Why do Dominicans pronounce the R letter like the French?

Morticia   Thu Oct 23, 2008 9:17 am GMT
I noticed this when I heard a Dominican woman in USA talking, but I wasn't aware of this before. Is this feature predominant in Dominican Spanish? What is the reason of this strange phonological feature? Whas Dominican Spanish influenced by Haitian creole? Thanks in advance.
antimooner   Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:30 am GMT
No

In haitian creole, as well as in west indies french, the "R"s are not prononced as it is in modern European french version. (I precise "modern" because not so long ago-about 50/100 years ago, in France, the "R"s were rolled by most people)
Morticia   Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:14 pm GMT
Then my hipothesis is discarted :-(
I heard how she spoke with a kind of a guttural R very similar to that present in French or Portuguese. I wonder if this phenomenon is widespread in Republica Dominicana and its origin. As far as I know R never was pronounced that way in Spain, so it can't be a kind of an archaism.
JTT   Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:33 pm GMT
This is from wikipedia so take if for what it's worth:

"In Spanish, guttural or uvular realizations of /r/ are considered a speech defect. Generally the single flap [ɾ], spelled r as in cara or ir, undergoes no defective pronunciations, but the alveolar trill in rata or perro is one of the last sounds learned by children and uvularization is likely among individuals who can't achieve the alveolar articulation. This said, uvular or back variants for /r/ ([R], [x] or [X]) are quite spread in Puerto Rican Spanish and, to a lesser extent, in some substandard Cuban and Dominican dialects."
Skippy   Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:23 am GMT
Listening to Carla on the show "Scrubs," she also doesn't pronounce the final /s/ in words like 'vamanos' or 'ingles.' I'm assuming French influence from the Haitians.
JGreco   Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:44 am GMT
"Listening to Carla on the show "Scrubs," she also doesn't pronounce the final /s/ in words like 'vamanos' or 'ingles.' I'm assuming French influence from the Haitians."

No this is a general feature among Caribbean dialect speakers of Spanish which also includes the country of Panama, and coastal regions of Venezuela and Colombia. In some areas where this dialect exists, the features above mentioned exist including other features such s aspiration (pronouncing "estamos" like "eh-ta-moh"), or changing -ado endings to -ao ("cuidado" becomes "cuidao" in spoken form), or softening of the -Ch sound to an -sh sound which exists especially in the Caribbean dialect of Panama.
Harvey   Sat Nov 08, 2008 6:50 am GMT
It was French influence in the area.
PARISIEN   Sat Nov 08, 2008 10:41 am GMT
"I'm assuming French influence from the Haitians."

-- Impossible. Modern French (and German, Danish) /r/ is a quite recent development, that started about two hundred years back and began to generalize in the 20th century first half.
Colonial French retained rolled /r/ much longer (it's still prevailing in the French Pacific territories, Quebec is still in the process of switching to European French /r/) whereas Black populations in the Caribbean area —Haitians for that matter— use a creole with sort of English /r/, frequently downright substituted with a /w/-sound.

Interpretations based on "influences" are generally wrong, except in some extreme cases like Italian influence on Argentinian Spanish (since about 50% of Argentinians are from Italy) or the American English influence on the Cajun French pronunciation.