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Isleño Spanish (
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...
: , french: espagnol islingue) is a dialect of the
Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...
spoken by the descendants of
Canary Islanders Canary Islanders, or Canarians ( es, canarios), are a Romance people and ethnic group. They reside on the Canary Islands, an autonomous community of Spain near the coast of northwest Africa, and descend from a mixture of European settlers and abor ...
who settled in St. Bernard Parish,
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a U.S. state, state in the Deep South and South Central United States, South Central regions of the United States. It is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 20th-smal ...
, United States, during the late 18th century. It has been greatly influenced by adjacent language communities as well as
immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...
from peninsular
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' ( Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...
and other
Spanish-speaking countries The following is a list of countries where Spanish is an official language, plus a number of countries where Spanish language, Spanish or any language closely related to it, is an important or significant language. Official or national language ...
. Moreover, the dialect spoken by the
Isleños Isleños (Spanish: ) are the inhabitants of the Canary Islands, and by extension the descendants of Canarian settlers and immigrants to present-day Louisiana, Texas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and other parts of the ...
who settled along
Bayou Lafourche Bayou Lafourche ( ), originally called Chetimachas River or La Fourche des Chetimaches, (the fork of the Chitimacha), is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 20, 2011 ba ...
is differentiated as Brule Spanish. In the present day, Isleño Spanish is approaching complete
extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds ( taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed ...
. Throughout the 20th century,
modernization Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...
and
urbanization Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
came to disrupt greatly the transmission of Spanish, coupled with the hardships of natural disasters. The remaining Spanish speakers of the community tend to be elderly individuals from fishing communities of eastern St. Bernard Parish.


History

The Isleños are descendants of colonists from the
Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Mo ...
who arrived in
Spanish Louisiana Spanish Louisiana ( es, link=no, la Luisiana) was a governorate and administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1762 to 1801 that consisted of a vast territory in the center of North America encompassing the western basin of ...
between 1778 and 1783. It estimated that about 2,000 Canary Islanders were settled into a series of communities, one of those coming to be known as San Bernardo ( Saint Bernard). Early in the establishment of this community, a minority of
Acadians The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the ...
were present along with
Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or oth ...
from the nearby community of
Saint Malo Saint-Malo (, , ; Gallo: ; ) is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, on the English Channel coast. The walled city had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the A ...
which intermarried with the Canary Islanders. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the community was reinforced by immigration from rural, peninsular Spanish regions such as
Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...
, Santander,
Galicia Galicia may refer to: Geographic regions * Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain ** Gallaecia, a Roman province ** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia ** The medieval King ...
, and
Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...
. A survey conducted in 1850 found at least 63 natives of Spain, 7 Canary Islanders, 7
Cubans Cubans ( es, Cubanos) are people born in Cuba and people with Cuban citizenship. Cuba is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds. Racial and ethnic groups Census The population of Cuba w ...
, and 7
Mexicans Mexicans ( es, mexicanos) are the citizens of the United Mexican States. The most spoken language by Mexicans is Spanish, but some may also speak languages from 68 different Indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexi ...
in the community.


Decline

The
1915 New Orleans hurricane The New Orleans Hurricane of 1915 was an intense Category 4 hurricane that made landfall near Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the most intense tropical cyclone during the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm formed in late September when it move ...
destroyed much of the Isleño fishing communities situated in eastern St. Bernard Parish. Only a couple years later, the
Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...
pandemic left over one thousand people dead in the community. With the adoption of the Louisiana Constitution of 1921, public education was required to be conducted in English. After
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, urbanization and modernization played a greater effect on the community and the retention of Spanish.Lestrade, Patricia Manning (1999). ''Trajectories in Isleño Spanish with special emphasis on the lexicon''. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. pp. 5-6, 13, 45, 52-53. This was compounded by
Hurricane Betsy Hurricane Betsy was an intense and destructive tropical cyclone that brought widespread damage to areas of Florida and the central United States Gulf Coast in September 1965. The storm's erratic nature, coupled with its intensity and mi ...
which severely damaged much of Isleño community and presence in St. Bernard Parish. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the community and only a fraction of Isleño families have returned to their original communities. Currently, the transmission of Spanish has halted completely along with the preservation of many traditions. Those who know Isleño Spanish or speak the dialect as a
first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tong ...
are often elderly community members.


Phonology

In many respects, Isleño Spanish shares an array of similarities with other Spanish dialects, generally of the
Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Mo ...
, mainland
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' ( Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...
, and the Caribbean. Isleño Spanish merges the
phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
/θ/ and /s/ into the single phoneme /s/, a phenomenon known as ''seseo''. At least until the mid twentieth century, Isleño Spanish speakers made a distinction between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/, which is still typical of rural speech in the Canaries, but later studies have suggested instability in this feature. Some of the notable features regarding
consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
are described below: * /d/ often experiences deletion in its various forms. In its intervocalic position, /d/ is habitually elided: e.ˈlu'hairy' or �mjeo'fear'. In word-final positions, /d/ is deleted and the final vowel becomes stressed such as in h.ˈte'you'. * /g/ is typically maintained in its word-initial position but may become when followed by or . In all other positions, /g/ is weakened. * /h/ is generally preserved as the aspirate where /h/ derives from the
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...
/f/ like in a.ˈsei̯'to do, to make'. * /n/ largely preserved as but is occasionally heard. However, the
consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education f ...
/jn/ results in the loss of /n/. * /r/ remains an
alveolar trill The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. ...
in its word-initial position or when written . Elsewhere, it can be realized as at the end of a syllable so that '
seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in northern France. Its drainage basin is in the Paris Basin (a geological relative lowland) covering most of northern France. It rises at Source-Seine, northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plate ...
' is often pronounced �al.terather than �aɾ.te With some speakers, this becomes so that 'because' is pronounced �poh.ke Just like with /d/, in its word final position, /r/ is habitually deleted. * /s/ is typically becomes the aspirate but is preserved in intervocalic positions like
oh ˈka.sah Oh, OH, or Oh! is an interjection, often proclaiming surprise. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Albums * ''Oh!'' (Girls' Generation album), 2010 * ''Oh!'' (ScoLoHoFo album), 2003 * ''OH (ohio)'', by Lambchop, 2008 * ''Oh!'', an E ...
'the houses' and other instances. * /x/ is pronounced exclusively, which is common in the southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and throughout the Caribbean. As for the vowels used in Isleño Spanish, there are a handful of differences to
Standard Spanish Standard Spanish, also called the es, label=none, norma culta, lit=cultivated norm, refers to the standard, or codified, variety of the Spanish language, which most writing and formal speech in Spanish tends to reflect. This standard, like ot ...
. In certain instances, is raised to in everyday speech such as �i.ˈsi'to say'. A similar phenomenon occurs with , where it generally lowers to : �u.ˈβei̯'to rain'. Additionally, the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
/ei/ is often pronounced as /ai/ in words like �sai̯h'six' or �rai̯'king' which can be found in the Canaries and rural Spain.


Morphology and syntax

The grammatical gender of certain words in Isleño Spanish differs from that of other dialects. Some examples include (), (), (), and (). It has been suggested that these differences are due to the early influence of
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...
on
Canarian Spanish Canarian Spanish (Spanish terms in descending order of frequency: , , , or ) is a variant of standard Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands by the Canary Islanders. The variant is similar to the Andalusian Spanish variety spoken in Western Anda ...
. Pronouns are often used redundantly in Isleño Spanish, just as in Caribbean dialects, for phonological reasons and to maintain the distinction between subjects. Moreover, the pronouns and remain unknown in the community. Non-inverted questions such as rather than are common in Isleño Spanish, which is a characteristic shared by various Caribbean Spanish varieties, possibly originating to the Canary Islands.


Vocabulary

Contact with other groups and substantial immigration into the St. Bernard community has shaped their vocabulary to some extent. Some of the largest contributions have been made by
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...
,
Louisiana French Louisiana French ( frc, français de la Louisiane; lou, françé la lwizyàn) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisi ...
,
Louisiana Creole Louisiana Creole ( lou, Kréyòl Lalwizyàn, links=no) is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the state of Louisiana. It is spoken today by people who may racially identify as White, Black, mixed, and ...
, regional dialects of Spanish, and the various
Castilian languages The Castilian languages are Castilian (Spanish) and its closest relatives. Besides derivatives of Spanish such as Judaeo-Spanish and Amazonic Spanish, this refers principally to Extremaduran, a partially mutually intelligible language that is ...
. Additionally, several archaic terms deriving from Old Spanish have been preserved. A handful of terms originating to the Guanche languages have continued to be used in Isleño Spanish. In particular, the word is used to describe toasted cornmeal or flour which is nearly identical to its usage in the Canaries. Also present is 'nape of the neck', which is believed to come from the
Guanches The Guanches were the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean some west of Africa. It is believed that they may have arrived on the archipelago some time in the first millennium BCE. The Guanches were the only nativ ...
as well. 1. The comparison of terms below uses the following abbreviations for different parts of speech: (n.) noun, (m.n.) masculine noun, (f.n.) feminine noun, (v.) verb, (adj.) adjective.


Brule Spanish

The Isleños who settled in the community of Valenzuela along Bayou Lafourche were greatly influenced by the immigration of
Acadian The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the ...
refugees and further isolation. The dialect has been considered an "offshoot" of Isleño Spanish and is referred to as Brule Spanish. The name comes from the agricultural practices of the Isleño community near the Bayou Lafourche, who, after 1820, sold much of their farmland and started new farms on swampland that they cleared and burned known as . During the later half of the 20th century, the Isleños left these communities, leading to the dissolution of their
speech community A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. Exactly how to define ''speech ...
. Their dialect is highly
endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...
if not already extinct as only a few dozen octogenarian speakers were known to exist in the early 1990s. The dialect possesses a large number of
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s from
Louisiana French Louisiana French ( frc, français de la Louisiane; lou, françé la lwizyàn) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisi ...
which is seen as the main distinction between it and Isleño Spanish. Even so, an amount of similarities in vocabulary between Brule and Isleño Spanish exist: 1. The comparison of terms below uses the following abbreviations for different parts of speech: (n.) noun, (m.n.) masculine noun, (f.n.) feminine noun, (v.) verb, (adj.) adjective, (adv.) adverb.


Notable Isleño Spanish-speaking people

* Frank Michael Fernández, Jr. * Irván "Puco" Pérez


See also

* Isleño (Louisiana) *
Canarian Spanish Canarian Spanish (Spanish terms in descending order of frequency: , , , or ) is a variant of standard Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands by the Canary Islanders. The variant is similar to the Andalusian Spanish variety spoken in Western Anda ...
*
Caribbean Spanish * Caribbean Spanish ( es, español caribeño, ) is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. The Spanish language was introduced to the Caribbean in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It resembles the ...
*
Spanish in the United States Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. There are over 41 million people aged five or older who speak Spanish at home, and the United States has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world, ahead of Spain ...
*
Sabine River Spanish Sabine River Spanish is a variety of the Spanish language spoken on both sides of the Sabine River between Texas and Louisiana. It has been spoken by a few communities descended from the 18th-century colonists who established Los Adaes and ...


References


Further reading

* Holloway, Charles Edward (1993).
The Death of a Dialect: Brule Spanish in Ascension Parish, Louisiana
'. LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. pp. viii–ix, 43–45, 143. An extensive linguistic investigation of Brule Spanish. * Lestrade, Patricia Manning (1999). ''Trajectories in Isleño Spanish with special emphasis on the lexicon''. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. A lexical investigation of Isleño Spanish and a community survey. * Lipski, John M (July 1, 1990). ''The Language of the Isleños: Vestigial Spanish in Louisiana''. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press. . A linguistic investigation highlighting defining characteristics of Isleño Spanish. * MacCurdy, Raymond R (1950). ''The Spanish Dialect in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana''. Albuquerque The University of New Mexico Press. . Phonetic and phonological study of Isleño Spanish with a detailed lexicon. * MacCurdy, Raymond R. (December 1959). "A Spanish Word-List of the "Brulis" Dwellers". ''Hispania''. 42 (4): 547–554. . . A word list of Brule Spanish with its similarities to Isleño Spanish. {{Languages of the United States Endangered Romance languages Isleño American Louisiana (New Spain) Spanish-American culture in Louisiana Languages of North America Spanish language in the United States Languages of the Caribbean Minority languages Endangered diaspora languages Endangered languages of the United States Spanish language in North America