Peruvian Spanish is a family of dialects of the Spanish language that have been spoken in Peru since brought over by Spanish conquistadors in 1492. There are four varieties spoken in the country, by about 94.4% of the population.[citation needed] The four Peruvian dialects are Andean Spanish, Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Andean-Coastal Spanish, and Amazonic Spanish.
Peruvian Spanish | |
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Español peruano | |
Native to | Peru |
Native speakers | 29 million (2018)[1] 2,060,000 as L2 in Peru (2018) |
Language family | |
Writing system | Latin (Spanish alphabet) |
Official status | |
Official language in | Peru |
Regulated by | Peruvian Academy of Language |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | es |
ISO 639-2 | spa[2] |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
IETF | es-PE |
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. |
The Spanish language first arrived in Peru in 1532. During colonial and early republican times, the Spanish spoken colloquially in the coast and in the cities of the highland possessed strong local features, but as a result of dialect leveling in favor of the standard language, the language of urban Peruvians today is more or less uniform in pronunciation throughout most of the country.[3] Vestiges of the older dialect of the coast can be found in the speech of black Peruvians, which retains Andalusian features such as the aspiration or deletion of final /s/ and the deletion of final /r/. The dialect of Arequipa, Loncco, in its pure form is now extinct, although some elders are familiar with it.
Throughout most of the highland, Quechua continued to be the language of the majority until the mid 20th century.[4] Mass migration (rural exodus) into Lima starting in the 1940s, and into other major cities and regional capitals later on, accompanied by discrimination and the growth of mass media, have reconfigured the linguistic demography of the country in favor of Spanish. The poor urban masses originating in this migration adopted the standardized dialect spoken in the cities, however with traces of Andean pronunciation and a simplified syntax.
This section does not cite any sources. (June 2022) |
Andean Spanish the most common dialect in the Andes (more marked in rural areas) and has many similarities with the "standard" dialect of Ecuador and Bolivia.
Phonology
The phonology of Andean Peruvian Spanish is distinguished by its slow time and unique rhythm (grave accent), assibilation of /r/ and /ɾ/, and an apparent confusion of the vowels /e/ with /i/ and /o/ with /u/. (In reality, they are producing a sound between /e/ and /i/, and between /o/ and /u/.[5]) Furthermore, the "s" (originally apical and without aspiration) is produced with more force than that of the coast; this is also generally true of the other consonants, at the loss of the vowels. Other distinctive features are the preservation of /ʎ/, sometimes hypercorrective realization of /ʝ/ as [ʎ], and the realization of velar plosives as a fricative [x].
The morphosyntactic characteristics are typical:
Coastal Spanish is spoken throughout the coast. It has the reputation (in pronunciation) of being one of the "purest" dialects in all of coastal Latin America because it does not debuccalize /s/ between vowels[is "in syllable coda" what is meant?] and retains the fricatives [x] and [χ].[6][7][8] It is the characteristic dialect as perceived abroad and has the reputation of being the base of "normal" or standard Peruvian Spanish.[9]
This section does not cite any sources. (June 2022) |
Phonology
General Spanish phrases from the Americas are common but there are also phrases that originate in the Lima coastal area, such as frequent traditional terms and expressions; the most ingrained "quechuaism" in common speech is the familiar calato, meaning "naked".
Syntax
This section does not cite any sources. (June 2022) |
Originated in the last 30 to 50 years with a mixture of the speech of Andean migrants and the speech of Lima. This dialect is the speech that is most typical in the upskirts of the city, but also serves as a transitional dialect between Coastal and Andean Spanish spoken in between the coast and the highlands.
Phonology
Characteristics | Example | Coastal/Lima Spanish | Coastal-Andean Spanish |
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No assibilation of /r/ and /ɾ/ except in the older generations, but the articulation of these two sounds is weakened, and the final syllable is silent[clarification needed] in internal contexts. | |||
Closed and lax emission of vowels in general.[clarification needed] | |||
Confusion between /e/ and /i/ as well as /o/ and /u/ in casual speech. | |||
Weakening, sometimes to the point of elimination, of the consonant sounds /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ʝ/ when in intervocalic contexts. | aguanta | [äˈɣʷãŋ.t̪ä] | [äˈwãŋ.tä] |
dado | [ˈdä.ð̞o̞] | [ˈdä.o̞] | |
mantequilla | [mãŋ.t̪e̞ˈki.ʝä] | [mãŋ.te̞ˈki.ä] | |
baboso | [bäˈβ̞o̞.so̞] | [βäˈɤ.sɤ] | |
Strong pronunciation of "s", or with a weak whistling;[clarification needed] less aspiration before consonants (articulated more like /x/ in front of /k/) | asco | [ähˈko̞] | [äxˈko̞] |
Voicing of voiceless consonants. | pasajes | [päˈsä.xe̞s] | [päˈsä.ɣe̞s] |
fósforo | [ˈfo̞s.fo̞.ɾo̞] | [ˈfo̞s.βo̞.ɾo̞] | |
época | [ˈe̞.po̞.kä] | [ˈe̞.βo̞.kä] | |
Accelerated speech and with varied intonation based on Andean Spanish. |
This dialect has the usual Andean syntactics, like lack of agreement in gender and number, the frequent use of diminutives or augmentatives, loísmo, double possessives and ending phrases with "pues", "pe" or "pue".
As far as the lexicon is concerned, there are numerous neologisms, influences from Quechua, and slang among the youth often heard in the streets.
This section does not cite any sources. (June 2022) |
This dialect has developed uniquely, with contact from Andean Spanish and the Spanish of Lima with the Amazonian languages. It has a distinctive tonal structure.
Phonetically it is characterized by:
On the other hand, the syntactic order most recognized is the prefixation of the genitive:
There are also disorders of agreement, gender, etc.
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2019) |
This dialect is spoken in the region of Tumbes.
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