Is the Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic different from the Spanish taught on Spanish Dict?

Question

Are there different types of Spanish?

Please note, I made corrections to your spelling and grammar. Hopefully, the question will be better understood this way. - Nicole-B, SEP 28, 2009

Answer 1

From my own experience, Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic is the same as what is taught on this site. However, you will notice an accent and some colloquial expressions that are native to the DR. I recently spent some time there and did notice that Dominicans tend to drop the final "s" sound in many words. For instance, Buenos Días becomes "Bueno Día... This accent is most prominent in the mountainous regions like Jarabacoa. I was told the reason for this was that most people born in the area, rarely leave the mountains. They may travel into the bigger city of Santiago, if they can afford to. But for the most part, they stay within the same few miles their entire lives. They also do not roll their "r's" as most other Spanish speaking people do.

So to answer your question, Spanish is Spanish. Just as there are variations to the English language according to where we live, the same is true for the Spanish language. The only word I noted to be different was the word for iced tea. On this site, it is called té helado. In Republica Dominicana, at least the area I visited, iced tea is called té frio.

I hope this answers your question.

The dropping of the s is prominent throughout the Spanish Caribbean, southern Spain, and the Canary Islands. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties#Variants_of_.2Fs.2F_and_debuccalization_of_coda_.2Fs.2F - spanishdr, ENE 14, 2013