Talk:Canarian Spanish

I created the article
I created the article, but it's just an stub for the moment. Onofre Bouvila 02:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I made the article what it is
When I came upon this stub there was only like three sentences, saying that Canarian spanish was spoken by Canarians and Canarian descendants in Louisiana. I created everthing else you see on this page, including story information, pronunciations, and vocabulary. I speak Canarian spanish and I am an Isleño. (Thanks for the credit, lol) As far as what to call this dialect, you would say Canarian spanish. When speaking spanish you would say Dialecto Canario or Habla Canaria. When speaking about the Canarian dialect in the U.S. state of Louisiana, you would refer to the Louisiana-Canarian dialect as Isleño spanish. (In spanish: Español Isleño or Español Criollo as well as Canario Criollo.) Remember, the Isleños speak a Creole Canarian dialect, but very very similar to the original. I will be adding some Isleño vocabulary words to this article shortly.

Thanks and enjoy.

Robert Gutiérrez 03:42, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Name
To be consistent with other articles on Spanish dialects, should this maybe be Canarian Spanish or something like that? I suppose the current title isn't really ambiguous, but it still sounds kind of odd for me to have an article just talk about the "X dialect" without the title specifying the language. It's not a huge deal, though, I guess --Miskwito 03:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * In Spanish is known as "dialecto canario", and everyone implicitly understands that it is a dialect of Castilian. That stuff of "Canarian Spanish", or even "Castilian Spanish" (omgomgomg) is not used in Spain. Onofre Bouvila 04:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Right, but this isn't the Spanish Wikipedia, so its Spanish name is somewhat irrelevant. It may be implicitly understood in Spanish that "dialecto canario" refers to a dialect of Spanish, but it's not implicitly understood in English that "Canarian dialect" refers to a dialect of Spanish, I don't think. I dunno. This isn't something I care deeply about, though. --Miskwito 20:38, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to have to say it, but the article sucks.
Maybe a three line stub is better than a lot of misinformation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.45.7.81 (talk) 22:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I've started on fixing a few of the problems with the article (starting with the most obvious by removing the enormous vocabulary lists). There should ideally, of course, be some discussion of distinctive Canarian vocabulary, but it should be discussion, not just huge lists, and it should involve a few choice examples, not hundreds of them, and it should be referenced. --Miskwito (talk) 23:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The article in general needs sourcing as well. Some online ones that look promising include two articles by John Lipski: and  --Miskwito (talk) 23:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Personal Pronoun
I'm a little confused by this statement:

Personal pronoun. Canarians do not use the personal pronoun, except for exceptions. Example: "fui a comprar," for "I went to buy", instead of "yo fui a comprar" for "I went to buy". "Venimos de una juerga (or fiesta)" rather than "nosotros venimos de una fiesta" for "we come from a celebration", also, "llegaron anoche" for "arrived last night," instead of "ellos llegaron anoche" for "they arrived last night."

How exactly is this different than the Spanish spoken everywhere else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.91.33 (talk) 19:20, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Dialect or language?
I don't what to think about this article. This perhaps isn't a dialect but perhaps an indipendent language--I mean--all the differing vocabulary! User:THEHIVESRULEyeah —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:43, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There is a significant difference between a dialect and calling something a totally different language. Spanish variants may not even be true "dialects" although they are often called that.  The main differences are in diction and the preferences of some tenses over others.  It does not make them different languages - just selecting different parts for common usage.  You will find the same discussions about Rioplatense Spanish and others.--MartinezMD (talk) 20:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Removing reference to Louisiana folks
I know this may be a bit sad for some americans who are proud of their canarian roots but its just untenable to claim that the Canarian dialect of Spanish is also spoken in Louisiana. Here is a documentary with the last couple of old folks who speak some spanish in louisiana and that is NOT canarian spanish (its just americans speaking very bad spanish in a very heavy anglo-american accent). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzUOX55dXAo. The guy at the beginning of doc says in his very broken Spanish that no one speaks it anymore and once he and his friends die thats it....

Sorry guys, but its more coherent to write that canarian spanish is spoken in the Canaries, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela - not Louisiana.

Canario is a dialect of 2 million people which is the basis of dialects of 10s of millions in various countries. A reference (covering a third of the article and including a massive map of luisiana) to a couple of villages in the US where Spanish is certainly NOT the vernacular is a clear example of US-centrism in wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.32.251.117 (talk) 02:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that there was too much emphasis on Isleño for such a brief article. However, your arguments are overstated. The guy at the beginning of the documentary you cite does not speak "very broken" Spanish – he has a clearly discernible US English accent behind it and talks quite slowly, but he is entirely competent in the language, and the other three speakers we hear probably better. In any case, your argument that because it is "bad" Spanish it can't be Canarian Spanish just doesn't make sense. What kind of Spanish is it, then? Does it become bad Standard Castilian just because it's bad? Of course not. Canarian Spanish is these folks' (grand-)mother tongue, even if it has naturally become less fluent over the course of time, and it is clearly the dialect on which the phonology of their speech is modelled (not to mention the vocabulary). So, how about reinstating some of the interesting and useful material you have so hastily deleted from this article? Acasson (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Accasson, I think that when someone speaks Spanish slowly, incorrectly and with a foreign (anglo) accent, that is a strong indicator that it is his or her second language. When one of the millions of Venezuelans speaks venezuelan Spanish, it is practically indiscernible from Canarian spanish to all other native spanish speakers, and often to themselves. For this reason, any info on the tiny spanish speaking isleño community (if it still exists) should be at best anecdotal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.47.108.241 (talk) 15:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Of course, it'd certainly be their 'second' language now, in a table of linguistic competence, but we've no idea whether they acquired it before, after or alongside English, so you have to be careful with labels like that. In any case, you've missed my point, so I'll restate it: these folks didn't learn Spanish in school based on any standard European or Latin-American model. They learnt it from family, based on a Canarian Spanish model. Their language doesn't become a bad version of some other model just because it's bad and more competent speakers of the target model want to disown them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acasson (talk • contribs) 16:19, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

La Palma's superdiminutive
I'm writing this here to avoid further escalations in an edit war between User:Winkelvi and myself. He (or she) says he is patrolling the "Recent changes" page to look for vandalism by IP addresses. While on an IP address (I mean not using a named account) I did an edit (Special:Permalink/627104287) on this Article which he reverted (Special:Permalink/627104385) immediately talking about "original research". I do not think, instead, that it is original research, at least no more than the rest of the article, which is full of "citation needed" notes. He also says in his page If you're here because of an editing issue or a revert I've made to one or more of your edits and you feel I've made an error, please leave me a civil message on my talk page. which I did, explaining the reasons for the edit and redoing it. He reverted the edit again and deleted the comment from his Talk page. Instead of directly editing the page for a third time I left another message on his Talk page, which was almost immediately deleted again. So I bring the question here to try to get Consensus. I just hope he does not simply delete it again.

Issue at hand is that there is an extra level of diminutive in Canary Islands, particularly in La Palma, with the word chiquititito as its main exponent (You can see the word used e.g. in http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/latin-culture/articles/1216/title/know-latino-when or in this book's title http://www.freeebookse.com/un-regalo-de-vida-chiquititito-un-cuento-de-donacion-de-eacute-PDF-133805/ but these are hardly academic research papers). I put it and it was deleted, twice. So to avoid an edit war (or to avoid it going further) I want the issue to be discussed here. --85.155.55.242 (talk) 23:07, 1 October 2014 (UTC) (About why I am not using an account, it is for a long variety of reasons. This should not be a point in the discussion).


 * Whilst I understand your frustration, having myself been on the wrong end of the pronouncements of self-appointed Wikipedian police, I think it most constructive in this case to disregard User:Winkelvi's dismissiveness and concentrate on the case in question. If you do that, I'm afraid it's pretty obvious that your contribution is original research, that you cannot support it with a citation, and that it therefore should not be added to an already fragile article. (If anything, I fear that the fact that other statements on the page lack citations works against you, not for you). Please be assured that I have no reason to doubt the veracity of your observations about the triple diminutive in La Palma, and there's no evidence that User:Winkelvi does either, but on Wikipedia conviction that your statements are correct is not enough. Acasson (talk) 09:38, 2 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your objective point of view, Acasson. Would the examples I provided above as mere examples be useful as sources, or some more academic article is needed, in your opinion? --85.155.55.242 (talk) 16:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I can't see any connection to the Canary Islands in either of those two examples, so citing them from this page would not be appropriate. Whether they'd even be acceptable citations for a claim in a more general article about the existence of triple diminutives in the Spanish language is pretty doubtful too, in my opinion. Something scholarly is what's really needed. Acasson (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Vernacular language
I am including the term "vernacular" to refer to the variation in the standard Spanish language spoken in the Canary islands. I am using several academic sources for this contribution. For example, Laura Morgenthaler García Identidad y pluricentrismo lingüístico: hablantes canarios frente a la ..., page 192. The idea of this small contribution is to have a more balanced article in line with studies in linguistics. Historian (talk) 19:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Mexico
'the area of the Caribbean, Veracruz, Mexico, the Colombian Caribbean Coast and Venezuela, and most of the rest of Hispanic America, with the notable exception of Mexico'

This needs some clarification... is Mexico included or not?!

31.205.122.207 (talk) 18:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Names: personal or toponyms?
Where it says "many names", such as Airam, Gara, Acerina, etc.—I'm guessing these are personal names, not toponyms. If you know this is true, please insert "personal" in that phrase. Kotabatubara (talk) 04:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)