Dominican Spanish - Phonology

Phonology

• Like many other Spanish dialects, Dominican Spanish features yeísmo: the sounds represented by ll (the palatal lateral /ʎ/) and y (historically the palatal approximant /j/) have fused into one. This merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a or (these are the sounds in English York and John). That is, in the Dominican Republic, se cayó "he fell down" is homophonous with se calló "he became silent / he shut up".
• Dominican Spanish has seseo (traditional /θ/ merges with /s/). That is, casa ("house") is homophonous with caza ("hunt"). Seseo is common to all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
• Strong contraction in everyday speech is common, as in "voy a" into "vuá" or "voá", or "¿para adónde vas?" into "¿p'ónde va'?". Another example: "Taco 'tá 'co'ta'o", from "Taco está acostado" ("Taco is lying down / Taco is sleeping").
• The fricative /s/ has a tendency to become an indistinct aspiration or disappear or to become a voiceless glottal fricative at the end of syllables. This change may be realized only at the word level or it may also cross word boundaries. That is, las mesas son blancas "the tables are white" is pronounced, but in las águilas azules "the blue eagles", syllable-final /s/ in las and águilas might be resyllabified into the initial syllable of the following vowel-initial words and remain, or become (it varies by speaker). Aspiration or disappearance of syllable-final /s/ is common to all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain.
• In some areas, speakers tend to drop the final r sound in verb infinitives. This elision is considered a feature of uneducated speakers in some places, but it is widespread in others, at least in rapid speech.
• The weak r, final or not, tends to be changed in many words by an i sound in the Northerly Cibao region and by an l (L) in the Eastern and in the capital city (Santo Domingo); i.e., the verb correr (to run) is pronounced correi and correl respectively, and perdón (forgiveness) becomes peidón and peldón. This substitution of i is delicately (almost mutely) present in Andalusian Spanish, and also the l use is prototypical, and more marked, in Puerto Rican Spanish. It is believed to be of Andalusian origin.
• Dominican Spanish uses the common Caribbean inverted placement of the second person singular pronoun tú in front of the verb in questions: "¿Cómo tú estás?" instead of "¿Cómo estás tú?". Unless that person is from Santiago then they use the more formal usted, instead of tú, the conventional word order is used.
• The "D" sound before the "O" is silent. For example, the word helado (ice cream) is pronounced as helao in Dominican Spanish.
• The "L" sound after the "E" (only if the "L" is the last letter) is pronounced as an "R" sound. For example, Miguel is pronounced as Miguer in Dominican Spanish.

Other differences with Standard Spanish include subtleties like hypercorrection, in particular, adding the s erroneously, thus overcompensating the habit of omitting it (i.e., correct: administraciones públicas ; vernacular: aminitracione pública; hyper-corrected: asministracione púsblica).