Canarian Spanish

• As with most other varieties of Spanish outside Mainland Spain, the preterite is generally used instead of the perfect: hoy visité a Juan ("today I visited John") for hoy he visitado a Juan ("today I have visited John").[5][6]
• Like most other varieties of Spanish outside central and northern Spain, ustedes is used for all second-person plurals: ustedes están is used for vosotros estáis. Only on a few parts of the islands of El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera is the pronoun vosotros still sometimes used, and even there, it is decreasingly and generally only by older speakers.
• Diminutive forms are typically shorter than in Peninsular Spanish, though the peninsular forms are used as a result of influence from the mainland: bailito for bailecito 'little dance' and pueblito for pueblecito 'little town'.[7]
• As with many other varieties of Spanish outside Mainland Spain, de ("of") is deleted in some expressions: casa Marta for casa de Marta and gofio millo for gofio de millo.

• Seseo, the lack of distinction between the pronunciation of the letters ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ or "soft" ⟨c⟩, is the most distinctive non-mainland characteristic; caza ('hunt') is pronounced exactly like casa ('house'), which occurs in some parts of Andalusia as well.[8] The feature is common to most parts of the Spanish-speaking world outside of the northern three quarters of Mainland Spain (Castile and the surrounding provinces have adopted the feature).[9][10]
• /s/ is debuccalized to /h/ at the end of syllables, as is common in Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, the Caribbean, and much of lowland Latin America.[11] The frequency of s-aspiration has generally increased over the last few decades, as part of the formation of new regional norms.[12] Syllable-final [s] is always or mostly pronounced in the formal speech, like TV broadcasts.
• /x/ (spelled as ⟨j⟩ or, before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩, as ⟨g⟩) is usually aspirated (pronounced [h]), as is common in Andalusia (especially in its west) as well as the Caribbean and some other parts of Latin America.[13]
• Word-final /n/ is realized as a velar nasal [ŋ].[14]
• Yeísmo has become almost universal throughout the archipelago. Currently the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ formerly represented by ⟨ll⟩ has been relegated to the speech of the most elderly, generally with low education and living in rural zones.[15]
• /tʃ/, the phoneme represented by ⟨ch⟩, is traditionally pronounced as a lax voiceless palatal plosive rather than an affricate. The plosive pronunciation is still widespread.[16]

Canarian vocabulary has its own regionalisms different from standard Castilian Spanish vocabulary. For example, guagua ("bus") differs from standard Spanish autobús. The word guagua is an onomatopoeia stemming from the sound of a Klaxon horn ("wawa"). An example of Canarian usage for a Spanish word is the verb fajarse ("to fight").[17] In standard Castilian Spanish, the verb would be pelearse, while fajar exists as a non-reflexive verb related to the hemming of a skirt. The term of endearment socio is a very popular Canarian term. The Canarian vocabulary has a notable influence from the Guanche language, especially in the toponymy. In addition, many Canarian names come from the Guanche language, such as Airam, Gara, Acerina, Aydan, Beneharo, Jonay, Tanausú, Chaxiraxi, Ayoze, Yaiza and Zebenzuí. As Canarian Spanish was influenced by Andalusian Spanish, a few words of Andalusi Arabic origin are found, and there are some doublets of Arabic-Latinate synonyms with the Arabic form being more common in Canarian, such as cuarto or alcoba for standard habitación or dormitorio ("bedroom"), alhaja for standard joya ("jewel"), or alacrán for standard escorpión ("scorpion"); Arabic influence in Canarian Spanish was also brought by returning Canarian settlers and their children from Spanish Sahara after its independence.

• Nationalisms and regionalisms of Spain
• Silbo gomero
• Isleño Spanish