Spanish in the Americas Flashcards
Grade 12 · Spanish · Flashcards
Key terms covering dialects, indigenous language contributions, colonial history, and regional linguistic features of Spanish across Latin America.
Flashcards
- Voseo
- Use of 'vos' as the informal 2nd-person singular pronoun instead of 'tú'; characteristic of Argentina, Uruguay, and parts of Central America.
- Tuteo
- Use of 'tú' as the informal 2nd-person pronoun; the dominant form in Mexico, Spain, and most of Latin America outside the River Plate region.
- Nahuatl
- Aztec language of central Mexico; source of loanwords: chocolate, tomate, aguacate, cacao, chile, coyote, and many more.
- Quechua
- Andean language family spanning from Colombia to Argentina; source of llama, quinoa, poncho, papa (potato), cóndor.
- Caribbean Spanish
- Dialect of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic; features rapid pace, final-consonant reduction, and African linguistic influence.
- Andean Spanish
- Dialect of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador; slower, more conservative, preserves Castilian features, influenced by Quechua.
- River Plate Spanish
- Dialect of Argentina and Uruguay; uses voseo, Italian-influenced intonation, and pronunciations like 'sh' for ll/y.
- Real Academia Española (RAE)
- Founded 1713 in Spain; publishes authoritative dictionary and grammar for the Spanish language used as normative reference worldwide.
- Colonization (1492 onward)
- Spain's political and cultural control of the Americas spread Spanish language, Catholicism, and European legal systems across the continent.
- Préstamo lingüístico
- Linguistic loanword — a word borrowed from one language into another; Latin American Spanish is uniquely rich in indigenous and African loanwords.
- Bilingualism in Latin America
- Millions of Latin Americans speak Spanish alongside an indigenous language (Quechua, Nahuatl, Guaraní, Maya, etc.); a significant and underrecognized reality.
- Afro-Caribbean influence
- African languages brought through the slave trade contributed vocabulary, phonology, and musical speech rhythm to Caribbean Spanish dialects.
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