How is dominican Spanish viewed?
Item
issuer
Quora
Language
English
Date Accepted
12/05/19
list of contributors
Juan Sarmiento
Title
How is dominican Spanish viewed?
content
Dominican Spanish is just that, Spanish, only with it's share of dialectal differences but nothing more. Their Spanish, just like Puerto Rican, Cuban and Venezuelan Spanish, is a descendant of the Spanish dialect of the Canary Islands, and it also has elements of indigenous languages such as Taino and Arawak as well as African influences due to the slaves that ended up there, giving it its unique flavor. Other Spanish speakers from other countries have no problems understanding them as long as no extreme slang or regionalisms are used, just like with any other country. As the child of Canary Islands Spanish, Dominican Spanish does omit the letter S and R a lot and sometimes if the letter R comes before a consonant it can turn into an L or I depending on where in D.R. the speaker is from. Examples : Perder/peldel/peidei, Cortar/coltal/coitai etc. This and the rapid-fire speed of some speakers can cause confusion with non-native speakers of Spanish but competent speakers of Spanish usually have no problems understanding Dominicans despite these differences. As a speaker of Coastal Ecuadorian Spanish, I always found Dominican Spanish to be not-terribly different from my own Spanish, except in my dialect, the letter S gets aspirated for example: estamos/eh-ta-moh. Speakers of my dialect [Coastal Ecuadorian Spanish] also tend to have a super-fast speech. To me it's like I speak Australian English and Dominicans speak Irish English. To sum it up, most Spanish natives do not care if the speaker is from Dominican Rep, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, etc, as long as we both speak the same language and we can communicate with no problems. That's usually more than enough and it brings a sense of being part of being from the same linguistic community. The dialectal differences are usually cherished instead of being looked down upon, except by ignorant people.