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Languages of Cuba

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Cuba is officially referred to as the Republic of Cuba and is located on the Isla de la Jeventud and also on a number of the Caribbean Sea’s archipelagos. Its capital city is Havana which is the biggest city in the country. Cuba is also situated about 225 miles from Miami, Florida. Cuba is believed to be in the Northern part of America and has a culture whose foundation is from Latin America. This has made Cuba a nation that is quite diverse where different languages are spoken.

Man with a wheelbarrowThe United States of America just commenced its political associations with Cuba which is the Caribbean’s biggest island. Cuba also ranks second as the most populated country after Hispaniola, with about 11 million citizens. Cuba is also a multi-ethnic nation as its citizens, beliefs, and way of life are drawn from various ancestries such as the aboriginal people of Ciboney and Taíno, the long period of colonialism in Spain, the beginning of slave trade especially for the Africans, and an association with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War period. It is, however, important to note that Cuba ranks poorly on matters pertaining to economic and political freedom. Despite this fact, the United Nations has ranked it very highly in human growth. Cuba also does very well on matters related to education and health. The section below will, therefore, discuss some of the languages that are spoken in Cuba, their originality, division, and frequency.

The official language spoken in Cuba is Spanish and it is the first language of about 90 percent of the entire population. Other languages spoken in the country include Haitian Creole, Lucimi, Galician, and Corsican. Spanish is Cuba’s official language but the present administration has not put in place a one language rule. Discussions in parliament are carried out in Spanish and no law regarding the language rule has been documented in the country’s constitution or in the Gaceta official de la Republica de Cuba. The Spanish Cuban people speak is similar to that spoken in other countries in Latin America. It is, however, important to note that the Creole dialect has increased its terminologies and influence in the country and has colored Cuban Spanish by making use of colloquial expressions. A few borrowed words from Africa, Ameri-India, and India are present in the Cuban Spanish. African slaves also took part in developing Cuban Spanish by giving it the accent and intonation that make Cuban language what it is today.

Lucumi dialect originates from the Niger-Congo category and it is a Yoruboid language. The language is used secretly in sacred functions specifically by a community known as the Santeria. This community is made up of the ancestors of African slaves known as the Yoruba. These people have combined their indigenous spiritual practices, beliefs, and values with the region’s Catholic practices. Lucumi, as compared to the Creole dialect, is a dead language as citizens do not use it to communicate.

Creole is spoken by people of the Haitian Creole population and this is their first and second dialect. This community fled the Haitian revolution and moved to Cuba. Most of these people reside in Matanzas, Guantanamo, and the city of Havana territories. Creole is a pidgin dialect and is the second most used dialect in Cuba. The language was formulated due to necessity and also for business intentions. This, therefore, enabled people from Europe, the locals, and even slaves to converse in Creole. The merging of North America, Africa, and Europe is always present in the Creole dialect.

A total of about 400,000 people from the Cuban population can converse in Creole with a lot of ease. Others have an understanding of the language and can speak simple Creole. Some provinces such as the city of Havana, Guantanamo, and Matanzas, where the Haitian community lives, conduct Creole classes in the regions. Creole dialect is also spoken in some islands such as the Reunion and Mauritius Islands, the Indian Ocean, Seychelles, and also the Antilles Islands.

In the year 1992, a few changes took place in Cuba’s language scene. These changes were mostly as a result of the dismantling of the country’s western block. Cuba has now left its borders open to other countries. As a result, foreign dialects such as English, Galician, French, Corsican and many more are being used especially in the tourism industry so as to ease communication amid Cubans and foreigners who are either tourists or investors.

About Cuban Spanish

"The Homeland is Humanity" This is the type of Spanish dialect used in Cuba. The dialect like all the other Caribbean languages shares various characteristics with nearby dialects. Some of these features include seseo, /s/ debuccalization, and coda deletion.

Debuccalization of the /s/ in syllable coda is the most common feature of Cuban Spanish. This characteristic is also found in other types of the Spanish language such as that talked in coastal and low regions which speak Lowland Spanish. This characteristic is also found in the Canarian Spanish and the Spanish talked in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula.

So as to keep up with the civil order of Cuba some terminologies have been adopted to replace traditional phrases. An example of this is the word compañero/compeñera which translates to comrade and is used in place of señor/señora. Besides this, The Spanish spoken in the regions in the East, which has five provinces including the previous Oriente province, is nearer to that spoken in the Dominican Republic than that used in the western region of the island.

Among all the territorial differences of the Spanish dialect, conventional Cuban Spanish is similar to and derives mainly from the Spanish spoken in Spain’s Canary Islands. Most of Cuba’s speech patterns are as a result of the Canarian exoduses in the 19th and 20th centuries. The exodus of the Canarian islanders had more effect on Cuban Spanish unlike the migrations of other Spanish communities such as the Basques, Asturians, Catalans, and Galicians.

Most of the words used to replace Cuban Spanish words originate from the Canarian vocabulary. An example of this is guagua which translates to ‘bus.’ This is different from the typical autobùs in Spanish. The vocabulary guagua was derived in the Canaries and is a rhetorical phrase that originated from the resonance of a klaxon horn. Another example of Canarian vocabulary spoken in Cuban Spanish is fajarse which means to fight. In Spanish the verb is pelearse, and fajar acts as a verb that is not reflective to the edging of a skirt.

Most of the words that are strange to Cuban Spanish originate from diverse influences of the past on the island. Most of the vocabularies originate from the Canary Islands. Some, however, originate from Africa, France, or the Taino area and also from the Spanish influence beyond the Canary Islands, for example, Andalucia or Galicia. A few words have also been borrowed from the American English. Some of these words are for clothes, for example, pulóver which translate to t-shirt in English. Another example is chor which means shorts. Traditional Spanish alters from English sh to ch.

As a show of respect to strangers and to elderly people, people in Cuba tend to speak more officially. They shake hands when saluting and saying goodbye to a person. Men mostly exchange sociable hugs which are referred to as abrazos. It is also normal for men and ladies to salute their family and acquaintances with a hug and a peck on the cheek. People in Cuba also tend to use informal terms when talking to strangers. Examples of these are terms such as mi corazón which means my heart; mi vida which means my life, cariño which means dear and so on. Mi amor which means my love is also used between foreigners when one of them is a lady. People in Cuba rarely use usted which is the official second person singular pronoun when addressing strangers, superiors, or elders. The pronoun is considered suitable only in official circumstances. Most Cubans use the usted form to either show fondness or aloofness.

Minority Languages in Cuba

Besides Cuban Spanish which is spoken by about 90 percent of the entire population, a few smaller languages are also spoken in Cuba. These include languages such as the Haitian Creole, Lucumi, Galician, and Corsican.

Haitian Creole in Cuba

This dialect is often referred to as Creole or Kreyól. The foundation of this language is from the French form of Creole. It is also one of the two formal languages of Haiti with the other formal language being French. The term Creole is of Latin origin through a Portuguese word referring to a person more so a servant who has been raised in his or her employer’s house. The term was initially used to refer to Europeans who were sired and brought up in colonies abroad. The term was later used to refer to the dialect as well. About 9.6-12 million people including about 400,000 Cubans speak Haitian Creole. Most of these people use the dialect as either the first or second language. About 90-95 percent of Haiti people use Haitian Creole as their first language. The basis of the language is in the 18th century French and it got a lot of influence from Taíno, African, Spanish, and Portuguese dialects. The language developed as a result of the interaction between French colonizers and slaves from Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade in the French settlement of Saint-Dominingue, which is presently the Republic of Haiti. By the year 2008, the Haitian people were the biggest community worldwide that speaks Creole.

Haitian Creole dialect was established in the 17th and 18th centuries on the western part of Hispaniola in a context that merged indigenous speakers of different dialects of Niger-Congo with French settlers. In the 1940s, the then president Élie Lescot mobilized efforts to homogenize the dialect. He invited two skilled linguistics from America, Frank Laubach and H. Ormonde McConnell, to develop the dialect’s orthography, that was standardized. Despite the orthography being regarded highly be a few people, most people in the island did not receive it well. It was in 1979 when Creole Haitian orthography was homogenized. In the same year, the language was raised in status by the Act of 18 September 1979. A formal orthography for Kreyól was also created by the Institu Pédagogigue and a few alterations were carried out over the decades that followed.

Lucumi in Cuba

Man in Havana displaying art for sale

This is a language from Yoruba and the liturgical dialect of Santeria which is located in Cuba. The language is at times simply referred to as Yorùbá.

The Yoruba dialect is the language of millions of people living in the Western part of Nigeria and its neighbors. The language of this people was initially documented by Christian missionaries in early 19th century. Yoruba has a number of territorial languages but there is the customary Yoruba that is taught in schools and also documented in books. There are, however, two marginally distinct forms of the customary Yoruba. One is linked with Lagos and the other relates to the Oyo province.

This is a tone dialect and has three tones that are comparable to the Chinese dialect. The tones are high, mid and low. No grammatical gender is present in customary Yoruba language as the ó represents he, she or it.

The Yoruba dialect is what is commonly identified as Lucumi in Cuba. The languages brings forth an unlike challenge for linguists and speakers. This is because the slaves from Yoruba in Cuba did not have any admission to the colonial learning institutions or books from the Christian missionaries. The dialect therefore adopted in Cuba is the old-fashioned spoken tongue and its territorial variables often contrast with the Yoruba language that is used back at home in Nigeria. Presently Lucumi language is used in spiritual ceremonies but is rarely used outside the practices of the Santeria community.

Galician in Cuba

Galician, also referred to as Galician-Portuguese is a romance dialect just like Spanish. The language originated in Galicia at the start of the middle ages and was carried along by the Christian missionaries to present day Portugal. The first texts to use the language date all the way back to the 12th century and by the middle of the 14th century, after producing a superb bulk of literature, the dialect was divided into Portuguese and Galician. This was done for historical and administrative purposes.

It was during the War of Independence against Napoleon, and the following brawls between the liberals and absolutists, that inspired a definite literary resurgence of the Galician dialect, more so of an administrative nature, with sections in rhyme and discussions or prose dialogues, which have attracted a lot of interest presently from a historical standpoint of the dialect and the community in the area. It is important to, however, not that the real revitalization of the language did not materialize until the 19th century through poetry. Galician then became the co-official dialect of Galicia in 1981. The language is also used in Castile-Leon and Asturias.

Presently, about 2 million people talk Galician and this number is inclusive of several thousands in Cuba.

Corsican in Cuba

This is also a romance dialect and is used by around 341,000 people across the world. Most of the people who speak this language reside in Corsica but there are speakers of this language in Marseilles and Paris and also in countries such as Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay, Canada, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the USA.  This dialect has no formal standing in Corsica. French is the formal dialect used in that country.

Corsican and Italian are somehow related especially the Tuscany language and there is shared eloquence amid the two dialects. Corsican is basically a verbal dialect and there is, therefore, a large territorial disparity, especially amid the North and South of Corsica.

Corsican was first documented at the end of the 19th century although the spelling structure was not homogenized until the 1970s. Skilled linguistics P. Marchetti and D. Geronimi recommended an orthography that gained acceptance by the people but was not adhered to at all times. This, therefore, led to differences in spelling, especially in older Corsican words.

In Corsica, the Corsican dialect is used at all ranks of learning. It is mostly taught as a subject but some learning institutions utilize it as a channel of giving instructions together with French. Adults can also take Corsican courses which are generally accessible throughout Corsica and also in some French mainland cities.

More books written in Corsican are now being published every year. Lots of magazines in Corsican dialect are also available and most of these are usually produces by cultural groups or political organizations. There is also an increase in the number of theatre firms.

In Cuba, Corsican is used by a very small number of Cubans and mostly as a second language together with Spanish.