As linguists interested in dialectology, we know well that educational, socioeconomic, historic and geographic change and circumstances (among other factors, such as language attitudes, national and local language policies, political pressures, and language contact) influence and help explain language. This volume entertains such questions as: How are varieties of Cuban Spanish alike and how do they differ in Cuba and outside of Cuba today? What are the specific systematic variants of Cuban Spanish that we can observe today? What lexical and phonological differences do we find? How has post-revolution Cuban Spanish changed in the Cuban population at large and in the United States, where we can now also encounter Cuban Spanish because of the continuous flow of Cubans into cities like Miami, for example?
In the case of published studies of Cuban Spanish, we find that there have been only a few—but excellent—linguistics publications in the United States since the start of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. We would be hard-pressed to find a significant number of linguistics publications analyzing either Cuban Spanish varieties spoken within Cuba after the Revolution, or studies of Cuban Spanish in contact with other languages and varieties in other geographical regions, such as in areas where so many Cubans and Cuban-Americans reside in the United States (e.g., Florida, New Jersey, New York, Chicago). In the United States, the Cuban and Cuban-American populations have grown, representing several waves of immigration to the U.S., and there are already several generations of persons of Cuban heritage born in the United States who have never been in contact with or grown up in a monolingual Spanish environment.
Cuban Spanish varies widely across Cuba itself and likewise across the Cuban-Spanish-speaking diaspora, wherever Cubans have fled into exile or migrated in various waves, from the 1960s to the present. There has been more travel to and from Cuba by those of Cuban heritage in the last few years than ever in previous decades, in spite of ever-changing travel policies depending on who is governing in the U.S. and in Cuba. This more prevalent direct contact has amplified interaction among Cubans from the island and those from the United States, both in the case of those who recurrently visit the island—who may still have family contacts or even a home there—and those who visit the United States.
Not only have varieties of Cuban Spanish come into more contact with other varieties, particularly in places like Miami, they have also come into increased contact with other varieties of Spanish spoken in the United States, such as Puerto Rican Spanish, Colombian Spanish, Nicaraguan Spanish, Spanish from Spain, etc. This is in addition to exposure to standard and nonstandard varieties of English. This has given rise to the widespread phenomenon of a rainbow of codeswitching, fascinating to hear. The future extent of migration or exodus of Cubans to the United States, of contact between Cubans on the island and Cuban-Americans and other Spanish speakers in the United States, and of interaction between Cuban Spanish and English, remains unpredictable. However, even if it is sporadic, episodic, or liable to change, it seems it will continue in varying degrees.
Amassing this well-rounded collection of essays in Cuban Spanish Dialectology, I am sure has not been an easy task for editor Alejandro Cuza to achieve. In the introduction, the editor writes that the main goal of the edited volume “is to fill this major gap in the literature and to provide the reader with the most up-to-date and comprehensive compendium on Cuban Spanish research” (p. xxi). In agreement with Robert Hammond in his Foreword, Cuza has attained his goal, indeed. The volume significantly helps to fill the longstanding research gap in the literature by providing an informative, well-organized, comprehensive, and up-to-date overview of original research in Cuban Spanish dialectology, focusing on variation, contact, and change, as indicated by the book’s subtitle. This relevant and important contribution offers faculty and students fresh perspectives not covered before in any collection.
Cuza made the sound choice of inviting linguist Robert M. Hammond, a professor at Purdue University who has dedicated many decades of his academic life to studying aspects of Cuban Spanish, to contribute the foreword. His foreword essay provides an excellent springboard to the welcomed theoretical explorations Cuza has selected. The compendium is structured in four topical sections: phonological and phonetic variation; morphosyntactic variation; lexical variation; and heritage language acquisition. Cuza presents a selection of fourteen original research essays written by both well-established linguists and emerging academics in the area of Hispanic language dialectology, focusing on a wide range of topics, such as phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, bilingualism and heritage language acquisition, and Cuban Spanish lexicology. The contributors are like a who’s who list of linguists, all worth reading from start to finish.
In the first section dealing with phonological and phonetic variation, Brandon M.A. Rogers and Scott M. Alvord, and Kristin M. Carlson and Ann M. Aly contribute essays. A particularly interesting article on continuity and change among Cubans in New York was authored by Daniel Erker, Eduardo Ho-Fernández, Ricardo Otheguy, and Naomi Lapidus Shin.
In the second section on morphosyntactic variation, authors include Gabriela G. Alfaraz, Luis Ortiz-López, Ashlee Dauphinais, and Héctor Aponte Alequin. The section includes an essay by Joshua Frank and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, and a sociolinguistc profile of “ser” and “estar” in Cuban Spanish in oral speech written by Manuel Díaz-Campos, Iraida Galarza, and Gibran Delgado-Díaz.
The third section of the volume incudes individual essays by Andrew Lynch, Pascual Cantos-Gómez, and Antoni Fernández Parera on lexical variation. Lynch’s paper on lexical innovations in Miami-based Cuban Spanish, Cantos-Gómez’s essay on Cuban vs. Peninsular Spanish, as well as Fernández Parera’s study on lexical influences and perceptions of Cuban Spanish in Miami, are sound and original contributions.
The last section of essays all deal with aspects of heritage language acquisition. Here the editor, Alejandro Cuza, with co-author José Camacho, writes about pronominal subject expressions with inanimate reference in heritage speakers of Cuban Spanish, while Diego Pascual y Cabo and co-author Inmaculada Gómez-Soler focus their essay on aspects of child heritage speakers. The last essay in the volume, by Ana de Prada Pérez and Andrea Hernández, analyzes code-switching performance theories in the case of Cuban heritage speakers.
We cannot help but be in full agreement with linguist Carmen Silva-Corvalán’s comment on Cuza’s volume: “Exceptionally well designed by Alejandro Cuza, this volume is the first of its kind to present analyses of a range of aspects of Cuban Spanish from diverse and up-to-date theoretical perspectives. It is a significant contribution which reflects the vitality and intellectual energy of the field. Without a doubt, the collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of Spanish linguistics” (back cover of book).
As usual, John Lipski’s Georgetown Studies in Spanish Linguistics series delivers outstanding work; Cuza’s Cuban Spanish Dialectology: Variation, Contact, and Change is on par with and has continued the series tradition of rigorous scholarly work. This book will be valuable to professors and graduate students of Hispanic linguistics who are also interested in sociolinguistics and language contact studies. It is also highly recommended to anyone interested in formal and rigorous linguistic research on aspects of Cuban and Cuban American Spanish today.
