Our way of speaking is one of the many forms of Spanish or Castilian. Given that Spanish is spoken in many more or less different and distant countries in terms of geography and history, it is not surprising that their ways of speaking differ from each other, in some cases remarkably. However, all these ways of speaking that exist today in the Canary Islands and America come from the linguistic variety that the conquerors and colonists brought from the Peninsula to the newly discovered lands throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, and that in the following centuries ended up consolidating in large territories until becoming one of the most important languages on the planet, both for the number of speakers and for its contributions to the cultural heritage of humanity.
The end of the conquest and colonization of the Canary Islands coincided with the discovery of America. The Islands then became a key piece of the subsequent American colonization, with notable contributions, both material and human. Many Canarians, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, contributed to populate various American regions, especially the Caribbean, which, even after the independence of America, continued to maintain closer relations with the Islands than with the Peninsula. Therefore, it is not surprising that Canarians and Americans share many characteristic words, since a large number were brought by Canarian settlers to various regions of the New World.
At the time of the colonization of the Canary Islands and America, the Andalusian variety was already quite different from the Castilian of the central-northern peninsula. This colonization was done mainly through Western Andalusia, hence the greater affinity of Canarian and American Spanish with Andalusian than with northern Castilian, which was then a less valued variety than Castilian or Andalusian. This fact explains the coincidences that, both in phonetic and grammatical matters, are observed between Canarian and American speech. They, together with western Andalusian, make up one of the two great varieties of Spanish, the so-called southern or Atlantic.
Our words
fogalera
1. f. Pile of burning combustible materials that raise a lot of flame. In the bonfires that are made for San Juan, old household items are burned.
2. f. GC. Very suffocating heat. Until this bonfire is removed, you cannot go outside.
3. f. GC., Tf. and LP. Fight, quarrel. Every time there was a verbena, a bonfire was started.
4. f. GC. and Tf. Epidemic.
5. f. Tf. and Go. Spree, revelry.
6. f. Tf. Party person or reveler.
7. com. Person who gets angry easily. He himself admitted that they didn't let him play because he was a bonfire.
Information on the location of voices and meanings
Fv: Fuerteventura
GC: Gran Canaria
Go: La Gomera
Hi: El Hierro
LP: La Palma
Lz: Lanzarote
Occ: Western Islands (Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro)
Or: Eastern Islands (Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria)
Tf: Tenerife
