Languages in Dominican Republic

In the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic (DR) is the most diverse country with regards to geography and culture globally. It has beautiful mountain landscape, desert scrubland, resonant colonial structural designs, and many beaches. DR became a country on February 27, 1844, after some revolutionaries took power from the Haitian leaders of the Hispaniola’s island. The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and he named it La Isla Española which later changed to Hispaniola. Several years later the town of Santa Domingo became the Spanish capital of the New World. Due to its position in the trade winds, Santa Domingo became the passageway to the Caribbean.

France was able to gain footing on the western side of the island which became quite affluent. In 1795, Spain surrendered the whole island to France. In 1804, the black African slaves in the western side, which is presently Haiti, revolted against the French and gained leadership in the whole island. In the year 1838, a section of Spanish-speaking educated Dominicans formed a secret organization called La Trinitaria whose aim was to depose the Haitians from power. The organization was created by Juan Pablo Duarte who was a son of a rich Dominican family. After deposing the Haitian rule, Pedro Santana, who was one of the revolution’s organizers, became Dominican Republic’s first president.

The intricate inheritance of Arawak which is Amerindian, Spanish, African, and French customs, together with early self-governance, distinguished the Dominican Republic from other islands in the Caribbean as a nation that was diverse linguistically, ethnically, and religiously. The country gained self-governance before slavery was eradicated in the Spanish Caribbean and a hundred years before the other islands were decolonized. The Dominican people view themselves as more Latin American than Caribbean. The Dominicans also have close relations with the United States of America, which had invaded the island during the 20th-century. The general society is presently attempting to create a democracy against a dictatorial political elect that is very fraudulent.

Dominican Republic’s population is roughly 8.4 million and it increases as a rate of 1.6 % annually. 73% of the inhabitants are of a mixed race which is a blend of descendants of Spaniards and Europeans, slaves from West Africa, and the locals. 16% is Caucasian while 11% is black and this is inclusive of a small Haitian population.

Over the years, Dominicans have moved to the cities from the rural regions. Santo Domingo, which is the country’s capital city, is occupied by more than 2.14 million citizens. The populace of other huge cities, such as Santiago de lo Caballeros, La Romana, and San Pedro de Macorís is between 124,000 and 364,000.

The official language in the country is Spanish. The people take pride in the clarity of their Spanish which is considered by some to be the most conventional Castilian used in Latin America. Nonetheless, Dominican Spanish has a unique intonation and integrates many Taino (local) and African verbalisms. For instance, tiny rural houses are referred to as bohios, which is derived from Tainos rectangular homes. A huge number of names of places and also cultural and social words are borrowed from the Tainos. In Santo Domingo, especially in the tourist industry, some English is articulated. Some Creole can be heard when approaching the Haitian boundary and in the sugarcane communities, where most Haitian laborers reside.

Languages Spoken in Cuba: Introduction

Nearly the entire population in the Dominican Republic speaks Spanish and the native dialect is referred to as Dominican Spanish which is almost similar to the Canarian Spanish which is spoken in the Canary Islands. Dominican Spanish has also loaned some words from the Arawak dialect. Spanish is the language used to teach in schools and English and French are taught as secondary dialects in all public and private schools.

Besides Spanish, there are a number of small dialects spoken in the Dominican Republic. Haitian Creole is used by the people of Haitian heritage. There is a society of roughly 8,000 people who speak Samaná English. This society is situated in the Samaná Peninsula and are relatives of the African Americans who were once slaves and arrived in the 19th-century. A few factors such as the American pop culture, tourism, the nation’s economic relations with the United States, and influence from Dominican Americans have motivated other citizens to study English.

Average English is normally used in the tourist regions. Life can be very hard for expats if they cannot speak Spanish completely. Life is much easier in the country if a person knows even just the basics. Besides, Dominican people appreciate it when expats make an attempt of conversing in their dialect.

Chinese is also spoken in the country by about 25,000 Chinese expatriates of the Chinese Revolution.

Languages Spoken in the Dominican Republic: Dominican Spanish

Dominican Spanish is a form of Spanish dialect that is used in the Dominican Republic, which is a Caribbean nation, and in the Dominican Diaspora, which is located in the United States, especially, in Miami, Boston, and New York City.

Dominican Spanish resembles other Caribbean Spanish dialects or the seaside Caribbean Spanish languages, and also the Canarian Spanish spoken in Spain’s Canary Islands, and the Andalusian Spanish which is spoken in Andalusia, South of Spain. People speaking Dominican Spanish can use several Spanish archaisms.

Dominican Spanish is founded on the Canarian and Andalusian Spanish languages of southern Spain and has words that have been loaned from the Taíno dialect, which is an Amerindian language. Cibaenian Spanish is a combination of the language spoken by the Portuguese colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Cibao valley, and the language used by the Canarian settlers in the 18th century.

The majority of the settlers of the Dominican Republic who spoke Spanish originated from the Andalusia area which is in southern Spain, and also the inhabitants from Spain’s Canary Islands. When these people arrived in what we now know as the Dominican Republic, the first people they met were the Taino people who spoke Arawak and did not speak Spanish. The environ on the island was not similar to that of Spain, so they had to borrow Arawak words so as to show some things and items.

Phonology

Like other Spanish tongues, Dominican Spanish has yeísmo. These are the sounds symbolized by the double “l” and “y”.

Dominican Spanish also has seseo or homophones. For example casa which translates to house is a homophone to caza which translates to hunt. Seseo is widespread in the entire Hispanic America, Southern part of Spain, and the Canary Islands.

In some regions of the country, people dismiss the last “r” sound in verb infinitives. This exclusion is thought to be a characteristic of unlearned speakers in a few regions, but it is very common in others, especially in very fact speech.

In a few regions of the country, the “L” sound after the “E” is articulated as an “R” sound. This is only applicable if the last letter is “L”. An example of this is Miguel whose pronunciation in the Dominican Republic is Miguer.

Other disparities with ordinary Spanish consists of details such as hypercorrection, especially, adding letter “S” incorrectly, which leads to over-compensating for the tendency of excluding it.

Vocabulary

Like every other language, Dominican Spanish has many terminology disparities from other kinds of language. In 2013, a dictionary of Dominican words, Diccionario del Español Dominicano, was published by the Dominican Academy of Letters (Academis Dominicana de la Lenqua). This dictionary contains about 11,000 words and expressions that are strange to the Dominican dialect. Below are a few examples of words found in the dictionary.

• In standard Spanish, the word ‘room’ is referred to as habitacion, but in Dominican Spanish the term is aposento.
• In standard Spanish, the term ‘good’ is referred to as bein, but in Dominican Spanish the term is tato.
• In standard Spanish, the term ‘bus’ is referred to as autobus, but in Dominican Spanish the term is guagua.
• In standard Spanish, the term ‘tree’ is referred to as arbol, but in Dominican Spanish the term is mata.
• In standard Spanish, the term ‘farm’ is referred to a granja, but in Dominican Spanish the term is conuco.
• In standard Spanish, the term ‘trash can’ is referred to as bote de bosura, but in Dominican Spanish the term is zafacon.

As a result of ethnic and commercial manipulation from the United States and the American settlements of the Dominican Republic in the periods between 1916-1924 and 1965-1966, anglicisms became very common in the Dominican Spanish more than the other Spanish variants except the Puerto Rican and possibly the Northern Mexican Spanish. A key example of this is “vaguada” which has been derived from the English term “bad weather”. The term in Dominican Spanish has, however, come to refer to a storm or heavy rain, instead of a spot of horrid weather.

Another fact associated to Anglicisms is the utilization of product names for specific items. An example of this is “Gillette” whose derivative yilé refers to any razor. A machete is referred to as machete which is a Spanish word and is at times called “colin” which is coined from “Collins & Co.,” This is the name of a former toolmaker from Connecticut.

Some names and terms in Dominican Spanish have been borrowed from the Arawakan dialect. Some of these are:

• Aji: chili/ hot pepper
• Arepa: corn cake
• Bara: whip
• Batata: sweet potapo
• Cacata: tarantula
• Cohiba : tobacco
• Jicotea: turtle
• Nana: small girl

When spoken, Dominican Spanish is quite fast. A person from  the Dominican Republic speaks out the words in fast disconnect, which causes all except their fellow citizens to struggle to comprehend. To politely ask a person to repeat what he or she said one says, “Repítelo máa despacio, por favor.” At times even local Spanish speakers from other regions of Spain or Latin America find that the Dominican Spanish spoken by their relatives from the Dominican Republic takes time to adjust to as a result of the speedy delivery.

Just like the people from the Dominican Republic, the origin of Dominican Spanish is multifaceted. Its foundation, like other Spanish tongues in the America, is the Spanish of the 15th-century explorers, which was given a boost by the ensuing influence of Spanish settlers, and infused with the influence from the native Taino populace and slaves from Africa, who the Spanish brought over at a later time. The United States also influenced the Dominican Spanish especially in the periods of its military occupations in the country in the 20th-century, 1916, and 1965.

Finally, many people who speak English may feel confused after struggling so hard to keep in mind the accurate Spanish term for a verb or an object, only to realize that it is not the correct one. Even more peculiar, the term used by the Dominicans can sound shockingly recognizable.

Minority Languages of the Dominican Republic

Despite Spanish being the main language spoken by most of the population in the Dominican Republic, a number of smaller dialects are also spoken in the country. These dialects include Samaná English and Haitian Creole.

Samaná English

This is a type of the English dialect used by progenies of Black migrants from the United States who resided in the Samaná peninsula, a region that is now the Dominican Republic. People of this community are referred to as the Samaná Americans. This dialect is related to the Antebellum Black Vernacular English with distinctions exclusive to the community’s history in the region. The census conducted in the country in 1950 found out that 0.57% of the populace, which is roughly 12,200 people, claim that English is their native tongue.

Most of the people who speak Samaná English retrace their lineage to migrants who came to the Peninsula in 1824-5. At this time the Hispaniola’s island was governed by Haiti and its leader was Jean-Pierre Boyer. The migrants reacted to an invite for occupation that Jonathas Granville conveyed by himself to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New York City. Emancipationists such as Richard Allen, Samuel Cornish, Benjamin Lundy, and Loring D. Dewey joined the crusade which was termed the Haitian emigration. The response was extraordinary as many US citizens boarded ships at eastern board cities and moved to Hayti which is another way Haiti was spelt out back then. Most of these migrants arrived between fall of 1824 and spring of 1825. There was continuous back and forth movement of these migrants in the following years but at a reduced rate. Between 1859 and 1863 another migration crusade brought new occupants into the island, but this was smaller in number compared to those who came in 1824-5. The original settlers in Sanamá were less than 600, and they created the sole existing immigration community.

Even though over 6,000 migrants came in 1824-5, at the end of the 19th-century, only a few people of the migrant community in the island spoke any tongue of the Antebellum Black Vernacular. These were societies in Samaná, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Plata. The biggest community was in Samaná that sustained church schools from where the dialect was conserved. It is, however, important to note that during the Trujillato (1930-1961) the government started a methodical strategy of making the whole Dominican populace Hispanic. This led to the elimination of church schools teaching the Black vernacular and people were discouraged from using it. Communities all over the island soon lost a vital feature of their individuality thus leading to degeneration. Samaná English was able to withstand the attacks due to the fact that the region of Samaná was constructive to a cultural life that was autonomous. All in all, the policies set by the government have had an influence on the slow decline of the language which can be categorized in the endangered language list.

Haitian Creole

This is a Creole dialect used by roughly 8.5 million individuals in Haiti. Another 3.5 million people speak Haitian Creole in other nations such as Canada, France, the USA, the Bahamas, The Dominican Republic, and other nations in the Caribbean.

French is the foundation of Haitian Creole and it has also been influenced by a number of languages from West Africa such as Ewe, Fon, and Wolof.

Since 1961, Haitian Creole has been the official dialect of Haiti, alongside French. The language is used in newspapers, literature, TV, and radio. Most of the people are bilingual as they speak both Haitian Creole and French. This is also the case in the Dominican Republic as most of the people speaking Haitian Creole also speak Spanish.

Haitian Creole originated from the sugarcane farms in Haiti as a result of interactions amid the French colonizers and slaves from Africa. The dialect has been one of the formal dialects in Haiti since 1987 and it’s the first tongue of more than 95% of Haitians, especially in the rural regions. Like the other French Creole dialects, the grammatical characteristics of Haitian Creole can be linked to those of modified French tongues used by early colonizers. These characteristics were, however, not derived from one specific language. Scholars face a lot of challenges such as trying to determine the selection of these characteristics into Haitian Creole, the roles played by the African dialects in deducing certain collections, and the degree of modification of these characteristics at the time of their reformation into the new structure.

Haitian Creole compared to other French Creoles of the western hemisphere has a lot of influence from African dialects. A few intellectuals are of the notion that Creoles progress at a slow pace as a result of two aspects. The first is the odd high quotient of Africans to Europeans in the society’s early past. The ratio was possibly 9 to 1 during the 17th century which increased to roughly 16 to 1 in 1789 and increased even more during the Haitian Revolution in 1791-1804 when many of the French colonizers died or left. The second factor is the early seclusion of Haiti from France, particularly after gaining its freedom in 1804.

Unlike other Creoles in the hemisphere which are used in unofficial and internal conditions, Haitian Creole is used in public and official gatherings, especially in churches, schools, and political gatherings. In the Dominican Republic, Haitian Creole is mostly used in rural regions near the Dominican Republic and Haitian border.