how different is DR spanish?
would we be 80% there if we learned basic spanish and just change to the regional DR versions (i.e. Cabarete or North Coast)?
4 Answers
Well me being Dominican I can tell you that its very different. We don't pronounce whole words, we take out letters, and add our own letters and plus we talk very fast with a strong accent. Our slang makes no sense to anybody else but makes perfect sense to us.
So if someone wanted to learn the way we(Dominicans) speak , it would not be useful to them unless they either lived in DR for the rest of their life or spoke to nothing but Dominicans.
Lets just say the way we speak is unique =)
Well me being Dominican I can tell you that its very different.
But are you a native speaker of Spanish, I mean, US-born Dominicans have a similar, but not identical accent to those who live in the DR, and let me tell you that Dominican Spanish shares a few of features with Cuban, Boricua, Panamenian and some Venezuelan and Colombian varieties, it's not so unique at all. Slang does not count, every variety has unique slang.
My experience with people from the Caribbean is that they don't always pronounce the entire word, swallowing the end of some words. This could be likened to the Texas drawl in English, or the practice of some people (including Obama and Sarah Palin) to drop their g's in speaking. "I'm talkin' to you."
I hear, for example, "¿Como etdá?" instead of "¿Como estás?" In Spain they would say, "¿Como estaís? meaning "How are you all?" but as in Texas, even when they only mean you in the singular.
You can tune your ear to these regional differences, but it will never hurt you to know the correct way of saying something, the correct spelling and the textbook pronunciation of what someone is trying to say.
DR versions? This is more Australia / Alabama or Canada /Texas
