Some Features of the Influence of African Languages on the Development of the Cuban National Version of Spanish

Abstract

The author discusses the concept of language contacts and their role in the development of national variants of the Spanish language of Latin America. The author pays attention to such aspects as the concept of variability as a key aspect of the functioning of the Spanish language, the classification of language contacts depending on their duration, intensity and degree of influence of languages on each other. The subject of the study is the peculiarities of the interference influence of African languages on the formation of the Cuban national variant of Spanish as a representative of the Caribbean dialect-variant group. Africanisms make up a significant layer of lexical units that distinguish the Cuban national variant, forming several lexico-semantic groups directly related to the national culture. The main conclusions of the study may be confirmation of the role of the influence of African languages on the formation of the Cuban national version of Spanish and the importance of language contacts with African languages in the process of forming the Cuban national version. The author draws attention to the frequency of Afrocubanisms, the multiplicity of considering them as markers of dialect division of the considered national variant of the Spanish language. The novelty of the research lies in the analysis of the nature of the interaction of lexemes within the framework of culturally specific groups, the peculiarities of non-equivalent vocabulary as a component of culturally specific phraseological units and the role of the African component in the formation of the national-cultural linguistic specificity of the Spanish language of Cuba and the self-consciousness of the Cuban people.