Notes on Puerto Rican Spanish

Abstract

While on sabbatical leave in Puerto Rico recently, I noticed that islanders use some words that are peculiar to the island and might prove interesting to others. Many mainlanders have the mistaken idea that Puerto Rican Spanish is mostly influenced by American English. This collection of items shows that the dialect has its own vibrant existence not particularly dependent upon Anglo language and culture. Money. Puerto Rico is a uniquely self-contained Spanish-speaking community on a small island whose monetary system is exclusively U.S. mint and coinage. Islanders have dubbed each U.S. coin with its own name: the quarter is a peseta, the dime is a sencillo or levita, a nickel is a vell6n, and a is a chavo. Puerto Ricans may refer to ddlares, but peso is much more frequent. The word peseta is borrowed from the term for the basic monetary unit of Spain and contains a quasi-diminutive morph -eta. This was probably instrumental in firmly establishing the equivalence dollar: quarter--peso:peseta. Perhaps contributing to this usage is the Cuban use of the word peseta, which refers to the twenty-cent coin of that country. The word vell6n (nickel) is used both in Puerto Rico and Panama (Smith). This usage probably derives from the metallic composition of the coin, which is copper and nickel. According to Smith and Williams, vell6n is a copper-silver alloy. Alvarez Nazario mentions that vell6n is a clipped form of the phrase real (de) vell6n, probably deriving from its metallic composition. In the western part of the island, vell6n de cinco is nickel, and vell6n de diez is dime, but when used simply as vell6n, the word r fers to a dime. The dime is usually called a sencillo or levita elsewhere. The word sencillo might be a vestige of the fact that it is the smallest silver coin (the most simple one) whose value was, before that, determined by its weight. Alvarez Nazario attributes the word to the phrase real sencillo, or one (simple) real, as opposed to dos reales, or two bits. The word for penny is chavo. In addition to its meaning denoting the coin, the plural chavos refers both to cents (in change) as in cuesta tres pesos treinta chavos, and in slang is the equivalent of English bread, dough, or Mexican lana: Lo compraria pero no tengo los chavos. Moliner calls this use of chavo a clipped form of ochavo, moneda de metal de poco valor; ... Se usa en frases como sin un chavo, no tener un chavo .. . Mexican chavo, by the way, means children, kids and comes from chaval, a Gypsy word (Corominas). Eyeglasses. Puerto Rican Spanish has narrowed and categorized the meanings of several words that deal with optical devices. Eyeglasses used for reading and improving vision are espejuelos. (They may also be called lentes [de prescripci6n.]) The word anteojos in Puerto Rico means only binoculars (as is the case in Cuba). Gafas refer to sunglasses exclusively. Automobile-related vocabulary. A hubcap is a tapabocinas, but a bocina is either a horn, a loudspeaker on the top of a car to make public announcements, or a speaker on a stereo set. Another very useful word of Puerto Rican coinage is the word for English ride, as in Do you want a ride? In Puerto Rico the word is pon, m.: Quieres (un) pon? In the Burger King and McDonald's restaurants, the drive-through windows are labeled servicarro and agreement is discarded *Notes for this section, with a maximum length of 7 double-spaced typescript pages including notes and list of works cited, should be sent to the Editor, Hispania, Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0358. Please send a typed original, a copy, return loose postage and a selfaddressed return envelope.