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Culture of the Dominican Republic


The Dominican people and their customs have origins consisting predominately in a European cultural basis, with both African and native Taíno influences. The Dominican Republic was the site of the first European settlement in the New World, namely Santo Domingo, founded in 1493.

Shortly after the arrival of Europeans, African peoples were imported to the island to serve as slave labor. The fusion of European, African and Taino traditions and customs contributed to the development of present-day Dominican culture.

Spanish is the predominant language in the Dominican Republic. The local dialect is called Dominican Spanish. It closely resembles Canarian Spanish, and also has borrowed vocabularies from the Arawak language. Some common words derived from the Taino natives include: barbecue, canoe, caribbean, hammock, hurricane, iguana, manatee, mangrove, savannah, and tobacco among others.

Schools in the Dominican Republic are based on a Spanish educational model. Both English and French are taught as secondary languages on private and public schools. Haitian Creole is spoken by the population of Haitian origin. There is a community of about 8,000 speakers of Samaná English in the Samaná Peninsula. They are the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans who arrived in the nineteenth century. Tourism, American pop culture, the influence of Dominican Americans, and the country's economic ties with the United States motivate other Dominicans to learn English.

The Dominican Republic is 68.9% Roman Catholic, 18.2% Evangelical, 10.6% with no religion, and 2.3% other. Other sources place the irreligious ratio at 7% and nearly 10%. Recent immigration, as well as proselytizing, has brought other religions, with the following shares of the population: Spiritist: 2.2%,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 1.1%,Buddhist: 0.1%, Bahá'í: 0.1%,Chinese Folk Religion: 0.1%, Islam: 0.02%, Judaism: 0.01%. The nation has two patroness saints: Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia (Our Lady Of High Grace) and Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (Our Lady Of Mercy).


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