Caribbean Spanish
regional Spanish dialect
Caribbean Spanish (Spanish: español caribeño [espaˈɲol kaɾiˈβeɲo], locally [ehpaˈɲol kaɾiˈβeɲo]) is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. The Spanish language was introduced to the Caribbean in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It resembles the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands, and, more distantly, the Spanish of western Andalusia. With more than 25 million speakers, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the Caribbean Islands.
More precisely, the term in its strictest sense however refers to the Spanish language as it is spoken on the Caribbean island nations of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda and Puerto Rico. In a much looser sense, it can also include Panama and the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Venezuela; and on the widest application of the phrase, it includes the Caribbean coastal regions of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
Phonology
Seseo, where /θ/ and /s/ merge to /s/, as in the rest of the Americas, in the Canary Islands and in southern Spain.
Yeísmo, where /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ merge to /ʝ/, as in many other Spanish dialects.
/s/ is debuccalized to [h] at the end of syllables, as is common in the southern half of Spain, the Canaries and much of Spanish America: los amigos [lo(h) aˈmiɣo(h)] ('the friends'), dos [ˈdo(h)] ('two'). It may also be elided entirely.
The public source identifies “Caribbean Spanish” as regional Spanish dialect. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Caribbean, Spanish and regional.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caribbean Spanish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.