize that section existed, apologies.
2 No it can be a book in spanish I am almost 100% fluent in spanish
3 I called it a dialect but really meant a subdialect, in my current linguistics class we are using the definition of a dialect as a linguistic modality of a certain geographic zone or region to clarify what I meant.

thanks to all the quick replies .

[ssasy]

Here are some books you may want to take a look at:

*Latinismo y español dominicano / Díaz Díaz, Belarminio
*Más datos sobre el español de la República Dominicana / Jiménez Sabater, Max A
*Dominicanismos / Patín Maceo, Manuel Antonio.
*El español en Santo Domingo / Henríquez Ureña, Pedro
*Del lenguaje dominicano / Jiménez, R. Emilio (Ramón Emilio)
*Palabras indígenas de la isla de Santo Domingo / Tejera, Emiliano,
Also if you click on the sticky: Como hablamos los Dominicanos there is a link to a book that might be useful.

P.s. I haven't read any of these books. I just thought they may be helpful. You just have to take a look at them and see if they are any good for your paper.

[Hillbilly]

Max Arturo Jiménez Sabater is the author I mentioned. Google him.
There is a guy named "ALBA" but I keep forgetting his first name. Also a very excellent source for information on Dominican Spanish.
And I even question the use of sub-dialect, since this would implicate that Hispanic- American Spanish is somehow a dialect en toto, and that is not true either.
To my way of looking at dialects, this has to be like Provençal, Catalan, Gallego, something that is clearly distinguishable from the parent language, and certainly not totally intelligable to speakers of the parent tongue.

Whatever, you are looking for information on the Dominican usage of the Spanish language and you have several fine references. Go get 'em!

HB

[Lesley D]

First of all I wish you the best of luck on your research paper. I have written many as well and although you may reach peaks of frustration in the process, the learning experience is incomparable. The list of books in post #6 are great suggestions and I highly recommend reading Como hablamos los dominicanos. I read it twice and I also provided my feed back in the thread. I could have easily written an essay on the book. It touches on several linguistics aspects of Dominican Spanish that are speech characteristics that define or set Dominican Spanish apart from Spanish spoken in other countries, however, very characteristic of the Caribbean region i.e. Puerto Rico (identical) and Cuba (very similar).

Regarding dialects etc. I am not sure what your area of study or concentration is but speaking from my own academic background and professional experience if you are a linguistics major or a translation major you should be well aware of the definitions of certain concepts in linguistics terms. It's important to understand the difference between for example 'dialect', 'pidgin', 'creole', 'patois', and 'language' before even starting your paper. If you have the slightest doubt send me a pm (private message). There should be no speculation here at all and whatever you choose as your topic of discussion, you must be able to refer back to your thesis throughout your paper to validate your theory.

For example one poster stated that Catalán is a dialect and it's not. Catalán is a language spoken in Spain (in Cataluña) and two of the key markers of a language are: it has its own set of verb conjugation rules and its own grammar. Catalán is also offered as a language of study in many universities. Now compare this to Spanish spoken in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic, which by definition is a dialect because it is "a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties ". Using this definition Spanish spoken in the Cibao region (el cibaeño) is distinguishable by its vocabulary, phonetic characteristics (pronunciation) but not by syntax or any other linguistic feature which remains identical to Spanish spoken in the rest of the Dominican Republic but differs from regional varieties of other countries.

As I said feel free to contact me via PM if you need any suggestions.


Regards,

-LDG.