Nuevos datos sobre la herencia africana del español caribeño. Estudio de campo en República Dominicana

Abstract

The arrival of the African slaves inevitably marked the future of America, not just ethnically, but also in terms of culture and language. The African influence is especially visible in the Caribbean context, where several previous works speak of a different speech, still in force, among the black communities. After a field work carried out in the Dominican Republic, where we conducted several interviews in Santo Domingo, La Vega, as well as the Afro-Dominican community of Mata los Indios, where we delivered a questionnaire about the use of some terms of African origin, we conclude that there is no kind of Afro-Dominican speech today, because the individuals of these communities use the same linguistic variety as other nationals. The only difference we could find is on their passive lexicon, as Afro-Dominican communities remain in contact with linguistic formulas inherited from the past, through chants and rituals of African origin, but which do not represent their real and daily speech. In the same way, we show that Africanisms are in decline within the Spanish lexicon.