Lemba previously said:

I have one problem with the topic which is that Dominican Spanish is NOT the same as Spanish from Spain, it is very similar yes, and it has some andalucian influences and canarian influences, but the way Canarians and Andalucians drop the S'es is different, in the sense that Andalucians and Canarians replace with S's with a silent J, kinda a semi-spitting sound. Mujereh vs Mujere, D.R tends to completely analiate the S, while andalucian/canarians replace it with a semi-silent J. Which might be moorish influence.

We have way too much Taino and African words for us to be anywhere near Castillian spanish. Our native and African infleunce language wise is very much present in the vocabulary although not as strong in the grammar, as most of our grammar is still spanish. We probably have more Native and African words then Haitian Kreyol, while Haitian kreyol is completely African in grammar, but with more French vocabulary.

Spanish is not PURE language, at all. Spanish is actually a bastard child of Latin and Arabic, with sprinkles of Basque and other influences. A considerable amount of the spanish language is arabic.

So who is to say that our Dominican Spanish is wrong? badly spoken? or slang? I find this to be small-minded. I am a Cibaenyo and we have a way of speaking with our i's sometimes the aspirating J's instead of H's, and a bunch of other language curiosities. I call a big kid a Lembote (A word of African origin), we call someone ugly a Camu (an indegenous word), there is too much richness in other influences in Dominican spanish for it to be considered slang. What most ppl dismiss as slang are simply non-spanish words that entered our language. Now the english words in our language are slang yes, because they are corrupted english words, urged in through colonialism. However they make up a very small part of our language in the D.R, very very very small.

So is Dominican spanish its own language, thats hard to say, some linguist consider it to be a creole language, some do not. I think that one of the biggest challenges we face is our OWN Ignorance into thinking the way we speak is wrong, and that castillian spanish is correct. THis is pure B.S, when spanish is not a pure language at all. Basque is a pure language, Spanish not so much. This is self-hate, of our own culture that is destroying our language, with every passing generation im seeing alot of things fade, although in the cibao we still keep our i's strong, but even that is being challenged by "education" or should i say "miseducation".

It is very sad that we did not value our form of speech from an early point in colonial history, had we done so we would have had a recognizable creole language, i mean come on, if american english is considered different from UK english, why not Dominican spanish? When its obviously alot more creolized. The same sadness has happened to Afro-americans who are told ebonics is slang. That is B.S specially, the older forms of Ebonics are simply African influenced.

I think we need to keep our culture alive, and language is the basis of culture, once we loose our language, our culture follows to be wiped out. Our form of spanish is VERY necesary for cultural survival. You cannot make jokes properly that have been learnt in d.r without our speech, our swing, or our flow. You cannot sing perico ripiao properly unless its sung in a Dominican accent, creole, etc. Can you imagine Antonio Banderas singing la chiflera? It just wouldn't sound right, or fit in rythmically with the Tambora and would not fit properly on the musical scale of the accordion.

Another thing that is special about Dominican spanish are its tonalities, specially in singing. There is both moorish/canarian influence and West African influence in our singing, we use more tonalities in our singing, something which most African languages are abundant in. If you listne to Tatico Henriquez and Guandulito you will hear alot of these tonalities, they are present in Palo, Salves, PriPri, Mangulina and Carabine as well.

Edwin514 previously said:

Like the others have already stated, you should learn proper spanish first and then progress to learning dominican spanish. As you may already know, dominican spanish is FULL of slang and phrases that make dominicans sound, well, dominican. It's even sometimes considered the worst dialect of spanish in Latin America, hinting at its peculiarity and difficulty. We drop s's and d's etc. and speak fast. We just fuck up shit lol.

It's kind of like trying to learn Jamaican patois without knowing any english.

Have a foundation of Spanish first, so it makes learning any other dialects easier. Then just hang around dominicans, listen to our music (if you like), and just immerse yourself in our culture.

Lemba previously said:

Same Spanish as the rest of the cibao since it's part of the Cibao.

Lemba previously said:

Same Spanish as the rest of the cibao since it's part of the Cibao.

mirabal4ever previously said:


"It's even sometimes considered the worst dialect of spanish in Latin America, hinting at its peculiarity and difficulty". "We drop s's and d's etc. and speak fast. We just fuck up shit" lol.

I totally do not agree with your comments on Dominican Spanish... The origen of Dominican Spanish in pronunciations with words in their syllables comes from the Canary Islands and the Andalusian regions of Spain. We actually have retained some of the purest forms of Spanish from the earlier days than say a country like Mexico. Mexico resisted any form of Andalusian Spanish to the utmost which explains the heavy usage of the letter S.