Social networks, the success of reggaeton and Latin pop, academic exchanges, the spread of streaming platforms and even YouTube tutorials are just a few examples of how the globalized world in which we live has made Spanish speakers live together more closely than ever, becoming familiar with the nuances of each of the varieties of the language. In fact, it is not strange that, nowadays, a person from Spain knows how to identify the differences between the speech of a Colombian, a Mexican and a Venezuelan.
In this context of constant linguistic exchanges, Chilean seems to have gone ‘viral’ as the most difficult variant of Spanish to classify and understand, to the point that some have even jokingly suggested that it could become a language different from Spanish.
But what is the real reason for this peculiarity of the Spanish of Chile? Can we go back to ancient times, such as the time of the conquest, to explain this distinctive feature; or, on the contrary, do these variations respond to recent generational idioms and conflicts?
In this short post, we are going to investigate a little about Chilean Spanish and its generalities, as well as the modifications that the language has been undergoing in recent times.
The Chilean dialect: generalities
It is common to hear in intellectual circles that Chileans have a sloppy way of speaking and, therefore, are difficult to understand. In the colloquial register, we find a language riddled with idioms, neologisms, indigenousisms, with words that are shortened and with a peculiar pronunciation. But Chilean is, in essence, just another variant of the Spanish language. Therefore, from a linguistic perspective, it is not possible to speak of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ variants, but rather these considerations are based on social circumstances.
Chile is a country that currently has a little over 19 million inhabitants, contributing its grain of sand to the more than 500 million Spanish speakers worldwide. However, Chileans have adopted a very special way of using their mother tongue, especially in aspects related to lexicon and phonetics.
When it comes to analyzing the particularisms of Chilean Spanish, it is necessary to look back to the times of the conquest. In this sense, we know that most of the Spaniards who came to conquer Chile were people with little linguistic culture. This characteristic, however, is equally applicable to the rest of the Spanish American territory, as is the fact that, in the process of colonization of the Spanish language in America, Andalusian was the most influential dialect.
Another influential element in the configuration of Chilean Spanish and its linguistic particularity was its geographic isolation and its peripheral location with respect to the centers of viceregal power. Thus, Chile was constituted as a remote captaincy isolated by the mountain range and the desert. In fact, in dialectological studies of the Spanish of America, the Chilean region always appears as a differentiated space.
Likewise, many of the elements of the Chilean vocabulary are indigenisms, since, before the Spanish arrived in Chile, the territory was inhabited by various indigenous ethnic groups, some of which have survived to the present day, as in the case of the Mapuche.
It is noteworthy that the Mapuches were precisely the most difficult people for the Europeans to subdue, and some of the social and territorial conflicts with the indigenous people persist to this day between the Chilean authorities and the Mapuches. In this sense, the Mapuche’s tenacity and resistance to subjugation may be closely related to the existence of a strong lexical influence of their language on the Spanish used in Chile.
For example, the term pololear, which could be translated as ‘to be in a relationship with someone’ comes from the Mapuche term “pëlulu” or “piulliu”, and was originally used to refer to an insect. There are several theories as to why it has acquired its current meaning, but what is clear is its indigenous origin and how widespread this term is nowadays (in fact, pololo and polola are the usual words used to refer to ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’).
On the other hand, if we had to summarize in one sentence the phonetic pronunciation characteristics of Chileans, we would have to say that there are words that are shortened, s’s that are not pronounced, that they are spoken with a rather low volume, with descending tonemes and vowels or consonants that disappear.
Current modifications
In view of this, beyond the general characteristics that we can ascribe to Chilean Spanish, what is clear is that this language has been undergoing increasing changes in recent years, denoting a dynamism worthy of mention.
Certainly, there is no settled study that has explained this phenomenon, since, for the time being, it is an intuition. However, some theories have been proposed that should not be wrongly addressed.
First of all, an important aspect to consider is that the diastratic difference was always much more noticeable in Chile than in other Spanish-speaking territories; that is, Chilean Spanish was divided more by social strata than by territories, and it was very easy to identify a person’s social class according to the way they spoke.
In this sense, it seems that the differences between the speech of the upper classes and the speech of the lower classes in Chile have become more and more pronounced, due in large part to a greater coexistence between previously separate groups.
However, many of the changes that the Chilean is currently undergoing seem to be intentional, responding to a vindictive motivation. Chile is a society strongly marked by class conflicts, and this is manifested in the linguistic identity and linguistic ideologies of the speakers of Chilean Spanish.
In 2019, when major popular uprisings rocked the country, something else seemed to happen: Chile’s Spanish surfaced. Speakers, who used to have a negative view of their speech, began to reclaim the use of words and expressions that had traditionally been considered incorrect, filling the public discourse with particularisms typical of Chilean speech. In this case, we would be dealing with a use of language with a clear social and political purpose.
Conclusions
More than a sum of dialects, Chile has social jargons that make it very much alive. As Chilean writer Alberto Fuguet says, “using the Chilean language allows you to be free in a country that, at times, becomes authoritarian”.
The Spanish of Chile has always been different, since colonial times; but this does not mean that it should be considered a less valid variant of Spanish, since it is precisely in these peculiarities where the richness of the language also lies.
Carlos Sánchez Luis