Venezuelan Spanish
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Venezuelan Spanish is a dialect of the Spanish language spoken in Venezuela.
Spanish was introduced in Venezuela by the conquistadors. Most of them were from Andalusia, Galicia, Basque Country and from the Canary Islands. Perhaps the latter has been the most fundamental influence on modern Venezuelan Spanish, to the point that Canarian and Venezuelan accents may seem indistinguishable to other Spanish speakers. Italian and Portuguese immigrants came later in the late 19th and early 20th century, their linguistic contributions, Italy by the most part, defined this dialect.
The Spaniards additionally brought African slaves. This is the origin of expressions such as chévere ("excellent"), which comes from Yoruba ché egberi. Other non-Romance words came from Native languages, such as guayoyo (a type of coffee) and caraota (common bean).
The Venezuelan (sometime) upper-class and middle class "snob" (or "sifrino" in colloquial Venezuelan Spanish) accent is often thought of as the "pretty-boy" or "boy band" accent of Spanish. This is hardly the case for the majority of spoken Venezuelan Spanish, widely ranging from its occasional formal form, to the more common -highly slang spiced- every day form, to the heavily "thug or thuggish" ("malandro" in Venezuelan Spanish) inflected manner, often found in the slums or "barrios" of the country.
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Dialectal features
* Venezuelan Spanish often shortens words, for example, changing para "for" into pa. In addition, /d/ between vowels is often dropped (elision): helado "ice cream" becomes /ela'o/. Originally from southern Spain and the Canary Islands, but these traits are common to many other Spanish variations.
* Another common feature is the aspiration of syllable-final -s, whereby adiós "goodbye" becomes [aˈðjɔh]. Common to most coastal areas in America, the Canary Islands, and the southern half of Spain.
* As in most American dialects, also, Venezuelan Spanish has yeísmo (a merger of /ʎ/ and /ʝ/), and seseo (traditional /θ/ merges with /s/). That is, calló "s/he became silent" and cayó "s/he fell" are homophones, and casa "house" is homophonous with caza "hunt". Seseo is common to all of America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain, and yeísmo is prevalent in most Spanish variations.
* A characteristic common to the Venezuelan, Dominican, Cuban and Costa Rican dialects is the use of the diminutive -ico and -ica instead of the standard -ito and -ita, restricted to words with -t in the last syllable; for example, rata "rat" becomes ratica "little rat".
* The second-person singular informal pronoun is usually tú, as in most of Latin America and also in Spain. This practice is referred to as tuteo. However, in Zulia and some parts of Falcón and Trujillo, it is common to find voseo, that is, the use of vos instead of tú. This phenomenon is present in many other Latin American dialects (notably Rioplatense), but Zulian voseo is diptongado, that is, the conjugation preserves the diphthongs of the historical vos conjugation that have been monophthongized in Rioplatense (which means the Zulian forms are the same as those used in Spanish from Spain for the second person plural vosotros): instead of tú eres, tú estás, Zulian says vos sois, vos estáis (compare with plural forms in Spanish from Spain vosotros sois, vosotros estáis; and with Rioplatense forms vos sos, vos estás). Another exception to the tuteo of Venezuelan Spanish is the use of the second-person singular formal pronoun usted interchangeably with tú, a practice that is unique to the states of Mérida and Tachira.[1]
* The word vaina is used with a variety of meanings (such as "shame", "thing or topic", "pity" and many others) and often as an interjection or a nonsensical filler.
* Venezuelan Spanish has a lot of Italianisms and Anglicisms.
[edit] Regional variations
There are several sub-dialects within Venezuelan Spanish.
* The Caracas dialect, spoken in the capital: is perceived and projected by the media to be the standard Spanish of Venezuela, with its variants generally related to the social classes found therein. It is mostly used in the capital, Caracas, and in other areas of the country such as Valencia.
* The Zulian dialect in the north-west of the country, also called maracucho or marabino, which uses voseo, like in the in part of the Lara area.
* The Lara dialect, where voseo is also used, but where the verbal declension of Old Spanish is kept (vos coméis).
* The Andean dialect, in particular the state of Táchira near the Colombian border. It is characterized by a non-aspirated pronunciation of s and use of Usted instead of tú, even within informal contexts. Another variant, in the states of Mérida and Trujillo still uses Usted instead of tu, but lacks the non-aspirated pronunciation of the s.
* The Margaritan dialect, spoken in Isla Margarita and in the north-east of continental Venezuela. The Margaritan dialect presents sometimes an interdental when pronouncing pre-vowel 's' and use of a strong 'r' instead of 'l' in most of the words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_Spanish
Cuban Spanish
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Differences with other dialects are most notable in the pronunciation of certain consonants, especially with relation to their syllabic position.
One of the most prominent features of Cuban Spanish is the debuccalization of /s/ in the syllable coda. This trait is shared with many other Caribbean varieties of Spanish,[1] as well as those further away.
Take for example, the following sentence:
Esos perros no tienen dueños
[ˈesoh ˈperoh no ˈtjenen ˈdweɲoh]
('Those dogs do not have owners')
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 ˈtjenen ˈdweɲo].
Another instance of lenition, in Cuban Spanish is the deletion of final[2] intervocalic /d/. With intervocalic deletion (e.g. condado [konˈda.o] 'county')
Another characteristic of Cuban Spanish is the use of the diminutive -ico and -ica instead of the standard -ito and -ita. But this use is restricted to words with -t in the last syllable. For example, plato ('plate') platico instead of platito while cara ('face') becomes carita. This form is common to the Venezuelan, Cuban, Costa Rican and Colombian dialects.
The Cuban Spanish of the eastern provinces (former Oriente) is closer to the Dominican Republic Spanish than to the Spanish spoken in the western part of the island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Spanish
Chilean Spanish
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There are a number of phonetic features common to most Chilean accents, though none of them individually are unique to Chilean Spanish. Rather, it is the particular combination of features that sets Chilean Spanish apart from other regional Spanish dialects. These features include:[2][3]
* Yeísmo, the merger of the phonemes /ʎ/, spelled <ll>, with /j/, spelled <y>. Thus, cayó ("fell") and calló ("fell silent") are homophones, both pronounced [kaˈjo]. In dialects which lack yeísmo, the two words would be pronounced respectively [kaˈjo] and [kaˈʎo]. Though yeísmo is common to most of Latin America, it is not the case that this feature should be considered a Latin American one, because both in Spain and Latin America there are regions with and without "yeísmo". Even in Chile, there are some people, mostly elderly speakers in rural zones, that are not "yeístas".
* Word- and syllable-final /s/ is aspirated to [h] or lost entirely, another feature common to much of Latin America. Whether final /s/ aspirates or is elided depends on a number of social, regional, and phonological factors, but in general aspiration is more common, especially when preceding a consonant. Complete elision is most commonly found word-finally, but is somewhat less common overall in formal or upper-class speech. Thus, los chilenos ("the Chileans") becomes [lɔh t͡ʃiˈleːnɔ].
* The velar consonants /k/, /ɡ/, and /x/ are fronted or palatalized before front vowels. Thus, queso ("cheese"), guía ("guide"), and jinete ("rider/horseman") become respectively [ˈceːso], [ˈɣ̟ia], and [çiˈn̪eːt̪e].
* Between vowels and word-finally, /d/ commonly elides or lenites (a process common throughout the Spanish-speaking world), so that contado ("told") and ciudad ("city") become respectively [kon̪ˈt̪aːo] and [sjuˈð̞aː].
* The voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ is pronounced as a fricative [ʃ] by many the lower-class speakers (thus, Chile becomes [ˈʃiːle]). Other variants are a fronted alveolar affricate, [t͡s], and an even more fronted dental affricate, [t̪ˢ].
* The sequences [h]+[β̞] and [h]+[ɣ̞] (where the [h]s are the results of /s/-weakening) are devoiced to, respectively, [f] and [x]. Thus, resbaló ("slid") and rasgó ("tore") become respectively [rɛfaˈloː] and [raˈxoː] in some speakers.
* The sequence /ɾn/ is sometimes assimilated to [nn]. Thus, jornada ("workday") may become [xonˈn̪aː][citation needed].
* In the sequence /bl/, the /b/ may be vocalized to [u]. Thus, inolvidable ("unforgettable") becomes [in̪olˈβ̞jaːule], in lower-class or no formal education speakers.
* Lipski also mentions as distinctive the devoicing of word-final, unstressed vowels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Spanish