Puerto Rican Spanish! (aka *BORICUA* Spanish)
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This video is all about Boricua Spanish – the dialect(s) of Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico, and by the Puerto Rico diaspora (especially on the US mainland).
Special thanks to Travis Hurley-Rivera for his suggestions, feedback, and Boricua Spanish audio samples!
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"Brunch for Two" by JCSD, licensed from Storyblocks.com
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00:00 – Spanish Uncovered
00:13 – Introduction
01:06 – History and influences
02:59 – Pronunciation part 1
03:46 – Spanish Uncovered promotion
05:20 – Pronunciation part 2
08:35 – Vocabulary
13:03 – Loanwords from English
15:34 – Grammar
17:27 – Final comments
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You can make a video about Latin American Spanish
Lol…. Can’t believe you started talking smack about your Ex. Your channel has always been really button-up.
MUCHAS GRACIAS SOY DE PUERTO RICO 🇵🇷🇵🇷🇵🇷 SIEMPRE TE SIGO🙏🙌
You should compare Italian Napolitano to Argentinian Spanish. I heard they are fairly similar.
Please Paul, it would mean the absolute WORLD to me if you discussed Colombian Spanish. Gracias hermano!
I am Puerto Rican. I think one of the funnier quirks in our Spanish is the use of the word “China” (“Chinese”) for the color orange, instead of naranjada. It’s a little racist, maybe? But it’s never meant that way!
Don’t forget we also use it for “oranges”
Not racist at all lol
Also guineo to call bananas 😂 poor people or guinea
May I ask u a question; Do u see yourself as American at all?
It’s not racist 😂 it originally referred to the fruit, cuz the Portuguese would import them from China iirc
A Boricua here! I’m always interested to see how my variety of Spanish is perceived abroad by other Hispanics, but, even more by different language speakers.
Puerto Rican aren’t Hispanic and Latino until given back to Spain and getting independence only from Spain your Americans who speak Spanish
Venezuelan here. We’re cousins, basically.
Somos todos ibero-americanos! Um abraço do Brasil!
@family and friends dude stop being a dork
The Puerto Rican 🇵🇷 accent comes from the region of Andalucia on Spain 🇪🇸 and the Canary Islands 🇮🇨. Me as a Puerto Rican, I’m really happy that you did a video about the puerto rican spanish.
Not just Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican too.
@Snoy FlyMexico too
Puerto Rico is not Spanish and Hispanic and Latino until given back to Spain and getting independence only from Spain your Americans who speak Spanish this is the Spanish family ♥️🇨🇴🇵🇦🇨🇷🇸🇻🇬🇹🇳🇮🇻🇪🇪🇨🇵🇾🇨🇱🇺🇾🇬🇶🇵🇪🇧🇴🇩🇴🇦🇷🇭🇳🇲🇽🇪🇸🇨🇺🇦🇩🇳🇱♥️
@Snoy Flyalso the Caribbean cost of Venezuela and Colombia
Yk, because of these locations of origin, I wonder how related/connected PR Spanish would be to Arabic compared to other Spanish dialects
“Some brainiacs think they’re all Mexicans.”
Sadly, many in Latin America believe Mexican Spanish is the “right” Spanish, especially those who are fanatics of cartoons and their Mexican dubbings. Those dubbings and those who praise them, certainly don’t help to erase that idea from the brainiacs.
And the fact that all Spanish variants are getting closer and closer to each other doesn’t help with that.
Puerto Rican is American Spanish
Pues porque el doblaje mexicano es el mejor, y un ejemplo de ellos es Los Simpson (al menos en sus primeras temporadas), además de que los mexicanos, en nuestro dialecto estándar (centro del país) es posiblemente el más nítido y fácil de entender.
@Víctor CB Mejor?
Spanish is indeed the language of friendship. We have so many rich varieties yet we understand each other without problems 99% of the time. Saludos a todos mis hermanos/as desde España!
In Andalusia we share many similarities with this dialect. Apart from the L substitution for some R, nothing really sounded very unfamiliar to me 😊
Lo de L/R viene igualmente de Andalucía.
As an Argentine Spanish speaker, Puerto Rican Spanish had always sounded somehow playful, dead worried, angry and overly energetic all at the same time XD It’s one of the most “sung” accents I know, together with Chilean. It’s very fun to imitate, I really love it XD
As a Boricua I love how the people of Chile talk, their accent is highly criticized but I love their accent so much.
Funny. To me people from Argentina speak Spanish with a very “sung” accent- Italianized pretty much. 🙂 (I am from Puerto Rico). I love it too.
… says the “Italian” speaker
As a Brazilian I’m impressed how many terms are like in Brazilian Portuguese, even those not indicated as such. Like “pai” for “father” and “gata” for a pretty and hot girl.
@Johnny Lynn LeeYes! We also use prieto for black (Preto in Brasil.) My wife was born in P. R. but her paternal grandmother was from Brasil. So i fell in love with the Brazilian culture. I also play bossanova on my guitar. Duolingo is helping me a lot with Portuguese also. So pronouncing the Brazilian “r” is pretty easy for me even though my family and I don’t have that in our Puerto Rican dialect.
I speak Salvadoran Spanish and we all feel like Caribbeans are yelling all the time haha But PR and DR are the most difficult accents for me to understand by far
I can see what you mean, it depends on the type of person though. Not everyone has that screaming type of speach. We have a word for people who speak like that, “Parcelero/a”
@ElJosherunfortunately the popularity of Reguetón has made many believe our Spanish is a certain way when everyday people speak very differently
@Chriss Marie indeed.
Posiblemente es que solo escuchas reguetoneros los cuales hasta a mí se me hacen difícil de entender.
Es como escuchar un Mara de tu país. Usan un vocabulario que es difícil de entender.
I think the strong influence of Portuguese and Catalan explains much of the unique nature of the Puerto Rican dialect of Spanish. But is it more closely related to the Dominican and Cuban Spanish dialects?
I did not expect to ever see you do a video on Puerto Rican Spanish! I am so happy!!! So a few more fun facts: You can also find people who instead of R>L you get L>R (Might be hypercorrection but I’m not sure). And I’ve even heard some people (mainly near San Juan) pronounce their syllable final Rs close to a retroflex (Maybe English influence?). Trilled R has many realizations such as aspiration of the first R and a flapped second R, so it sounds like /hr/ carro > /kahro/. Depending on the sounds around it or the local dialect, the trilled R can also be a voiceless velar fricative, voiceless glottal fricative, or a voice uvular fricative. I read one article that says this could probably be due to Taino influence and it used the pronunciation of different place names on the island to support the existence of that phoneme in the Taino language.
I was born and raised in Mexico and until watching this video I never realized that some expressions I commonly use are also used in Puerto Rican Spanish! That was very cool to notice!
Growing up in NYC which was heavily Puerto Rican at the time, we called the Spanish they spoke, “Newyorican”, as there were so many English words sprinkled in.
Never thought you would cover PR spanish. I’m a rican and yes this is accurate, pretty cool to see. As you said most Spanish variants are not that different from each other despite having their own slang and loan words. Now with the internet it has become even easier to learn about the other accents and slangs. It makes speaking casually to other spanish speakers easier.
This was cool to see has a Puertorrican. I was not aware of the way I said things until hearing them here. I wish you had the time to show the difference in dialects between rural and metropolitan puertorrican Spanish. I have travelled a bit around the island when I was there and was a bit shocked finding fellow people speaking same Spanish but in their own way of expressing and some unique words. Tells you a lot about how language is also influenced in the place you live. Awesome video as always
As a L2 Spanish speaker,I have a couple of things to say.
First and foremost, I didn’t know that PR Spanish was so particular, maybe because there aren’t a lot of puerto rican here in Italy.
Second, the guy speaking for the examples is the best ever, you can hear he was having a lot of fun showing his language to the Internet, which is a sentiment I very much appreciate.
¡Wepa! That took me out when that was mentioned😂 it also doesn’t help I’m listening to this in Spain too😂 I’m proud to be Puerto Rican!🇵🇷✊🏽
as a puertorican, born and raised in the island, i used to think puertorican spanish was pretty normal until i started hearing other varieties of spanish like argentine, chilean and dominican spanish and i started noticing how unique it actually is. im the type that doesnt have frenillo (the french r sound) and a lot of ppl here see it more as a sort of vocl disability rather than an accent but that may be bcuz i live in a rather rural part of the island
I do… And people look at me like I was swearing at them. Idk, es tan jaro.
The Boricua speaker is so enthusiastic, I love that guy! It’s fun to listen to him speak.
Also, the way the language drops consonants and merges vowels without even blinking, It’s like Borocuan is the Danish of the Spanish dialects 😆
As a PR Spanish speaker, I actually had a hard time understanding other Spanish speakers. As a kid, the only Spanish I knew was from family, church, and music (from PR). I moved to Chicago. I lived in completely white or black communities until highschool. When highschool rolled around, I lived in a community of mostly Mexican students. I could not understand what they were saying…. At all. They sounded weird and funny to me. Obviously, I was made fun of for speaking strangely. I picked it up over time, never gotten the accent and still don’t get their slang.
I have had the opposite (yet same) experience. I am Mexican but born in the US. Grew up hearing Spanish only around my family (from north of Mexico City) and when I moved to Florida and got a bunch of PR friends… I could almost NEVER understand their Spanish! I think the biggest difference, in at least our Nahuatl influenced Spanish, is that we tend to annunciate most every letter… almost the opposite of Boricua Spanish. The dropping of “S” sounds in Boricua Spanish is probably the hardest thing for me to follow, more so than all the different slang words (which I’ve adopted some over time). Now that I leave in Seattle I work with a handful of Mexicans and that confuses them sometimes! 😂
The most beautiful Spanish accent of all.I am a gringo that lived in PR. 27 years and my wife,the most beautiful soul I’ve ever known,taught me Puerto Rican Spanish.She died almost 2 yrs ago and I’ve since returned to the US.I was so lucky I learned Spanish there in PR because I learned to speak in the very fluid,flowing style they speak.Now here in Atlanta,Ga. I speak Spanish mostly with Mexicans and people from Central America.They insist that I am a Latino.I love all Latinos but Puerto Rico is so very dear to me and I will always have a special place in my heart for her.