We're going to compare two accents, one from Southern Spain and one of from the Caribbean. This will exemplify the similarities between the Southern Spanish accents and some Latin American ones, particularly those in the Caribbean.
The singers here are La Mala Rodriguez, who grew up in Seville, Andalusia in the South of Spain, and Residente from Puerto Rico. In contrast to the other Spaniard, Bebe, who was the center of another linguistic note recently on this blog (titled Malo, as mentioned above), La Mala does not distinguish between /s/ and /θ/, and so the the /θ/ phoneme is absent from her speech; and so, she speaks with seseo, as any Latin American would, i.e. she says hace ['ase], trece ['tɾese]. Like the Latin American accents, La Mala's pronunciation of /s/ lacks the apical quality heard in Northern and Central Spain, which was also the case for Bebe's pronunciation.
A very prominent feature in La Mala's speech is the aspiration of /s/ in syllable-final position, even across word boundaries. As I said in my other entry, this change is common in many regions and is beginning to spread more and more to other regions where it hasn't been traditionally heard. And so, we hear La Mala sing das [ðæ̞h], tienes ['tjenɛh], si tú quieres nos ponemos contentos [situ'kjerɛh nɔhpo'nemɔh kõn'tẽntɔh] and respeto [rɛh'peto] (the transcription for Residente's pronunciation would be the same, so the two singers would pronounce these words in the same fashion).
All of this is true, as well, for the Puerto Rican Residente; and what has just been discussed in the previous paragraph is what makes their speech sound so similar, and is what almost hides the fact that La Mala is a Spaniard. Her accent, along with other accents from Southern Spain and particularly the Canarian Islands, can be easily be mistaken as coming from the Caribbean; and, oftentimes, they are mistaken as such. Anecdotally, when I first listened to this song, not previously knowing about La Mala Rodriguez, I was under the impression that she was indeed from the Caribbean; either from Puerto Rico or Cuba. It wasn't until I heard the way she pronounced a few other words further into the song that I realized that she was actually from Southern Spain. Someone, like myself, trained in phonology can make that distinction; but, the average native, non-Spaniard Spanish speaker can not, and will simply conclude that La Mala is caribeña.
There are a few pronunciation features that identified La Mala as a Spaniard (from the South, certainly; someone from the North of Spain does not risk being mistaken for a Latin American) to me. First and foremost, it was the dropping of final /-r/ in the infinitives, as in ver [βe]. For instance, La Mala rhymes arrastrada [aræ̞h'tɾa] with hablar [a'βla]; when the infinitive is followed by a clitic, the final still isn't pronounced, instead, the following consonant is geminated, i.e. ponernos [po'nennɔh]. A Cuban or a Puerto Rican will pronounce this final /-r/, generally either as [l], or in more careful speech, as [r]. This is what we hear from Residente in the song; he sings, for example, verte ['βelte], faltarnos [faltal'nɔh] and puerto ['pwelto], though in other instances, [r] is retained, as in puerco [pwer'ko] and tener [te'ner]. This particular difference in the pronunciation of syllable-final /-r/ is what sets La Mala and Residente apart; other than that, with regards to her accent, La Mala has more common with a caribeño than with her fellow countrymen from the North (Madrid, for instance).
Some other pronunciation aspects that La Mala and Residente share are:
- /j/ is pronounced as aspiration, [h], i.e. La Mala complejos [kõmple'hɔh]; Residente juro ['huɾo]. In Northern Spain, /j/ is generally realized [χ], and in other places, like Latin America, [x] is heard instead.
- /n/ in coda position is pronounced [ŋ], strongly nasalizing the preceding vowel, i.e. presión [pɾe'sjõŋ], insomnio [ĩŋsõnnio].
- loss of intervocalic /d/ ([ð]) in some cases, i.e. La Mala arrastrada [aræ̞h'tɾa], nada [na:], bocado [βo'kao]; Residente toda ['toa], criado ['kɾjao] (but inodoro [ino'ð̞oɾo]).
- General use of the syncopated form of para > pa. Colloquially, this is common throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
I conducted an experiment in which I asked a small number of Spanish speakers (acquaintances of mine) to listen to the song. Many of them, without any instruction, proceeded to ask me if the female singer was Cuban. All were surprised to find out that she is actually Spanish, as the average Spanish speaker from Latin America is not aware that a Spaniard can sound very much like a Latin American, like a caribeño or even Chilean, to be more precise.
4 comments:
Interesting -- but "Canarian" Islands? I've never heard that one before. There are Canarian people etc., but the place is surely the Canary Islands, or the Canaries.
Interesting topic. Around Christmastime, I was watching football on either ESPN Español or GolTV Español. One of the commentators had an interesting accent, which got me interested in the subject of various Spanish accents, dialects and languages.
Back to the commentator – his /r/ were [ɽ] (retroflex flap; which, if you're familiar with Hindi/Urdu are ड़/ڑ). His /d/ also had a retroflex quality, but it was the /r/ that stood out the most for me.
I've been trying to figure out since what accent this was. I settled on some type of Carribean, but I suspect that you might be able to give a more specific origin. Would you know what this is?
It could be a Caribbean accent, perhaps Cuban. This reminds me of a pronunciation of /r/ in words like carta.
However, I would reserve a definitive answer unless I heard a recording (or saw a detailed description).
There's also some interesting affrication going on with /s/ + /t/ in words like "esto" and even "es tu" (e.g. in "Cuál es tu guerra?")
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