This essay explores the relationship(s) between English and Spanish in the novel "Raining Backwards" (1988) by Cuban American Roberto G. Fernandez. While the many linked plots and characters suggest many protagonists, this study demonstrates how language itself takes on the role of protagonist. Through the author's use of calques and…

The interrogative intonation of Cubans and Cuban Americans living in Miami is investigated. Two different intonation patterns are used in this variety of Spanish to convey absolute interrogative meaning: one with a falling final contour, as has been observed in Cuban Spanish, and one with a rising final contour, as is used in American English and…

This article discusses the effect of the revolution on the vocabulary of Cuban Spanish. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Speech samples were obtained from college student Miami-area Cuban informants in an attempt to test the hypothesis that a compensatory phonemic change takes place in certain Spanish dialects in which syllable-final and word-final /s/ appear optionally as zero. Vowel system, distinction (open versus closed), and length are looked at. (SCC)

This article presents a glossary of popular expressions, slang and Cubanisms found in the writing of Eladio Secades. The words and phrases are defined in standard Spanish and translated into English. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Researchers planning to use a Spanish translation of the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist with a primarily Puerto Rican population found that it had been designed for Cuban speakers of the language and, therefore, decided to develop a new translation. Suggests the need to be sensitive to the differences in vocabulary among Hispanic subcultures.…

Two studies on the phonology of Spanish spoken by Cubans in the United States are critically analyzed. The studies are: "Markedness and a Cuban Dialect of Spanish," by Jorge M. Guitart, and "Some Theoretical Implications from Rapid Speech Phenomena in Miami-Cuban Spanish," by Robert M. Hammond. The methodologies of Hammond and Guitart are…

Standard manuals of Spanish pronunciation recognize that both [+continuant] and [-continuant] surface variants occur for the voiced obstruents/bdg/. Within generative phonology, it has been assumed that the systematic phonemic representation for these voiced obstruents should be [-continuant] /bdg/, with a rule of spirantization converting these…

Discusses hybrid verbs as a linguistic product of the anglophone cultural influence on the Spanish spoken by Cubans in southeastern Florida. (NCR)

Interview tapes of adult Cubans from the Latin American Capital Cities Dialect Project were transcribed, focusing on the variability in the deletion of word-final consonants, especially /s/. The operation of the deletion rule for /s/ in Cuban Spanish is shown to be principally dependent on grammatical categories and surface syntactic function. In…

Areas of interference between English and the Spanish of some Puerto Ricans and Cubans in Chicago is the subject of this study. Fifty-nine informants were provided with a list of everyday expressions in English, which they were to express in Spanish. The informants were classified according to education, degree of knowledge of English, and degree…

An approach to translation is discussed which takes into account the sociolinguistic factors involved in a translated document designed for use with a linguistically, culturally and educationally heterogeneous population, such as the U.S. Spanish-heritage community. The translation project described resulted in the Spanish-language questionnaire…