Salvadoran Spanish Explained

Salvadoran Spanish
Nativename:	Español salvadoreño
Pronunciation:	pronounced as /es/
States:	El Salvador
Speakers:	6.5 million in total
Date:	2019
Speakers2:	L2: 19,200 (Instituto Cervantes 2019)
Region:	Central American Spanish
Script:	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Agency:	Academia Salvadoreña de la Lengua
Iso1:	es
Iso2:	spa^[1]
Familycolor:	Indo-European
Fam2:	Italic
Fam3:	Latino-Faliscan
Fam4:	Romance
Fam5:	Western
Fam6:	Ibero-Romance
Fam7:	West Iberian
Fam8:	Castilian
Fam9:	Spanish
Fam10:	North American Spanish
Fam11:	Central American Spanish
Ancestor:	Old Latin
Ancestor2:	Classical Latin
Ancestor3:	Vulgar Latin
Ancestor4:	Old Spanish
Ancestor5:	Early Modern Spanish
Isoexception:	dialect
Dialects:	Caliche Lenca
Glotto:	none
Ietf:	es-SV
Notice:	IPA
Map:	Zonas dialectales del español de El Salvador, según Azcúnuga López (2010).svg
Mapcaption:	Two varieties of Salvadoran Spanish by Azcúnuga López (2010).

Salvadoran Spanish is geographically defined as the form of Spanish spoken in the country of El Salvador. The Spanish dialect in El Salvador shares many similarities to that of its neighbors in the region, but it has its stark differences in pronunciation and usage. El Salvador, like most of Central America, uses voseo Spanish as its written and spoken form, similar to that of Argentina. Vos is used, but many Salvadorans understand tuteo. Vos can be heard in television programs and can be seen in written form in publications. Usted is used as a show of respect, when someone is speaking to an elderly person.

Phonetics and phonology

Notable characteristics of Salvadoran phonology include the following:

• The presence of seseo wherein pronounced as //θ// and pronounced as //s// are not distinguished. Seseo is common to Andalusian, Canarian, and all Latin American Spanish varieties.
• Syllable-final pronounced as //s// is realized as glottal pronounced as /link/ (mainly on the Eastern departments as Usulután and San Miguel). In the casual speech of some speakers, this may also occur syllable-initially. This is most common word-medially, in an unstressed position, as in Spanish; Castilian: casa pronounced as /[ˈkaha]/ 'house', and is much less common in a word-initial stressed position, as in Spanish; Castilian: siglo pronounced as /[ˈsiɣlo]/ 'century'. Syllable-final [s] is always or mostly pronounced in the formal speech, like TV broadcasts.
  • A voiceless fricative which sounds similar to pronounced as /link/ is also used in the speech of some Salvadorans.^[2] According to, this is the result of a gestural undershoot. It is on an acoustic continuum between pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/, representing an intermediate degree of lenition.
• pronounced as //x// is realized as glottal pronounced as /link/.
• Intervocalic pronounced as //d// often disappears; the ending Spanish; Castilian: -ado is often pronounced as /[ao]/.
• There is no confusion between final pronounced as //l// and pronounced as //r//, unlike in the Caribbean.
• Word-final pronounced as //n// is pronounced velar pronounced as /[ŋ]/.
• As El Salvador was part of the First Mexican Empire, the Salvadoran dialect adopted the voiceless alveolar affricate pronounced as /[t͡s]/ and the cluster pronounced as /[tl]/ (originally pronounced as /link/) represented by the respective digraphs (tz) and (tl) in loanwords of Nahuatl origin, Spanish; Castilian: [[quetzal]] and Spanish; Castilian: tlapalería pronounced as /[t͡ɬapaleˈɾia]/ ('hardware store'). Even words of Greek and Latin origin with (tl), such as and, are pronounced with pronounced as //tl//: pronounced as /[aˈtlantiko]/, pronounced as /[aˈtleta]/ (compare pronounced as /[aðˈlantiko]/, pronounced as /[aðˈleta]/ in Spain and other dialects in Hispanic America).

Pronouns and verb conjugation

Voseo

See main article: Voseo. In El Salvador, as in the other Central American nations, Spanish; Castilian: vos is the dominant second person singular pronoun used by many speakers in familiar or informal contexts. Voseo is most commonly used among people in the same age group in addressing one another. It is common to hear young children address each other with "vos." The phenomenon also occurs among adults who address one another in familiar or informal contexts. "Vos" is also used by adults in addressing children or juveniles. However, the relationship does not reoccur when children address adults. Children address adults with usted regardless of age, status or context.

Ustedeo

See main article: Usted. "Usted" is the formal second person singular pronoun in Salvadoran Castilian. "Usted" is used in addressing foreigners formally, for acquaintances, and in business settings. Unlike nearby Costa Rica, "usted" is not the dominant second person pronoun for addressing a person.

Tuteo

Spanish; Castilian: Tú is hardly used, though it is occasionally present between Salvadorans who aren't imitating foreign speech. It occupies an intermediary position between Spanish; Castilian: vos and Spanish; Castilian: usted. It is used in addressing foreigners familiarly and when writing correspondence to foreigners (again in familiar contexts).

Postposed pronouns

In El Salvador, and neighboring areas of Honduras and Guatemala, Spanish; Castilian: vos, or more rarely Spanish; Castilian: usted, may be added to the end of a sentence to reiterate the listener's participation. This constitutes free use of the pronoun, unconnected to any of the arguments in the preceding sentence. Little is known about this phenomenon's origins.

Syntax

In El Salvador and Guatemala it is common to place an indefinite article before a possessive pronoun, as in . Very rarely the possessive can be combined with a demonstrative pronoun, like . This construction was occasional in Old Spanish and still found in Judaeo-Spanish, but its frequency in El Salvador and Guatemala is due to similar constructions being found in various Mayan languages.

Salvadoran Caliche/Caliche Salvadoreño

The definition for Caliche is an informal term for Salvadoran Spanish due to colloquialisms and unique indigenous lexical words that are different from Salvadoran Spanish. Caliche refers to the Nawat (Pipil) influenced dialect of Spanish spoken in El Salvador. Many words have gone through the process of deletion, vowel assimilation, or epenthesis to make it easier for the speaker to understand. Salvadoran Caliche is used across social classes, although professional individuals tend to avoid it because it is not considered "proper" Spanish.

For example, this table shows the difference between Standard Salvadoran Spanish and Caliche:

Salvadoran Spanish	Salvadoran Caliche	English gloss
Acá, así es la situación	La onda está así	This is the situation
Dinero	pisto	Money
Un Colón salvadoreño	Un Peso/ Un bola	One Salvadoran Colon
Está difícil	Está yuca	It is difficult
Está muy ebrio/borracho	Está muy bolo/ A verga/Pedo	He/She is very drunk
Sabemos progresar	Sabemos socarla/ Le hacemos huevos	We know how to progress
Nos gusta salir a pasear	Nos gusta chotiar/Vacilar	We like to go to outings

Words like this are not unique to El Salvador, and when heard by someone that is Salvadoran or from neighbouring countries they are understood. Nawat's influence appears in the word Spanish; Castilian: chiche, which means "breast".^[3] But chiche in El Salvador also means "not easy”. Another word is Spanish; Castilian: guishte,^[4] which means a piece of broken glass, which comes (from Witzti “thorn”). This word does not appear in any dictionary so its origin cannot be traced, but the only hypothesis behind this word was proposed by Pedro Geoffroy Rivas—an anthropologist, poet, and linguist—who believed that it came from the Pipil language, since El Salvador's Spanish has been heavily influenced by it. Unfortunately, Caliche is not described in studies on Salvadoran Spanish. The philologist John M. Lipski points out that Centro American Spanish (including the Spanish spoken in El Salvador) lacks adequate sources for linguistic and literary research. Lipski further elaborates that such linguistic shortage indicates a possible generalization that in recent decades Salvadoran dialectology has failed to advance as rapidly as the comparative work in other Latin American nations.

Sources

• Brogan . Franny D.. 2018 . Sociophonetically-based phonology: An Optimality Theoretic account of /s/ lenition in Salvadoran Spanish . PhD . University of California, Los Angeles .
• Brogan . Franny D. . Bolyanatz . Mariška A. . A sociophonetic account of onset /s/ weakening in Salvadoran Spanish: Instrumental and segmental analyses . Language Variation and Change . July 2018 . 30 . 2 . 203–230 . 10.1017/S0954394518000066. 149803757 .
• Book: Canfield . D. Lincoln . Spanish pronunciation in the Americas . 1981 . University of Chicago Press . Chicago . 9780226092638.
• Book: Hualde , José Ignacio . José Ignacio Hualde . 2005 . The Sounds of Spanish . Cambridge . Cambridge University Press . . 9781108817882 . 56834550.
• Lipski. John M.. John M. Lipski. 1984. On the Weakening of /s/ in Latin American Spanish. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. 51. 1. 31–43. 40501902.
• Book: Lipski . John M. . John M. Lipski. Latin American Spanish . 1994 . Longman . London . 9780582087606.
• Lipski . John M. . John M. Lipski. 2000. 65–88. El español que se habla en El Salvador y su importancia para la dialectología hispanoamericana . October 21, 2021. Científica. Universidad Don Bosco. es.
• Book: Navarro Tomás . Tomás. Tomás Navarro Tomás . Manual de pronunciación española . 2004 . Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas . Madrid . 9788400070960 . 24.

Further reading

• Aaron, Jessi Elana (University of Florida) and José Esteban Hernández (University of Texas, Pan-American). "Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation: Shifts in /s/ reduction patterns in Salvadoran Spanish in Houston". In: Potowski, Kim and Richard Cameron (editors). Spanish in Contact: Policy, Social and Linguistic Inquiries (Volume 22 of Impact, studies in language and society,). John Benjamins Publishing, 2007. Start page 329., .

Notes and References

1. Web site: ISO 639-2 Language Code search. Library of Congress. 22 June 2019.
2. , citing, and .
3. Encyclopedia: chiche . Diccionario de la lengua española . October 6, 2021 . Spanish.
4. Encyclopedia: Guishte. Diccionario Libre . Spanish . October 6, 2021.