Isleño Spanish (Spanish: , ) is a dialect of the Spanish language spoken by the descendants of Canary Islanders who settled in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, United States, during the late 18th century. It has been greatly influenced by adjacent language communities as well as immigration from peninsular Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries. Moreover, the dialect spoken by the Isleños who settled along Bayou Lafourche is differentiated as Brule Spanish.
In the present day, Isleño Spanish is approaching complete extinction. Throughout the 20th century, modernization and urbanization 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 who arrived in Spanish Louisiana 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 were present along with Filipinos from the nearby community of Saint Malo 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, Santander, Galicia, and Catalonia. A survey conducted in 1850 found at least 63 natives of Spain, 7 Canary Islanders, 7 Cubans, and 7 Mexicans in the community.
Decline
The 1915 New Orleans hurricane destroyed many of the Isleño fishing communities situated in eastern St. Bernard Parish. Only a couple years later, the Spanish flu 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, urbanization and modernization played a greater effect on the community and the retention of Spanish. This was compounded by Hurricane Betsy 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 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, mainland Spain, and the Caribbean. Isleño Spanish merges the phonemes and into the single phoneme , a phenomenon known as seseo. At least until the mid twentieth century, Isleño Spanish speakers made a distinction between and , 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 are described below:
often undergoes deletion. In intervocalic position, /d/}} is habitually elided: 'hairy' or 'fear'. In word-final positions, is deleted and the final vowel becomes stressed such as in 'you'. is typically maintained in word-initial position but may become when followed by or . In all other positions, is realized as an approximant . Historical is generally preserved where it derives from the Vulgar Latin like in 'to do, to make'. Since it is phonetically identical to (which is also glottal), this can be phonemicized as . is largely preserved as but is occasionally heard. However, the sequence results in the loss of . remains an alveolar trill in word-initial position or when written <rr>. Elsewhere, it can be realized as at the end of a syllable so that 'seine' is often pronounced rather than . With some speakers, this becomes so that 'because' is pronounced . Just like with , in word-final position, is habitually deleted. is typically becomes the aspirate but is preserved in intervocalic positions like 'the houses' and other instances. 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. In certain instances, is raised to in everyday speech such as 'to say'. A similar phenomenon occurs with , where it is generally raised to : 'to rain'. Additionally, the diphthong is often pronounced as in words like 'six' or 'king' which can be found in the Canaries and rural Spain.