Cuban Spanish
| Cuban Spanish | |
|---|---|
| Español Cubano | |
|
Native speakers
|
11 million (2011) |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Latin (Spanish alphabet) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | es-CU |
Cuban Spanish is the variety of the Spanish language as it is spoken in Cuba. As a Caribbean language variety, Cuban Spanish shares a number of features with nearby varieties, including coda deletion, seseo, and /s/ debuccalization ("aspiration").
Characteristic of Cuban Spanish is the weak pronunciation of consonants, especially at the end of a syllable. Syllable-final /s/ weakens to [h] or disappears entirely; word-final /n/ becomes [ŋ]; syllable-final /r/ may become [l] or [j], or even become entirely silent. The fricative variants of /d/, /b/, /g/ (i.e. [ð], [β], [ɣ]) are also significantly weakened when occurring after a vowel: [ð] tends to disappear entirely, while [β] and [ɣ] become weak approximants, with no friction at all and often barely audible as consonants. All of these characteristics occur to one degree or another in other Caribbean varieties, as well as in many dialects in Andalusia (in southern Spain) — the place of historical origin of these characteristics.
One of the most prominent features of Cuban Spanish is the debuccalization of /s/ in syllable coda. This trait is shared with most American varieties of Spanish spoken in coastal and low areas (Lowland Spanish), as well as with Canarian Spanish and the Spanish spoken in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula.
Take for example, the following sentence:
Also, because /s/ may also be deleted in the syllable coda and because this feature has variable realizations, any or all instances of [h] in the above example may be dropped, potentially rendering [ˈeso ˈpero no ˈtjeneŋ ˈdweɲo]. Other examples: disfrutar ("to enjoy") is pronounced [dihfruˈtar], and fresco ("fresh") becomes [ˈfrehko]. In Havana, después ("after[ward]") is typically pronounced [dehˈpwe].
...
Wikipedia