Andalusian Spanish


The Andalusian dialects of Spanish are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varieties, and also from Standard Spanish. Due to the large population of Andalusia, the Andalusian dialects are among the ones with more speakers in Spain. Within Spain, other southern dialects of Spanish share some core elements of Andalusian, mainly in terms of phonetics notably Canarian Spanish, Extremaduran Spanish and Murcian Spanish as well as, to a lesser degree, Manchegan Spanish.
Due to massive emigration from Andalusia to the Spanish colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, most Latin American Spanish dialects share some fundamental characteristics with Western Andalusian Spanish, such as the use of ustedes instead of vosotros for the second person plural, and seseo. Many varieties of Spanish, such as Canarian Spanish, Caribbean Spanish and other Latin American Spanish dialects, including their standard dialects, are considered by most to be based on Andalusian Spanish.

Features

Andalusian has a number of distinguishing phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features. However, not all of these are unique to Andalusian, nor are all of these features found in all areas where Andalusian is spoken, but in any one area, most of these features will be present.

Phonological features

In still other areas, the distinction is retained. Ceceo predominates in more southerly parts of Andalusia, including the provinces of Cádiz, southern Huelva, rural areas of Málaga and Seville and south-western Granada. A common stereotype about ceceo is that it is mostly found in backward rural areas, but the predominance of ceceo in major cities such as Huelva and Cádiz is enough proof to refute this.
Seseo predominates in Córdoba, northern Seville and Málaga and western Huelva. The cities of Seville and Cádiz are seseante, but entirely surrounded by ceceo areas; the city of Cádiz is the only area in the entire province of Cádiz, along with San Fernando, that is not ceceante. Distinción is mostly found in the provinces of Almería, eastern Granada, Jaén, and the northern parts of Córdoba and Huelva. See map above for a detailed description of these zones. Outside Andalusia, seseo also existed in parts of Extremadura and Murcia up to at least 1940. The standard distinction which predominates in Eastern Andalusia is now to be heard in many cultivated speakers of the West, especially among younger speakers in urban areas or in monitored speech. The influence of media and school is now strong in Andalusia and this is eroding traditional seseo and ceceo.
As a result, these varieties have five vowel phonemes, each with a tense allophone and a lax allophone. In addition to this, a process of vowel harmony may take place where tense vowels that precede a lax vowel may become lax themselves, e.g. trébol vs tréboles . S-aspiration is general in all of the southern half of Spain, and now becoming common in the northern half too.
Many Western Andalusian speakers replace the informal second person plural vosotros with the formal ustedes. For example, the standard second person plural verb forms for ir are vosotros vais and ustedes van, but in Western Andalusian one often hears ustedes vais for the informal version.
Although mass media have generalised the use of le as a pronoun for the substitution of direct objects, many Andalusians still use the normative lo, as in lo quiero mucho.
Laísmo is typical of central Spain and not present in Andalusia. Though not correct, it is frequently heard on Radio and TV programmes.
The standard form of imperative, second person plural with a reflexive pronoun is -aos, or -aros in informal speech, whereas in Andalusian, and other dialects, too, -se is used instead, so ¡callaos ya! / ¡callaros ya! becomes ¡callarse ya! and ¡sentaos! / ¡sentaros! becomes ¡sentarse!.
The gender of some words may not match that of Standard Spanish, e.g. la calor not el calor, el chinche not la chinche.
La mar is also more frequently used than el mar. La mar de and tela de are lexicalised expressions to mean a lot of....

Lexicon

Many words of Mozarabic, Romani and Old Spanish origin occur in Andalusian which are not found in other dialects in Spain. For example: chispenear instead of standard lloviznar or chispear, babucha instead of zapatilla, chavea instead of chaval or antié for anteayer.
A few words of Andalusi Arabic origin that have become archaisms or unknown in general Spanish can be found, together with multitude of sayings: e.g. haciendo morisquetas. These can be found in older texts of Andalusi. There are some doublets of Arabic-Latinate synonyms with the Arabic form being more common in Andalusian like Andalusian alcoba for standard habitación or dormitorio or alhaja for standard joya.

Influence

Some words pronounced in the Andalusian dialects have entered general Spanish with a specific meaning. One example is juerga,, the Andalusian pronunciation of huelga. The flamenco lexicon incorporates many Andalusisms, for example, cantaor, tocaor, and bailaor, which are examples of the dropped "d"; in standard spelling these would be cantador, tocador, and bailador, while the same terms in more general Spanish may be cantante, músico, and bailarín. Note that, when referring to the flamenco terms, the correct spelling drops the "d"; a flamenco cantaor is written this way, not cantador. In other cases, the dropped "d" may be used in standard Spanish for terms closely associated with Andalusian culture. For example, pescaíto frito is a popular dish in Andalusia, and this spelling is used in many parts of Spain when referring to this dish. For general usage, the spelling would be pescadito frito.
Llanito, the vernacular of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, is based on Andalusian Spanish, with British English and other influences.