Hubbry Logo
search
logo

Belizean Spanish

logo
Community Hub0 Subscribers
Write something...
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
See all
Belizean Spanish

Belizean Spanish (Spanish: español beliceño) is the dialect of Spanish spoken in Belize. It shares similarities with Caribbean Spanish, Andalusian Spanish, and Canarian Spanish. However, Belizean people of Guatemalan, Honduran, Mexican (including Mexican Mennonites), Nicaraguan, Salvadoran (including Salvadoran Mennonites), and even Cuban descent may speak different dialects of Spanish, but since they grow up in Belize, they adopt the local accent.

While English is the only official language of Belize, Spanish is widely spoken in the country. In the 2022 census, 199,393 people reported being able to speak Spanish, accounting for 50.2% of the population, making it the second most spoken language in the country after English. However, while Spanish is spoken by the majority of people in the northern and western parts of the country, it is spoken by less than half of those in the eastern and southern districts (including Belize City, the country's largest city), where Belizean Creole, English and Mayan languages dominate.

Spanish language came to Belize when the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494, claiming the entire western New World for Spain, including what is now Belize. Then in the mid-16th century Spanish conquistadors explored this territory, declaring it a Spanish colony incorporated into the Captaincy General of Guatemala on December 27, 1527, when it was founded. In the second half of that century it was integrated into the government of Yucatan in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

However, few Spanish settled in the area because of the lack of the gold they'd come seeking and the strong resistance of the Maya people. The Spanish colonists living in Belize often fought against the Maya, who were affected by slavery and disease carried by the Spanish.

On 20 January 1783, shortly after the Treaty of Versailles, Britain and Spain signed a peace treaty in which Spain ceded to Britain a small part of Belize, about 1.482 km square located between the Hondo and Belize rivers. British settlers obtained a further concession. By the London Convention of 1786 Spain ceded Belize another 1.883 km square (reaching the Sibun River or Manate Laguna, south of the Belize River). The British banned teaching of Spanish in schools.

But after thousands of Maya people and mestizos were driven from the area of Bacalar during the Caste War (1847–1901), about 7000 Mexican mestizos immigrated during these years, the Kekchi emigrated from Verapaz, Guatemala, where their lands had been seized for coffee plantations and many of them enslaved in the 1870s–1880s, Mopan returned to Belize around 1886, fleeing enslavement and taxation in Petén, Mennonite Mexicans settled in the north and west of Belize after 1958 (Mexican Mennonites may have intermarried with native-born mestizos and Mexican mestizos), and thousands of undocumented migrants moved to the central and western parts of the country, including approximately 40,000 Salvadorans (including Salvadoran Mennonites), Guatemalans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans immigrated to Belize in this decade of strife in neighboring countries between 1980 and 1990, this, along with a high fertility rate, dramatically increased the number of Hispanics in Belize, causing concern over the rapid growth of the Spanish language in a country where the official language is English.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.