Peruvian Spanish
Peruvian Spanish is a family of dialects of the Spanish language that have been spoken in Peru since brought over by Spanish conquistadors in 1532. There are four varieties spoken in the country, by about 80% of the population. The four Peruvian dialects are Andean Spanish, Peruvian Coast Spanish, Andean-Costal Spanish, and Amazonic Spanish.
History
The Spanish language first arrived in Peru in 1532. During colonial and early republican times, the Spanish spoken colloquially in the coast and in the cities of the highland possessed strong local features, but as a result of dialect leveling in favor of the standard language, the language of urban Peruvians today is more or less uniform in pronunciation throughout most of the country. Vestiges of the older dialect of the coast can be found in the speech of black Peruvians, which retains Andalusian features such as the aspiration or deletion of final /s/ and the deletion of final /r/. The dialect of Arequipa, Loncco, in its pure form is now extinct, although some elders are familiar with it.Throughout most of the highland, Quechua continued to be the language of the majority until the mid 20th century. Mass migration into Lima starting in the 1940s, and into other major cities and regional capitals later on, accompanied by discrimination and the growth of mass media, have reconfigured the linguistic demography of the country in favor of Spanish. The poor urban masses originating in this migration adopted the standardized dialect spoken in the cities, however with traces of Andean pronunciation and a simplified syntax.
Peruvian dialects
Andean Spanish
Andean Spanish the most common dialect in the Andes and has many similarities with the "standard" dialect of Ecuador and Bolivia.Principal characteristics
The phonology of Andean Peruvian Spanish is distinguished by its slow time and unique rhythm, assibilation of and, and an apparent confusion of the vowels with and with. Furthermore, the "s" is produced with more force than that of the coast; this is also generally true of the other consonants, at the loss of the vowels. Other distinctive features are the preservation of, sometimes hypercorrective realization of as, and the realization of velar plosives as a fricative.The morphosyntactic characteristics are typical:
- Confusion or unification of gender and number
- Confusion or unification of gender and number
- Frequent use of the diminutives –ito and –ita
- Loísmo
- Duplication of the possessives and objects
- The absence or redundant use of articles
- Uncommon use of the preposition "en" in front of locative adverbs
- The use of "no más" and "pues" after the verb
- The use of the verb at the end of the phrase
- The use of the simple tense to express the preterite and of the indicative in place of the subjunctive in subordinates.
Peruvian coast Spanish
Characteristics
- The vowels are stable and clear.
- and are pronounced clearly, without any fricativization.
- is more often laminal than apical, and debuccalized to in front of most consonants. It is retained as in final position.
- varies between,, and ; it is sometimes.
- Word-final nasals are velar.
- The final is normally elided, but sometimes devoiced as in formal speech.
- Yeísmo exists, the phoneme occurring as and interchangeably, and as palato-alveolar in initial position by some speakers.
- The tendency to eliminate hiatus in word with an -ear suffix.
Andean-Coastal Spanish
Originated in the last 30 to 50 years with a mixture of the speech of Andean migrants and the speech of Lima. This dialect is the speech that is most typical in the upskirts of the city, but also serves as a transitional dialect between Coastal and Andean Spanish spoken in between the coast and the highlands.Characteristics
| Characteristics | Example | Coastal/Lima Spanish | Coastal-Andean Spanish |
| No assibilation of and except in the older generations, but the articulation of these two sounds is weakened, and the final syllable is silent in internal contexts. | - | - | - |
| Closed and lax emission of vowels in general. | |||
| Confusion between and as well as and in casual speech. | |||
| Weakening, sometimes to the point of elimination, of the consonant sounds,, and when in intervocalic contexts. | aguanta | ||
| Weakening, sometimes to the point of elimination, of the consonant sounds,, and when in intervocalic contexts. | dado | ||
| Weakening, sometimes to the point of elimination, of the consonant sounds,, and when in intervocalic contexts. | mantequilla | ||
| Weakening, sometimes to the point of elimination, of the consonant sounds,, and when in intervocalic contexts. | baboso | ||
| Strong pronunciation of "s", or with a weak whistling; less aspiration before consonants | asco | ||
| Voicing of voiceless consonants. | pasajes | ||
| Voicing of voiceless consonants. | fósforo | ||
| Voicing of voiceless consonants. | época | ||
| Accelerated speech and with varied intonation based on Andean Spanish. |
This dialect has the usual Andean syntactics, like lack of agreement in gender and number, the frequent use of diminutives or augmentatives, loísmo, double possessives and ending phrases with "pues", "pe" or "pue".
As far as the lexicon is concerned, there are numerous neologisms, influences from Quechua, and slang among the youth often heard in the streets.
Amazonic Spanish
This dialect has developed uniquely, with contact from Andean Spanish and the Spanish of Lima with the Amazonian languages. It has a distinctive tonal structure.Phonetically it is characterized by:
- The sibilant resisting aspiration
- A confusion of with
- There is occlusion of the intervals in tonal ascension with aspiration and lengthening of the vowels.
- are pronounced with aspiration
- The tends to become an affricate
- Also, there is assibilation and weak trills.
There are also disorders of agreement, gender, etc.