Cynthia .Costas-Centivany

Wesleyan University ']!he Honors @ollege THE SPANISH OF VlEQUES by CYNTHIA . COSTAS-CENTIVANY Class of 1981 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wesleyan University in palatial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in General Scholarship iddleto, C onnec ticu% * April, 198 @ For my brothers, AndrOs, Luis and Jaime. For my dear father and for my mother. For my friend, Robert. 'or Jerry, Leslie, Katerina and Nadia. For Dave and Lueile. For dearest Barbara and our people,s f,.lture. May each of our dreams come true. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE............................................... 2 I INTRODUCTION..........................................6 BACKGROUND '0R RESEARCH 9 A Brief Description of Vieques 9 A Brief History of Education in Vieques, 1898---12 present RES EARCH ..MED___._.H0 17 Approaching the Informants for Field Research---17 !['able of Informants I] ANALYSIS OF FIELD WORK DATA 2]. Ill THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH: CAUSES, EFFECTS ISSUES 42 AND ANSWERS IV C ON(] LUS I 0N...........................................59 APPENDIX I APS 65 II PRELIMINARY QUESTIONNAIRE 69 III A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE 72 SPANISH 0[ VIEQUES SELECTED BIBLIOGRAP}{Y 82 "El lenguaje es como un arca depositarla de la substantivldad de un pueblo." "n esos rasgas del esplritu hay una manera particular y original que expresa claramente la afirmaci6n de nuestra personalidad." ---Antonio S. Pedrelra Insularismo 2 PRE FAC E During the summer of 1980, I interviewed Spanish- speaking residents of the Middletown area. I investigat- ed problems of language change and adJustment for those Spanish speakers who had emigrated from their place of birth in Latin America, Spain or the Caribbean. Problems with the English-speaking educational system and their new social environment were the project's focal points for in- vestigation. Its results illustrate the extent to which the language barrier restricts the economic and social mo- bility of Hispanics in a community like Middletown. The majority of the informants in 'the summer project were Puerto Rican, Born in Puerto Rico, I too repeatedly migrated between the island and the United States through- out my early life. I shared with the informants the experiences of confronting problems in adjusting to the English Language in an American cultural context. The informants in Middletown, and the background reading I did for the project motivated me to examine the language experiences of people who speak a Puerto Rican variety of Spanish, but who have remained in Puerto Rico rather than in the United Sta- tes, Vieques, an island municipality of Puerto Rico, with a small, rural community residing there offers one of the most typical samplings of Puerto Rican Spanish. The ares, 'small farmers' there would,I thought, have a "pure," less English influenced style of Puerto Rican speech. I found, however, that emigration was at least as common among Viequenses as it is for Puerto Ricans of less isolated rural municipalities. I had noted before that most of the Middletown informants from Puerto Rico had emigrated from rural areas on the main island. The high emigration rate of Viequensss, in turn, confirmed the assumption that Vie- ques represents a microcosm of Puerto Rico, Despite the emigration and return migration that brings in the English influence to Vieques, I was able to interview a good number of informants who were born, raised and had remained on the island. I chose most of my informants from the southern fishing village of La Esperanza.ome of the Public administrators and political leaders whom I contact- ed were originally from La Esperanza but worked and lived in the central town of Isabel II. My intention was to interview as many informants of the same neighborhood with as diverse educational and occupational backgrounds as possible. The value of their tape-recorded interviews will become ev- dent in later chapters. I would like to express my appreciation to my informants, without whom this work would not have been possible. I am also thankful to my friends and generous hosts in Vie- @ ques, Marldza Acab and Angel Martnez, from whom I received the encouragement and support I needed while doing my fleldwork. I must also thank my ever-remembered friends at the University of Puerto Rico, who offered me guidance and assistance in my research. I am most grateful to my friends here, who in the midst of my writing also helped shape the direction of my work by 9ffering me a listening ear and their suggestions. Finally, I will not forget the patience, the indispensable assistance, and the encouragement which I have received from my tutor and sponsors, along with those professors who were generous enough to give me their time and attention. C.M.C. Middletown, Conn. April 1981 al hombre le preocupa su lengua, porque se ha' dade cuenta del poder fabuloso yen clerto modo mlsterloso contenldo en esas leves celdillas sonoras de la palabra." ---Pedro Sallnas, Areco y..Defensa del Lenquaje 6 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION QJEC TIVES My fieldwork in Vieques aimed to determine the extent of the American English influence on the Spanish spoken there. Through loan words and loan translations from Eng- lish, it seemed possible to specify the effects of migration and education on the Spanish of Vleques. The natural course of the research was directed towards tracing the role of English in the educational system of Vieques in or- der to find a more substantive explanation for these effects. The diverse cultural influences in the history of the island have played a highly important rols in the spoken Spanish of Vieques, The contemporary influence of English is education- ally based when compared with the other language influences of the past. The Spanish of Vieques reveals the heritage of the island's people. The Carib-Arawak dialect of the Tan__o Indians is the foundation for the Spanish brought by Vieques' first colonizers (onfrfas, 1966:34). Imported slaves brought with them the African element which enriches the language further. British and French linguistic influences have remained most evident in the iand's toponomy, Despite the island's Span- ish occupation in 1514, subsequent British, Dutch and French ,invasions continued to threaten the Indigenous and Spanish 7 inhabitants of Vieques. In 1712, the Spanish administrators were overthrown by a Puerto Rican overseer, Miguel Enrquez. Thereafter, the governor of Puerto Rico took on the adminis- trative responsibility for Vieques (Bentez, 1976,181). Not until 1928 was Don Teofilo Leguillou assigned as the admini- strator of Vieques by Puerto Rico's Governor. He was sus- pected of being a French adventurer and naturalized Spanish citizen (Bentez, 1976,38). Despite Spanish control, Vieques was susceptible to other European influences during its colonization. At the close of the 19th century, American English became the ver nacular of exchange in Vieques. Its present manifestations in the spoken Sp.sh of the island reflect historic and economic realities. Educational and economic backgrounds are too often inferred from the style or accent of the Viequense's spoken Spanish. This often happens when a Viequense migrates to the urban areas of Puerto Rico, where the urban listener at times condescends the rural style of speech of the Vie- quense (confirmed in interviews with Santos Ros and Carmelo Belardo, Vieques, Jan. 2 and 5, respectively, 1981). Puerto Ricans, in turn, are sometimes socially differentiated by the the listener who is accustomed to the "purer," less English- Similarly, Robbins Burling describes how speech styles help perpetuate the social structure of Hindi speakers who belong to different castes, (1970,112). 8 influenced styles of Spanish spoken in other parts of Latin American. With Robbins Burling% own proposition, it is possible to surmise that this differentiation made by "purist" listeners is a national rather than social distinction which they assign to Puerto Ricans Perhaps language is always a crucial symbol of ethnic or national affiliation. The difficulty of learning a new language gives continuity to linguistic traditions, and it becomes very easy to identify a language with a people, or nation, or even a race. Certainly language is one of the most obvious of ways by which we classify people. Yet people can learn new languages, and the fact that a group of people speak a common language can hardly be taken as proof that they share a common ancestry. Indeed, the very ease with which language serves as a con- venient symbol of cultural identity may allow people to switch their ethnic identity simply by learning a new language, (1970,101). The American English loans used by Viequenses and Puerto Ricans reflect their national affiliation with the United States. Concurrently, 'the Spanish they share with Spanish- speaking Latin Americans shows a common cultural affiliation from Indigenous origins and Spanish colonization. However, applying Burllng's statement, neither the Spanish spoken by Viequenses and Puerto Ricans confirm that these islanders possess an ancestry that is unique to that of North Americans and Latin Americans. The aborigines of the Americas and the Caribbean were themselves ethnically and linguistically di- vided. In addition, the colonization of these separate areas became distinct under the different cultural and linguistic dominions to which the various Indigenous populations were 9 subjected. Despite its possession by the Spanish, Vieques was particularly vulnerable to British, Dutch and French invaslons The fact remains that Vieques and Puerto Rco are presently existing in a linguistically, if not politically, ambiguous state. Both Vieques and Puerto Rico suffer from basic inconsistencies in the way in which Spanish and Eng- lish are treated in schools. It was my intention to determine the extent of the English influence as reflected in lexlcal borrowings.

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