Puerto Rican Spanish
| Puerto Rican Spanish | |
|---|---|
| Español puertorriqueño | |
|
Native speakers
|
3.9 million (2011) |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Latin (Spanish alphabet) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | es-PR |
Puerto Rican Spanish (español puertorriqueño [espaˈɲol pweɾtoriˈkeɲo]) is the Spanish language as characteristically spoken in Puerto Rico and by millions of people of Puerto Rican descent living in the United States and elsewhere. It belongs to the group of Caribbean Spanish variants and, as such, is largely derived from Canarian Spanish and Andalusian Spanish.
Since most of the original farmers and commoners of Puerto Rico between the 15th and 18th centuries came from Andalusia, the basis for most of Puerto Rican Spanish is Andalusian Spanish (particularly that of Seville). For example, the endings -ado, -ido, -edo often drop intervocalic /d/ in both Seville and San Juan: hablado > hablao, vendido > vendío, dedo > deo (intervocalic /d/ dropping is quite widespread in coastal American dialects).
Seville Spanish is also the source of the merger of phonemes /s/ (e.g., coser) and /θ/ (cocer) that are both pronounced /s/ in much of Andalusia and generally in all Hispanic America dialects. This merger is called seseo and makes such pairs as cocer/coser, abrazar/abrasar, has/haz, and vez/ves homophonous. Another Andalusian trait is the tendency to weaken postvocalic consonants, particularly /-s/: 'los dos > lo(h) do(h), 'buscar' > buhcá(l) (aspiration or elimination of syllable-final /s/ is quite widespread in coastal American dialects).
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Wikipedia