Venezuelan Spanish

Venezuelan Spanish
Castellano venezolano
Pronunciation[kasteˈʝano βenesoˈlano]
Native toVenezuela
Native speakers
29,794,000 in Venezuela, all users (2014)[1]
L1 users: 29,100,000 (2013)
L2 users: 694,000 (2013)
Early forms
DialectsAmazonian
Llanero
Andino
Western
Eastern
Isleño[citation needed]
Costeño
Zuliano/Maracucho
Central
Oriental
Trinidadian
Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Official status
Official language in
 Venezuela
Regulated byAcademia Venezolana de la Lengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1es
ISO 639-2spa[2]
ISO 639-3
GlottologNone
IETFes-VE
Kinds of Spanish spoken in Venezuela.
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Venezuelan Spanish (castellano venezolano or español venezolano) refers to the Spanish spoken in Venezuela.

Spanish was introduced in Venezuela by colonists. Most of them were from Galicia, Basque Country, Andalusia, or the Canary Islands.[3] The last has been the most fundamental influence on modern Venezuelan Spanish, and Canarian and Venezuelan accents may even be indistinguishable to other Spanish-speakers.

Italian and Portuguese immigrants from the late 19th and the early 20th century have also had an influence; they influenced vocabulary and its accent, given its slight sing-songy intonation, like Rioplatense Spanish. German settlers also left an influence when Venezuela was contracted as a concession by the King of Spain to the German Welser banking family (Klein-Venedig, 1528–1546).

The Spaniards additionally brought African slaves, which is the origin of expressions such as chévere ("excellent"), which comes from Yoruba ché egberi. Other non-Romance words came from indigenous languages, such as guayoyo (a type of coffee) and caraota (black bean).

  1. ^ Spanish → Venezuela at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018) Closed access icon
  2. ^ "ISO 639-2 Language Code search". Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
  3. ^ Ostler, Nicholas (2010). Empires of the word : a language history of the world. Folio Society. pp. 335–347. OCLC 692307052.