The Anglicization of Cuban Spanish: Lexico-Semantic Variations and Patterns

José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo

doi:10.7557/1.6.2.4120

Abstract

The impact of English on Cuban Spanish has represented the embodiment of a profound process of acculturation on the island. This empirical study is intended to examine the anglicization of Cuban Spanish by determining anglicizing patterns or strategies in the phonological, morphological, lexical and semantic levels. Thus, the article demonstrates the variability of word-building mechanisms and semantic transparency dia-synchronically. The normative and descriptive analysis is also accompanied by brief contrastive commentaries on divergent and common aspects between Cuban Spanish and European Spanish, illustrated with examples extracted from prior corpora and dictionary revision. The research has shed more light on the universality of certain morpho-phonological patterns in Spanish, as well as the correlation between pragmatic or extralinguistic aspects with lexico-semantic variation, revealing significant changes in sociolects and attitudes.

Highlights

Cuba, having been a long-standing Spanish colony and located just 90 miles away from the United States, represents the paradigm of anglicized manners, social standards, beliefs, and language
The Cuban economic and political status depended on American infrastructure for over fifty years (1902-1959) and its linguistic and cultural impact has transcended up to the present day
The shifting socio-economic conditions on the island have resulted in an unprecedented display of sociolinguistic phenomena, especially in terms of semantic change and sociolects

Summary

Introduction

Cuba, having been a long-standing Spanish colony and located just 90 miles away from the United States, represents the paradigm of anglicized manners, social standards, beliefs, and language. In terms of graphemic integration, the most visible feature is the adaptation of certain loanwords to Spanish rules (see Table 2) This comes about from an existing incompatibility of a number of unusual grapheme clusters or letter combinations, leading to pattern-like substitutions: earlier loans are more detectable because of their tendency to keep some of the foreign graphemes, e.g. warandol, Wajay, keno. The nearness of adapted Cu. vowels to English patterns is in line with the premise that English might have had a deeper impact on the phonology of Cuban Spanish This has been traditionally reflected in the number of orthographically adapted English-induced words on the island, which could as well lead to unrecognizable spelling by English speakers, e.g. chingala, tribey. Other verb-forming suffixes (-izar, -ificar), though already existing in the language, have become more productive in Spanish (Cárdenas 1999: 52) partly due to their English counterparts (-ize, -ify), and the tendency of the latter to be assimilated through English verbs, in particular specialized ones (clorificar < chlorify, vulcanizar < vulcanize)

Word-building processes

Conclusions