Honduran Spanish

Honduran Spanish is the Spanish language as spoken in the country of Honduras in Central America. Voseo is routinely used in Honduras.

Honduran Spanish
Español hondureño
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol onduˈɾeɲo]
Native to	Honduras
Region	Central American Spanish
Native speakers	10,637,827 million (2023)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian Spanish North American Spanish Central American Spanish Honduran Spanish
Early forms	Old Latin Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Honduras
Regulated by	Academia Hondureña de la Lengua
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa[2]
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	es-HN
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Phonology

• Honduran Spanish, as a Central American variety, pronounces the fricative /x/, written with ⟨j⟩ or ⟨g⟩, as a simple aspiration [h].^[3]
• /ʝ/ is at times elided in contact with front vowels.^[3]
• Word-final /n/ becomes velarized, as [ŋ].^[3]
• /s/ is often aspirated or elided in word- or syllable-final position. As an apparent extension of this, it may even be aspirated in word-initial or word-medial, syllable-initial environments. This word-medial aspiration is most common near morpheme boundaries, and in the pronoun nosotros, 'we'. S-reduction is most common in the north of Honduras. It is less common in areas of Copán Department near the Guatemalan border, in Comayagua, and among the upper classes of Tegucigalpa.^[4]

Local words

These words are some slang words used in Honduras. Some may also be used in neighboring El Salvador and elsewhere.

Honduran Spanish	Gloss
bululo	bread roll
trucha	corner shop
pulpería
relajo	mess
jura	police patrol
chepo
posta	police station
maje	dude
cipote	boy
güirro
cipota	girl
güirra
juco	dirty man
juca	dirty woman
colocho	curls (in reference to hair)
chongo	bow (gift wrapping)
encachimbar	to annoy, to upset
bolo	drunk
goma	hangover
paila	bucket
carro paila	pick-up truck
pisto	money
billullo
chabacán	troublemaker
guachiman	security guard (from English 'watchman')

References

1. Spanish → Honduras at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. "ISO 639-2 Language Code search". Library of Congress. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
3. Lipski, John M. (2008). "Central American Spanish in the United States". Varieties of Spanish in the United States. Georgetown University Press. pp. 142–149. ISBN 9781589016514.
4. Lipski, John M. (1986). "Instability and Reduction of /s/ in the Spanish of Honduras". Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. 11 (1): 27–47. ISSN 0384-8167. JSTOR 27762472.