John Narvaez
When I finished high school, I moved from my hometown Cartagena to nearby Barranquilla to start my B.Ed in modern languages. Even though these cities are just two hours away from each other, they have distinctive dialectal and sociocultural features that make the Spanish spoken in them very different and particular. Cartagena had a long history as a slave port in colonial times, so the influence of the African slaves’ languages created a variety of Spanish that is unique in the context of Colombia. Elements of African phonology and prosody are evident in the way we speak with consonant duplication being a major feature. In Cartagena, words like “puerta” /pwerta/ (door), or “carta” /karta/ (letter) are pronounced /pwet`ta/ and /cat`ta/ for example. Lexical variation also offers distinct ways of naming things and pragmatic elements of the dialect may give the impression that people from Cartagena are rustic and “more rural” than their counterparts from Barranquilla.
The Barranquillero dialect, in contrast, tends to be a more standardized version of Spanish with a marked emphasis or the trilled /r/ and common features of Caribbean Spanish such as the aspiration of /s/ (/kosta/ = /kohta/). It also received influence from the waves of European and middle eastern immigrants who settled in the city and who have somehow shaped the city’s identity as a cultural and economic hub of Colombia’s Caribbean region.
Continue reading “Dialect shifting: Surviving linguistic prestige and status in Barranquilla, Colombia, 25 years later…”