Cuban Spanish

Cuban Spanish is the variety of the Spanish language as it is spoken in Cuba. As a Caribbean variety of Spanish, Cuban Spanish shares a number of features with nearby varieties, including coda weakening and neutralization, non-inversion of Wh-questions, and a lower rate of dropping of subject pronouns compared to other Spanish varieties. As a variety spoken in Latin America, it has seseo and lacks the vosotros pronoun.

Origins
Cuban Spanish is most similar to, and originates largely from, the Spanish that is spoken in the Canary Islands and Andalusia. Cuba owes much of its speech patterns to the heavy Canarian migrations of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The accent of La Palma is the closest of the Canary Island accents to the Cuban accent. Many Cubans and returning Canarians settled in the Canary Islands after the revolution of 1959. Migration of other Spanish settlers (Asturians, Catalans, Castilians), and especially Galicians also occurred, but left less influence on the accent.

Much of the typical Cuban vocabulary stems from Canarian lexicon. For example, guagua ('bus') differs from standard Spanish autobús. An example of Canarian usage for a Spanish word is the verb fajarse ('to fight'). In Spain, the verb would be pelearse, and fajar exists as a non-reflexive verb related to the hemming of a skirt.

Much of the vocabulary that is peculiar to Cuban Spanish comes from the different historic influences on the island. Many words come from the Canary Islands, but some words are of West African, French, or indigenous Taino origin, as well as peninsular Spanish influence from outside the Canary Islands, such as Andalusian or Galician.

The West African influence is due to the large Afro-Cuban population, most of whom are descended from African slaves imported in the 19th century. Some Cuban words of African origin include chévere 'wonderful', asere 'friend', and orishá 'Yoruba deity'. In addition, different Afro-Cuban religions and secret societies also different African languages in their practices and liturgies.

Many Afro-Cubans in the 19th century also spoke Bozal Spanish, derived from the term bozales, which originally referred to muzzles for wild dogs and horses, and came to be used to refer to enslaved Africans who spoke little Spanish. Some elements of Bozal Spanish can still be found in the speech of elderly Afro-Cubans in remote rural areas, in Palo Mayombe chants, and in trance states during possession rituals in Santería. Due to historical commercial ties between the US and Cuba, American English has lent several words, including some for clothing, such as pulóver (which is used to mean "T-shirt") and chor ("shorts", with the typical Spanish change from English sh to ch, like mentioned above, $⟨ch⟩$ may be pronounced [], the pronunciation of English "sh"). Anglicisms related to baseball, such as strike and foul, are frequently employed, with Spanish pronunciation.

Phonology
Cuban Spanish is marked by a variety of phonological features that make it similar to, and distinct from, many other dialects of Spanish. Like other Latin American Spanish varieties, this dialect is seseante, meaning there is no distinction between ⟨s⟩, ⟨z⟩, and soft ⟨c⟩ sounds, differing from a Peninsular Spanish dialect. Cuban Spanish is also similar to most other Latin American dialects by using yeísmo; the letters ⟨y⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ are both pronounced [ʝ].

Similar to speakers of other Caribbean dialects, Cuban Spanish speakers exhibit the weak pronunciation of consonants, especially at the end of a syllable. A syllable-final may either be aspirated and be pronounced as  or may even be deleted, in a process known as elision. Where some speakers would pronounce a word like estar ('to be') as /estaɾ/, pronouncing the /s/ phoneme, many Caribbean Spanish speakers aspirate the /s/ and produce /eʰtaɾ/, or elide it altogether, pronouncing /e taɾ/. This trait is shared with most American varieties of Spanish spoken in coastal and low areas (Lowland Spanish), as well as with Canarian Spanish and the Spanish spoken in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula.

Take for example, the following sentence: Esos perros no tienen dueños (Eso' perro' no tienen dueño')

[ˈesoh ˈperoh no ˈtjeneŋ ˈdweɲoh]

('Those dogs do not have owners') Also, because this feature has variable realizations, any or all instances of [h] in the above example may be dropped, potentially rendering [ˈeso ˈpero no ˈtjeneŋ ˈdweɲo]. Other examples: disfrutar ("to enjoy") is pronounced [dihfɾuˈtaɾ], and fresco ("fresh") becomes [ˈfɾehko]. In Havana, después ("after[ward]") is typically pronounced [dehˈpwe] (de'pué'/despué').

Another instance of consonant weakening in Cuban Spanish (as in many other dialects) is the deletion of intervocalic /d/ in the participle ending -ado (-ao/-a'o), as in cansado (cansao/cansa'o) [kanˈsao] ("tired"). More typical of Cuba and the Caribbean is the elision of final /r/ in some verb infinitives, or merger with -/l/; e.g. parar, 'to stop', can be realized as [paˈɾal] or [paˈɾa] (paral/pará).

The voiceless velar fricative [x] (spelled ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩) is usually aspirated or pronounced [ h], which is also common in Andalusian and Canarian dialects and some Latin American dialects.

Another common characteristic of Caribbean Spanish is the tendency for other processes to affect consonants in the final position such as /n/ velarization and neutralization of liquid consonants. Word-final becomes, such as in the word hablan (“they talk”), pronounced [a βlaŋ #]. Syllable-final may become  or, or even become entirely silent. Final more frequently becomes  in the eastern and central regions of Cuba. For example, in words such as carne (“meat”) or amor (“love”) many speakers of this dialect will produce the words as [kalne] or [amol]. Postvocalic tends to disappear entirely. All of these characteristics occur to one degree or another in other Caribbean varieties, as well as in many dialects in Andalusia (in southern Spain)&mdash;the place of historical origin of these characteristics.

In some areas of Cuba, the voiceless affricate [] (spelled ch) is deaffricated to [].

The Spanish of the eastern provinces (the five provinces comprising what was formerly Oriente Province) is closer to that of the Dominican Republic than to the Spanish spoken in Havana.

There also exists a phonological feature unique to Cuba called the toque or golpe (“tap” or “hit”). This phonological process occurs within a consonant cluster that is composed of a liquid consonant, i.e., [ɾ] or [l], and an occlusive or nasal consonant, i.e., [p][t][g][b][t][k][n][m]. Instead of producing the liquid, a Cuban speaker may produce the glottal stop consonant [ʔ]. For example, a word like algodón ('cotton') will have the [l] phoneme substituted for the [ʔ] sound, producing [aʔ-go-ˈðon].

In western Cuba and  in a syllable coda can be merged with each other and assimilated to the following consonant, resulting in geminates. At the same time, the non-assimilated and unmerged pronunciations are more common. Example pronunciations, according to the analysis of which transcribes the merged, underlying phoneme as :

Morphology and syntax
Cuban Spanish typically uses the diminutive endings -ico and -ica (instead of the standard -ito and -ita) with stems that end in. For example, plato ("plate") > platico (instead of platito), and momentico instead of momentito; but cara ("face") becomes carita. This form is common to the Venezuelan, Cuban, Costa Rican, Dominican, and Colombian dialects.

The suffix -ero is often used with a place name to refer to a person from that place; thus habanero, guantanamera, etc. A person from Santiago de Cuba is santiaguero (compare santiagués "from Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain)", santiaguino "from Santiago de Chile").

Wh-questions, when the subject is a pronoun, are usually not inverted. Where speakers of most other varieties of Spanish would ask "¿Qué quieres?" or "¿Qué quieres tú?", Cuban speakers would more often ask "¿Qué tú quieres?" (This form is also characteristic of Dominican, Isleño, and Puerto Rican Spanish. )

Cuban Spanish also frequently uses expressions with personal infinitives, a combined preposition, noun or pronoun, and verbal infinitive where speakers in other dialects would typically use a conjugated subjunctive form. For example, eso sucedió antes de yo llegar aquí, instead of …antes de que yo llegara… 'that happened before I arrived here'. This type of construction is found elsewhere in the Caribbean and occurs in all speech styles.

Cuban Spanish uses the familiar second-person pronoun tú in many contexts where other varieties of Spanish would use the formal usted. While Cuban Spanish has always preferred tú to usted, the use of usted has become increasingly rare after the Revolution. Voseo is practically non-existent in Cuba. It was historically present in the countryside of eastern Cuba. Pedro Henríquez Ureña alleged that it often used the object and possessive pronouns os and vuestro instead of te and tuyo. Its present-tense conjugations ending in -áis, -éis, and -ís, and future-tense conjugations in -éis.

In keeping with the socialist polity of the country, the term compañero/compañera ("comrade" or "friend") is often used instead of the traditional señor/señora. However, states that the term compañero has failed to enter the popular language, and is rejected by many Cubans opposed to the current regime, citing a misunderstanding with a Cuban who refused to be addressed as compañera.