UNIVERSITY OF EL SALVADOR

SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT LICENCIATURA EN LENGUAS MODERNAS ESPECIALIDAD INGLES Y FRANCES

VARIATIONS OF SPANISH SPOKEN IN EL SALVADOR BASED ON ONE OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA: REGION, SOCIAL STATUS OR CULTURE.

TEACHERS NAME: Lic. Nicolas Ayala

COURSES NAME: English Linguistics STUDENTS NAMES: Kenia Landaverde Krissia Cedillos Madeline Guadalupe Rodriguez Ricardo Alejandro Alegria

UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, MONDAY, MAY 4TH, 2012

TOPIC:

VARIATIONS OF SPANISH SPOKEN IN EL SALVADOR BASED ON ONE OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA: REGION, SOCIAL STATUS OR CULTURE.

OBJECTIVES

GENERAL: FIND THE VARIATIONS BETWEEN SALVADOREANS AT THE MOMENT TO COMMUNICATE AND COMPARE ACCORDING TO SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND REGIONAL STATUS.

SPECIFIC: MAKE A RESEARCH FOR THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO REFER TO DIFFERENT THINGS OR SUBJECTS AMONG SALVADORIANS BASED IN AN INTERVIEW REGARDING A SOCIAL AND COMMON CONCERN. IDENTIFY ACCENTS AND INFLECTIONS OF THE PARTICIPANTS.

METHODOLOGY.

In order to make this report, the Team has performed the task to make a research on the local Market of San Salvador (Mercado Central). Several interviews have been made with people from different sectors of El Salvador in order to find variations of the Spanish language spoken between Salvadorians that come from different parts of the country. The questions that have been asked in the interviews are: -What can be done from politicians, vendors and clients to improve the markets functionality? - How important are God and Health and Family for women in the actual time? These questions were proposed to people that came from several and different parts of El Salvador such as Chalatenango, San Miguel, Santa Rosa de Lima, etc. Some variations have been found and are better reflected in the content of the present document taking into consideration the characteristics of each one of the variations on a language learned in class and in the Study Book.

Dialectal variation of Spanish. Every language has its own rules that manage it, focusing in phonology, grammar, syntax, morphology, pragmatic and semantic. Phonology is the study of speech sounds in language with reference to their distribution and patterning and to tactic rules governing pronunciation. Grammar studies the inflection and their component part combined to form sentences. Syntax is the study of the rules whereby words or other elements of sentence structure are combined to form grammatical sentences. Morphology, study the structure and form of words in language, including inflection, derivation, and the formation of compounds. Pragmatic, the study of those aspects of language that cannot be considered in isolation from its use. Semantic is the branch of linguistic that deals with the study of meaning, changes in meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or words and their meaning. All this areas complement each other and together make a total part that produces the perfection in a language; moreover, all his branches of linguistics can be apply to English, French, Spanish and other languages but each languages has its own characteristics. Nevertheless, in the real world many of the rules that govern a language are not respected by speaker of its. Some social and cultural factors modify the level of knowledge of the language that native speaker has. Social variables like educational and social level, place where people live (rural or urban areas), and occupation produce the linguistic variables. We will focus on Spanish that is a language speaks by millions of people in different countries around the world and it makes Spanish the third language more spoken in the planet. The American continent has a diversity of spoken languages but especially people from Central America speak Spanish as a maternal language. Some countries of Central America as Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador are very close one from the other; they have a big diversity in vocabulary and pronunciation. Our study is based in the linguistics variation in El Salvador with reference to the social and economic level. The economical class (upper, medium and low level) of each family in El Salvador has a direct relationship with the educational level. Sometimes the higher educational level people has means a better linguistic level in writing and speaking. Also people that live in urban areas have more access to a better education while

people from rural areas face more difficulties to get a college degree for example. The higher educational degree people have requires a better use of the Spanish and the person has to develop and improve the Spanish he uses for academicals purpose. Being in the zone where people of the upper class live or used to visit like malls we can notice that they used to called people using the pronoun tu instead of vos to call the second person singular like the majority of people from medium and upper class do. Moreover, this people have a more often used of the simple future like: nosotros iremos al cine el proximo sabado, while people from low class prefer to use the near future as in the expression vamos a ir al cine el miercoles. This difference can be produce by the facility in using the near future because you do not have to conjugate the principal verb just the verb ir and use the base form of the other verb. Our study is basically focused on the type of Spanish talk by people of the low class from different parts of our country, more specifically the ones that had moved from other department or the country to San Salvador. Spanish in El Salvador has many mispronouncing words specially in people of lower economical level, for example an older woman that work as a vendor in a street market pronounce the word publicidad as [publicida] she cuts out the letter d at the end of the word. Other example is the word subsidio like [sudsidio]or [sucsidio] changing the sound of the letter [b] to [g] or [c]. These words can we say that are new and have certain level of difficulty to pronounce and probably it is the cause of the mispronunciation. Another peculiarity of Salvadorian Spanish is the elimination of one vowel when two similar vowels are together, for example: the phrase que esta get the sound [questa], and que en is says like *quen+ in both phrases we eliminate the first e and say two words in one. Mrs. Bertila Santos, from Santa Rosa de Lima, La Union uses a very common word from Salvadorian, which is va? this is the short form of verdad that is use to ask for affirmation to someone else. Moreover, some people have problems with the right pronunciation of the diphthongs, for example, she said regnin instead of reunion, and sometimes some vowels are switching by a consonant. Other common phonetic mistake is the addition of and *y+ between an hiatus a,

such in words as da, Mara and sanda get the sound [diya], [Mariya]and [sandiya]. Something that happens especially in the rural areas of our country is that an aspirated [f] is replaced by an *j+ sound, for example: quera sacar ajuera al chucho, jumangose el cigarro se jue pa la cancha. These examples can look strange but it is the way people from the rural areas normally talk. The change of a vowel for another vowel in a word is very often in this country. A common negation is no hay, but people say it like nuhay. The one o is switching by u and it becomes word. Also, Salvadorian use a lot of redundancy while talking, for example, someone said mejoras ke se pueden hacer para mejorar we can change the noun mejoras for cambios and doing it we avoid the conversion of the same word. Phrases like subir para arriba and bajar para abajo are phrases are a total redundancy, but they have a frequent use by Salvadorians. Other expression like hasta la vez in place of hasta la fecha, mas mayores or mas menores can be replaced by los mayores or los menores are very popular in the population even thought they are a big grammatical mistake. Our little research also showed that there are words in some parts of the country that have a distinctive meaning, like in the case of the word paila in San Miguel, which means dish in the rest of the country. We could notice in the case of one of the people we interviewed, Blanca Sonia from Sonsonate that she used the term galera to talk about the roof of the market where she worked. Her case is remarkable because, even though her accent was almost identical to the accent of a native from the capital, it is evident that she still uses terms that sound unusual in this part of the country. The variations in language are not limited to accent but also to meaning. This kind of variation in the meaning is not limited to single words, but also to sets of words or phrases, which can be noticed in the results of our interview with Maria Magdalena, from Usulutn, who to refer about an event that started in the past and continuous happening nowadays says hasta la vez , a phrase rarely used in the capital city.

CONCLUSIONS

When people moved from a rural area to the capital city or just urban areas, they had to change the way they speak. We can notice that in the interviews. People that had moved to San Salvador long time ago had forgotten their rural accent and had adopted the accent from natives of San Salvador. On the other hand, people that are recently moved to the city still have the accent and commit some mistakes in phonology. It is remarkable how in such a small country as El Salvador, where the distances are relatively short among the different areas of the country, there are such noticeable differences in the ways people speak. This small research stands as a proof of the linguistic richness that we share in our small country, El Salvador.

BIBLIOGRAPHY - El espaol que se habla en El Salvador y su importancia para la dialectologa Hispanoamericana John M. Lipski. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The study of language.

George Yule.

ATTACHMENTS

SOME DISCREPANCIES FOUND IN LANGUAGE REGARDING THE ORIGING OF EACH OF THE INTERVIEWEES AND QUESTIONS ASKED TO THEM: What can be done from politicians, vendors and clients to improve the markets functionality? Anonym San Vicente most likely to speak as a native from the main city San Salvador Bertila SantosSanta Rosa De Lima Usuario: comprador/cliente/ Blanca Sonia--- Sonsonate Clientes. Galera (techo) CristelaSanta Rosa De Lima Techo. EuniceSonsonate most likely to speak as a native from the main city San Salvador Rosa EmiliaSan Miguel La mera ciud (The main City)

How important are God and Health and Family for women in the actual time? Mara MagdalenaUsulutn hasta la vez= Hasta la fecha/Aun en la actualidad/ Sra. NavidadSan Vicente Most likely to speak as a native from San Salvador ZenaidaChalatenango--- making a little sound like n at the end of a word from time to time (puesn) *mas mayores y mas menores