Even after being situated on the outskirts of the Caribbean region, Dominican Republic citizens still prefer to speak the Spanish language in their nation, even while having a general conversation too.
In terms of area, the Dominican Republic is the second-largest nation in the whole Caribbean region, covering almost 18,700 square miles. The nation shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
Marking the first time of existence, the island was first discovered by Christopher Columbus on December 5, 1492. The Dominican Republic used to be a part of the Spanish empire till the late 18th century. In the 19th century, France, Haiti and Spain controlled it at different times. The U.S. later occupied the island during 1916-1924.
The country holds around 10 million people on the land, with around 3 million people living in the capital city of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo.
At the same time, the Caribbean nation has Spanish as its only official language.
What is Dominican Spanish?
When one assumes the Dominican Republic’s view, one can only cherish the beauty of the island. But very few know that Spanish is the official language in the land of the Dominican Republic and is also the most spoken language too.
It is considered as the Dominican Spanish.
Dominican Spanish is not just spoken on the island, but it is also spoken between the Dominican citizens living on the foreign land, who mainly resides in New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami.
The current dialect is a subset of Caribbean Spanish based on southern Spain’s Canarian and Andalusian dialects. The localities of the island during pre-colonization were used to known as Arawak. Due to which Dominican Spanish borrows some words from the Arawak language and the African languages that were spoken by Africans who came to the Dominican Republic.
Dominican Spanish is almost spoken among 90% of the country’s population. It is also the primary language for commerce, business, government offices, and also in schools and other educational institutions. Additionally, most of the media publications on the island also print on the records in Spanish.
