Canary islands pronunciation

Canarian spanish words

Thanks to the Berber dialectology and to the Libyan onomastics of the Roman period, it is possible to know that the spirantization spread from Numidia towards the North African south and west, reaching the Roman province of Mauritania.

The presence of another Berber phonetic variable known as asibilation, which explains the Canary place names beginning with ch, s (with graphic variant z) and j (Chacorche, Sonsamas, Jinama, etc.), much more widespread, is typical of southern Berber dialects, especially in southern Morocco.

The guanches of the canary islands

The Canarian variety can be included in the so-called Atlantic modality; it has similarities with Spanish-speaking America, and also with the speech of the South of the Iberian Peninsula, especially with Western Andalusia.

The Canary lexicon is largely influenced by Portuguese. Due to its geographical location, the Canary Islands have been a historical place of passage and a bridge between cultures. In the lexicon, this is reflected in the presence of terms from English, French and Arabic, and words of American origin, in addition to those of aboriginal origin, mainly Guanche.

Canary dictionary

An important colonizing contingent also came to the islands from Portugal, which in some areas was superior to Castilian and Andalusian, especially during the period in which the kingdom of Portugal was integrated into the so-called Iberian Union. In the north of the island of La Palma an insular dialect of Portuguese or pidgin was probably still spoken at the beginning of the 20th century.[citation needed] Portuguese is the language that has left more words in the Canary variety of Castilian.

The sound of «j» (associated with the spelling <j>, as well as the spelling <g>), followed by the vowels «e» and «i» («ge», «gi»), suffers lenition in most of Andalusia and throughout America (where the phoneme is articulated as [x] or [ç]). In the Canary Islands this lenition can become a simple aspiration [h], this «relaxed» way of pronouncing the phoneme «j» contrasts with the velar pronunciation (sometimes markedly uvular) that occurs in much of the Iberian Peninsula.

There are also numerous words of Arabic origin to designate different plants (aciba, ahulaga, albohol, alcatripa, algafita, algahuero, almácigo, alpispillo, almulei, bahaza, orijama, tarahal, aliacán…). These words may have arrived directly from North Africa favored by the presence of many common plants, or they may have been naturalized first in the peninsula and then come to the Canary Islands (this seems to be the case of the words ahulaga and tarahal), so they are also rooted in the peninsular Castilian.[5] The word «algahuero» has been used in the Canary Islands for many years.

Canary accent

The Canarian vocabulary also presents several influences: archaisms coming from old Castilian, such as besos (lips, bezos in medieval Castilian); words coming from Portuguese or Galaico-Portuguese, such as gaveta (drawer of a cupboard, table…).

The toponymy of the Canary Islands is full of words of aboriginal origin, sometimes preserved as they are and sometimes Castilianized (for example: Tacoronte, Guayadeque, Tuineje, etc.). There are also many proper names that come from the Guanche language (Gara, Jonay, Yaiza, etc.).