National and Cultural Identity of the Uruguayan National Variant of the Spanish Language
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DOI: 10.22363/2686-8199-2020-7-291-296 NATIONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY OF THE URUGUAYAN NATIONAL VARIANT OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE Vyacheslav V. Tkachev Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3168-958X Abstract. Studies on the problems of Spanish variability have become extremely popular nowadays. The study of the nature and causes of differentiation in Spanish-American speech is an essential Spanish dialectology task. Usually, one talks about Argentine Spanish as “rioplatense”, an adjective that takes it name from the areas adjacent to the River Plate. However, this is a mistake, as the River Plate also forms part of Uruguayan territory. Therefore, when speaking of rioplatense Spanish, one refers to the idioms that are typically used in Argentina as in Uruguay, two brother countries as far as customs and traditions are concerned. The differences between each variant are negligible and are indistinguishable for Spanish speakers from other places. The Uruguayan variant is very similar to the Buenos Aires variant (because of its relationship with the port of Buenos Aires). However, it does have some differences con the latter, and talk of homogeneity does not apply in this case. The same applies to the Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires and spoken in Patagonia, which sound practically the same but have slight underlying differences. The manuscript analyzes the history of the Spanish language formation in Uruguay as the Uruguayan national variant of the Spanish language, differences from “Pyrenean Spanish.” and the influence of factors on the language. The article also clarifies the phonetic, lexical, and grammatical features of the language. Special attention is paid to the absence of the 2nd person plural personal pronoun “vosotros”, which is the key difference between the Uruguayan national variant of Spanish and other Spanish variants. Our research has shown that the Latin American version of the Spanish language's uniqueness lies in the ability to maintain its authenticity in the multilingual environment of Latin America, keep and transmit cultural realities from generation to generation. And, at the same time, develop with modern trends in unison. The nature of the Latin American variant determines its identity. It opens up prospects for further comparative studies of the Spanish language's geographical features at different levels of the system. Keywords: Uruguayan national variant of the Spanish language, Spanish, phonetic, grammatical, Portuñol 291 Introduction Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and the problem of its external variability deserves special attention. There are 20 countries spoken Spanish. Uruguay borders Brazil to the North, Argentina to the West, and the Atlantic Ocean to the East and South. The land borders are 1,564 km long, and the coastline is 660 km long. The country was named after the river of the same name Uruguay, whose name, in turn, comes from the language of the Guarani Indians and translates as “river of colorful birds”. A slight influence of Brazilian Portuguese In some cases, this is even to the point of bilingualism, which is commonly known as “Portuñol.” and is similar to what happened in areas on the Argentina-Brazil border. It is true that the Italian colonization influence exists in Uruguay, but almost exclusively in the capital. In the rest of the country, there is more of an effect of Brazilian/Portuguese idioms. It dates back to the Portuguese colonization period, primarily because of Spain and Portugal's constant disputes over the borders. Later, the Treaty of Tordesillas was created in order to divide the land belonging to the two kingdoms fairly. It was at this time that the Portuguese founded Colonia del Sacramento. Starting then, many disputes began between the Portuguese and the Spanish and between the Spanish and the indigenous peoples living on the eastern side of the country until the fight for independence began (1825). Borrowed vocabulary and influence The sub-variant of Rocha has a slight influence of Brazilian Portuguese. In the Uruguayan cities of Rivera and Artigas, on the border with Brazil, there is a mixed Portuguese-Spanish dialect known as portunol — a similar phenomenon is observed in the Argentine-Brazilian border. The influence of native American languages on the Uruguayan dialect is small. The languages of the charrua, minuan, Chana, boan, Genoa, and Guarani Indian tribes in Uruguay disappeared almost without a trace. These languages' words remained only in the names of many toponyms and autochthonous representatives of the plant and animal world. The influence of European languages on the Uruguayan dialect, on the contrary, is very significant. It was associated with the mass immigration of non-Spanish-speaking Europeans to the country in the 20th century. The influence of Italian and the languages and dialects of the Spanish provinces is particularly noticeable. Several gallicisms (liceo, bulevar, chofer) have taken root, which is not common in other countries of the region. Italian loanwords are widely used in gastronomic and musical subjects. 292 The Purpose of the study is to study the peculiarities of the Spanish language in Uruguay. Methodology The problem of the variability of language units has been studied for decades. There are many works aimed at investigating specific aspects of variability. The classical works of the Russian and foreign linguistics in this area should include researches by Shuchardt (1950), Zhirmunsky (1954), Canfield (1959), Elizaincín (1992), Hensey (1993), Nevokshanova (2011), and others. N.M. Firsova (2007) and V.G. Stepanov (1963) investigated the problems of variation in Spanish studies. To understand the Uruguay national variant of the Spanish language's national and cultural identity, we used the functional approach, comparative method, analytical description of language facts, and global Internet application. Findings Uruguay's official language is Spanish, but Italian influences the pronunciation, and the dialect of Uruguay and Argentina is also called rioplatense dialect or Castellano (castellano). It is characterized by articulating combinations of “ll” and similar to [sh] and the presence of about 9,000 words that are incomprehensible to Spanish-speaking people from other countries. Most residents of the capital speak Spanish and other European languages. Approximately half of the capital's population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. Methodist and Anglican faiths are also common. In Montevideo, the surrounding areas, and the entire southern zone of Uruguay and the dialect of Buenos Aires, the classic Castilian “tú” (you) is not used. The pronoun “vos “is used instead, and when it is used, the verb is also conjugated in an unusual form for classical Castilian — “vos tenés” (you have, you have) instead of the Castilian “tú tienes”. In some cases, “tú” is used, but the verb is in the form corresponding to “vos” — “tú tenés”. The use of “tu” instead of “vos”. In Uruguay, the personal pronoun “tú”, similarly to “vos”. Also, both pronouns share the same verb conjugation: “tú tenés; tú sos/vos tenés; vos sos”. In other words, it is normal for an Uruguayan to create phrases using one verb form or another, interchangeably. In contrast, the use of the pronoun “tú” is expected in the area bordering Brazil in the Department of Rocha and in some regions of Maldonado and Lavallejo, which is presumably because of the population of these regions dates back to immigrants from Castile. Another theory claims 293 that this is due to the influence of the dialect of Brazilian Portuguese used in the neighboring Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul. The dialect of this province is archaic and uses “tú”, while the word “você” (analogous to “vos”) is used in modern Portuguese. Uruguayan Spanish is a sub-variant of Spanish rioplatense or Castilian rioplatense, which is a dialect variety of Spanish spoken partly from Argentina and Uruguay. Its use extends to the Rio de La Plata basin, Argentina and Uruguay, and other surrounding regions. Focusing on the agglomerations of Gran Buenos Aires, Rosario, Montevideo, Mar del Plata, and La Plata, the region's most important population centers, it extends its cultural influence to geographically remote regions, especially through audio-visual media, in which it is the standard lecto for Argentina and Uruguay. In regions with close ties to other countries, such as the borders with Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, or Brazil, where the influence of other dialects of Spanish, Quichua, Guarani, and Portuguese, as in the case of Northern Uruguay, it is noticeable that they merge with them, creating different variants. However, in areas with relatively stable populations before the migration waves of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is the most common Spanish form in the region. Also, there is a dialect in Uruguayan national variant of the Spanish language-Portunol, which has Portuguese influence on Uruguayan Spanish. Portunol, or portunol (Spanish: Portugal, port. Portunhol, also known as Spanish: fronterizo, port. fronteiriço, lit. “borderline” or misturado letters. “mixed”) — a mixed spoken language on the borders of the closely related Spanish and Portuguese languages (Latin America, especially Northern Uruguay, Brazil, and in Europe — in Portugal). Portunol is the Lingua Franca, or a simplified mixture of two languages that allows people who speak Spanish or Portuguese and do not speak another language to communicate with each other. If the media is one of the languages that will try to speak another language, there are often “interference” from the native language, which causes the phenomenon of “switching codes.” Since Portuguese and Spanish are close romance languages, such dialogues can be conducted relatively freely. These languages have almost identical syntactic structures and similar vocabulary, which means that a single macro grammar occurs when mixed. For example, the phrase “en el hueco de la noite longa e langue” illustrates code-switching between the Spanish article la and the Portuguese noun “noite”.