Spanish speakers from different countries--difficult accents?

[jsgoddess]

When I watch a movie filmed by and for a British audience, I can struggle to understand. Some of it is word choice, and some is simply the unfamiliar accents.

When native Spanish speakers meet, can they end up with similar problems?

I wondered this while watching a baseball game where a Venezuelan catcher was talking to a Puerto Rican pitcher. Are their accents ever likely to be difficult for each other?

[lalenin]

When I watch a movie filmed by and for a British audience, I can struggle to understand. Some of it is word choice, and some is simply the unfamiliar accents.

When native Spanish speakers meet, can they end up with similar problems?

I wondered this while watching a baseball game where a Venezuelan catcher was talking to a Puerto Rican pitcher. Are their accents ever likely to be difficult for each other?

Absolutely yes. I am Cuban and when I talk to Argentinians I know they're speaking spanish, but I can't understand more than every other word. I can't really say the same for any other nationalities though, unless it's a slang word. There is just something about the Argentinian accent that throws me.

[ForumBot]

I've heard that Argentenians are particularly difficult to understand, due to their tendency to make the c and j a "ch" (as in change) sound. My Spanish teacher, who is not a native speaker, said he had trouble understanding people from northern Spain, while he could speak perfectly with those from the south.

[Balthisar]

(Not a native speaker). I understand Argentinians much, much easier than Cubans (and Puerto Ricans, for that matter).

[jsgoddess]

Does this tend to be a difference that can be overcome by people speaking verrrrry sloooowly, or is it deeper than that? (This question is for anyone who has encountered this problem.)

[CalMeacham]

I understand that Antonio Banderas, who does the voice of Puss in Boots for the Shrek movies also does the same part in Spanish for different regions (pretty neat, that). But he does it with different accents for different places -- and it's not the same accent as the place it's going (which means that Puss always sounds like a foreigner). So he does him as an Iberian for the Mexican market, for instance, but some completely different accent for the version marketed in Spain.

[Colibri]

I am Cuban and when I talk to Argentinians I know they're speaking spanish, but I can't understand more than every other word.

I can't understand either Cubans or Argentinians. :)

Spanish is my second language, but I find Andean (Ecuadorian and Peruvian) and Guatemalan Spanish to be the easiest to understand. Caribbean Spanish (Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Panamanian) is often tough. Argentineans sometimes might as well be speaking Italian.

[Rick]

When I was in High school (57% Hispanic) I could identify where a native speaker was from just by listing to their accent and manner of speaking.
Cubans, for example, speak very fast compared to someone from Mexico.

[Miss Woodhouse]

my BIL lived in Equador for two years and learned to speak spanish there. He had to adjust his language and accent to speak with people who speak spanish at home. His wife is bilingual so I assume he now speaks spanish with the hispanic accent common to our area.

Accent is a natural part of language. Language evolves so of course it would evolve differently for people speaking in different geographic locations.

[ralph124c]

My Brazilian friends all tell me they have no trouble understanding spoken/written spanish. But a spaniard in Brazil-he cannot speak or understand portuguese-why is this? many of the verbs are the same.

[Wendell Wagner]

jsgoddess writes:

> When I watch a movie filmed by and for a British audience, I can struggle to
> understand. Some of it is word choice, and some is simply the unfamiliar accents.

Do you seriously have problems understanding a standard British accent? I can understand if you have problems understanding some of the more unusual British accents, since you're not likely to hear them very much, but how could you have problems with a standard British accent? How could any American make it to adulthood without having listened to a reasonable number of British movies, TV shows, and British actors being interviewed on American TV talk shows?

Colibri writes:

> Argentineans sometimes might as well be speaking Italian.

There were a lot of Italian immigrants to Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so there is a lot of Italian influence on Argentinean Spanish.

[Colibri]

There were a lot of Italian immigrants to Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so there is a lot of Italian influence on Argentinean Spanish.

Yeah, in my experience they make pretty good pizza in Buenos Aires too. I especially liked the hearts of palm with mozzarella.

It has been said that an Argentinean is an Italian who speaks Spanish, acts French, and would like to be British. (No offense meant to any porteños ;) ).

[Harriet the Spry]

How could any American make it to adulthood without having listened to a reasonable number of British movies, TV shows, and British actors being interviewed on American TV talk shows?


By not watching a lot of TV or movies. I do fine with written British English.

[Wendell Wagner]

Written British English is essentially the same thing as written American English. Did you actually grow up not watching TV or seeing movies? There are Americans who did such a thing, but most of them live out in the middle of nowhere.

[jsgoddess]

jsgoddess writes:

> When I watch a movie filmed by and for a British audience, I can struggle to
> understand. Some of it is word choice, and some is simply the unfamiliar accents.

Do you seriously have problems understanding a standard British accent?

I do fairly well with most programs. You're kind of snotty, aren't you?

[Polycarp]

There are a wide range of accents, across Hispanic America and also the regions of Spain. The classic theismo (which has nothing to do with theism, but rather with sounding the letter "c" as a theta (unvoiced th sound)) is Castilian. As I understand, Andalucians drop letters with abandon. Terminal -s is often unsounded in a couple of American dialects.

Iberian Spanish generally sounds the double L as a palatalized L sound, roughly as in English million. Most of Hispanic America renders it as a Y sound. And the Southern Cone -- Argentina and neighboring countries -- renders it as the d3 sound of English J as in Jones.

My impression, though, is that there's a great deal of mutual comprehension, about equivalent to what you might hear in a discussion between someone with a Kansas rasp, a Georgia drawl, a New England twang, a braid Yorkshire accent, the clipped "U" English of Maggie Thatcher, and the indescribable Aussie accent of Steve Irwin -- each of whom could understand all the others just fine, though he/she would sound strange to them and they to him/her.

[Wendell Wagner]

I've heard Americans complain at times about having problems understanding British accents, and I find it hard to take their complaints seriously. Nearly all Americans grow up hearing a reasonably wide variety of British accents on TV and in movies. An American will hear a standard British accent spoken as often as any of the more obscure American accents. I find it weird then that some Americans claim that they can't understand a standard British accent.

[Wendell Wagner]

And incidentally, jsgoddess, I grew up on a farm in Ohio, so I was exposed to approximately the same variety of experiences as a child that you were.

[KarlGrenze]

When I watch a movie filmed by and for a British audience, I can struggle to understand. Some of it is word choice, and some is simply the unfamiliar accents.

When native Spanish speakers meet, can they end up with similar problems?

I wondered this while watching a baseball game where a Venezuelan catcher was talking to a Puerto Rican pitcher. Are their accents ever likely to be difficult for each other?

Like some had said, it depends on the nation/region.

But if you're talking about a film, chances are that yes, I would have no problem (as a Puerto Rican) understanding what they're saying. That is because for film/movies/soap operas, productions generally use a more "generic" or formal way of speaking, such that can be understood by different audiences (of different countries).

Now, I may not know the meaning of some words/phrases, because they are slang or perfectly normal colloquialism, and that certainly varies from one country or region to the other.

Like I said, this is for film/media, and it also includes news. Someone from Venezuela interviewing someone from Puerto Rico is going to use some "standard" Spanish, avoiding Venezuelan idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms as much as possible when speaking to someone who is not from their country. Now that is just professionalism and politeness.

Teammates, playmates, and friends may talk to each other in their different accents, but spend enough time together that they know what the other one is talking about, even if they have different accents/slang. You will probably never hear me speak like someone from Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, or Venezuela, but when I talk with my friends and they use their native slang, I may already know what they mean (and if I don't know, I ask).

Some two random people from different countries may recognize from where the other person is by their accent, may already know the slang words (common ones) of the other person's region, and if not able to completely understand may at least say so knowing that the other person will understand and perhaps say it slower or use some other words.

Small anecdote: My Brazilians friends went to Mexico, and came back saying how fast they were talking Spanish, and that they were having trouble following them. I almost laughed in their faces, and told them that in general it is those from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic) that speak the fastest, not Mexicans.

[jsgoddess]

I've heard Americans complain at times about having problems understanding British accents, and I find it hard to take their complaints seriously.

Well, as soon as someone complains, you be sure to speak up. Otherwise, unless you have something to say about Spanish speakers, you're in the wrong thread.

[Darth Nader]

I wouldn't dare to correct my many Spanish-speaking friends and relations to their faces, but I'm fairly the dialect most commonly heard around here would be fairly difficult for someone from say, northern Spain. Then again, with the amount of borrowed English words using Spanish grammar, perhaps it's more of the language being a creole than just the accent when things get that mixed up.

[ChicanoRojo]

I can't understand either Cubans or Argentinians. :)

Spanish is my second language, but I find Andean (Ecuadorian and Peruvian) and Guatemalan Spanish to be the easiest to understand. Caribbean Spanish (Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Panamanian) is often tough. Argentineans sometimes might as well be speaking Italian.

Of all the accents that I find hard to get used to is Caribbean accent (Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican) and, ironically, some of regional Spain accents. Caribbean accent is just that they tend to speak way too fast and convert "r"s to "l"s. So. For example, "Yo quiero un nuevo carro." To my mexican ears, they sound like "Yoquielounnuevocalo." :confused:

Argentinans are not as bad if you are into soccer. I guess I am used to streching the "LL" to its limits.

[ChicanoRojo]

I wondered this while watching a baseball game where a Venezuelan catcher was talking to a Puerto Rican pitcher. Are their accents ever likely to be difficult for each other?

Depends. Certain regions of Venezuela and Puerto Rico share a Caribbean accent.

[Darth Nader]

...and sometimes, I 'm not too good with English, either. Gads.

[ChicanoRojo]

Does this tend to be a difference that can be overcome by people speaking verrrrry sloooowly, or is it deeper than that? (This question is for anyone who has encountered this problem.)

From my Mexican pov, it depends on who you are speaking with. Caribbean accents, once the speaker slows down, it's no problem, at least in my experience. One of my cousins is married to a Dominicano. At first, for the life of me I could not understand a word he was saying. Too fast. "L"s where they shouldn't be. But. After talking to him after a good amount time (and he slowing down), I can understand him w/o a problem.

[gatorman]

My Brazilian friends all tell me they have no trouble understanding spoken/written spanish. But a spaniard in Brazil-he cannot speak or understand portuguese-why is this? many of the verbs are the same.

Its probably due to a wider range of sounds in Portuguese that are not present in Spanish, all the nasal sounds.

I have a MUCH easier time understanding Mexicans and South Americans then I do Caribbean Spanish, its much slower and much more clear

[ChicanoRojo]

I've heard that Argentenians are particularly difficult to understand, due to their tendency to make the c and j a "ch" (as in change) sound. .

Well. Argentinans are well known for making a strong "ll" sound than the rest of the Spanish speaking countries. For example, "caballo" (horse). Generally, it should sound like "ka-Bah-yo", but in Argentina it spoken as "ka-Ba-Sho."

[John Mace]

My Brazilian friends all tell me they have no trouble understanding spoken/written spanish. But a spaniard in Brazil-he cannot speak or understand portuguese-why is this? many of the verbs are the same.
Just guessing, but most Brazilians probably hear lots of Spanish whereas Spanish speakers aren't exposed to Portuguese that much. The written languages are quite similar, but the pronunciation is very different. I can understand Spanish pretty well and find written Portuguese pretty easy to understand, but I can hardly understand any spoken Portuguese. I get more from listening to Italian than I do from Portuguese.

I agree that, as a non-native speaker, Cuban Spanish is the hardest to understand. All the words sound like they've been run together and have had the last syllables lopped off. Does Cuban Spanish even have an "s"? :)

[John Mace]

I do fairly well with most programs. You're kind of snotty, aren't you?
Maybe you weren't so clear in the OP, because I thought the same thing as Wendell when I read it. Does she really have difficulty understanding British actors? There are some British regional accents that are pretty thick, but do you have problems with, say, a James Bond movie? That's kind of hard to imagine...

[jsgoddess]

Maybe you weren't so clear in the OP, because I thought the same thing as Wendell when I read it. Does she really have difficulty understanding British actors? There are some British regional accents that are pretty thick, but do you have problems with, say, a James Bond movie? That's kind of hard to imagine...

No, I don't have problems with a James Bond movie. Like I already said, I do fine with most programs. The last movie I can remember having any trouble with was "The Full Monty," while the people I was with really struggled. Since I don't do much hanging out on baseball diamonds with the British, I gave an example in the OP of a time when I've encountered accents I couldn't decipher.

Now, I assume someone will come along and say how impossible that is.

[John Mace]

No, I don't have problems with a James Bond movie. Like I already said, I do fine with most programs.
OK. But in your OP you said it was a "struggle". I think that's where the confusion came from.

[Sapo]

Venezuelan living in Puerto Rico, here.

In conversation, there is no way you cannot understand someone else from another country. There might be some word choice issues but nothing critical. As long as both parties are making an honest effort to understand and be understood, pronountiation is very similar from country to country.

Ditto for newscasts. With a more standard spanish and trained diction, they are very easy to understand no matter what country they are from.

Watching movies from Spain normally requires my full attention. Sometimes it can get really hard, as they speed and use all kinds of slang.

When it comes to slang, though... It seems like all countries have made a deliberate effort to choose their sexual euphemisms from the daily food items of their neighbouring countries. Put a handfull of assorted latinos in a room and in less than 10 minutes, the topic of conversation would be "what does x mean in your country?"

[ChicanoRojo]

I agree that, as a non-native speaker, Cuban Spanish is the hardest to understand. All the words sound like they've been run together and have had the last syllables lopped off. Does Cuban Spanish even have an "s"? :)

:D And no "R's". ;) I can almost hear my Boricua friends.

[ChicanoRojo]

Ditto for newscasts. With a more standard spanish and trained diction, they are very easy to understand no matter what country they are from.



And part of that creation of a "standard Spanish" is the radio and television media. The tevenovela industry has also helped create a "mainstream Spanish" that is easy on the ears. Columbian, Venezuelan, and Mexican tevenovelas are always popular in the Latino communities in the US.

[ChicanoRojo]

When it comes to slang, though... It seems like all countries have made a deliberate effort to choose their sexual euphemisms from the daily food items of their neighbouring countries. Put a handfull of assorted latinos in a room and in less than 10 minutes, the topic of conversation would be "what does x mean in your country?"


:D LOL...Dot's use "papaya" in Cuba. We don't mind in Mexico. :D

[jsgoddess]

OK. But in your OP you said it was a "struggle". I think that's where the confusion came from.

Jesus Christ. I said "I can struggle." If you never have, bully for you. Really. That's peachy keen.

Now that my story has been vetted by the Doper truth squad, can we get back to talking about Spanish speakers?

[ForumBot]

Ah, don't take the bait. Some people are just buttmunches no matter where they are. I have trouble with a couple of English accents, particularly if they're spoken quickly. Seeing as how I'm from The South, I like it when people talk all slow like and use small words my piddlin' lil' brain can reckin.

[John Mace]

Jesus Christ. I said "I can struggle." If you never have, bully for you. Really. That's peachy keen.

Hey, pardon me for simply trying to explain why someone didn't understand your point. If you don't see a difference between "I can struggle" and "I do fairly well", then I don't know what else to say.

[Jeff Lichtman]

I wondered this while watching a baseball game where a Venezuelan catcher was talking to a Puerto Rican pitcher. Are their accents ever likely to be difficult for each other?

In this case context probably makes it easier. The pitcher and catcher already have some idea what they're going to be talking about (pitch selection, throwing mechanics, holding the runner on, etc.), and a lot can be said with a limited, special vocabulary.

[Balthisar]

FWIW, I have trouble with some of the lowbrow English accents, at least until I get used to them. I couldn't get into the English version of "The Office" because I bored to easily of trying to understand what those wankers were talking about. "The Full Monty," on the other hand, I had no problems with after the first couple of minutes of getting accustomed.

In Mexico I hear ChicanoRojo's Argentina-style "ll" used from time to time. I don't know if it's people being presumptious or what. In fact the earliest occurance I recall was one of my Spanish teachers in Mexico. "Zho fui a montar caba-zhos azher." Her whole way of speaking was outside of the norm that I knew for that region at that time, and I had to ask if she was from Spain or some other weird place. Nope -- just from the state of Veracruz.

Also in parts of Mexico I've heard something similar to the Carribean accent. Also anyone from Sinaloa was incomprehensible, and it took me a few weeks to fully understand people from Sonora. People from the central -- Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Jalisco -- are the most intelligible to me, but then again, that's what I'm used to.

My father-in-law semi-regularly clips "-ado" to Carribbean style "ao," but he knows it's wrong for the region and does it just for fun. Funny thing is, I catch myself doing it now when I'm being funny (or even less-than-funny).

Oh, crap, just for the sake of completeness, you know how we make fake Spanish by adding -o to words? Mexicans make fake English by adding "-ation" to words.

[Bridget Burke]

I've heard Americans complain at times about having problems understanding British accents, and I find it hard to take their complaints seriously. Nearly all Americans grow up hearing a reasonably wide variety of British accents on TV and in movies. An American will hear a standard British accent spoken as often as any of the more obscure American accents. I find it weird then that some Americans claim that they can't understand a standard British accent.

Which "standard" British accent? The BBC accent once known as Received Pronunciation? (http://www.yaelf.com/rp.shtml) Extreme versions of this one can sound as stilted and phony to the American ear as "pure" Castellano does to many Mexicans. But we can definitely understand it.

However, shows set in The North of England & farther afield can be a bit more difficult. Of course, "the right people" speak a more standard English. But Tony Bourdain visited Ireland in a recent show. He toured historically troubled neighborhoods of Belfast with two cab drivers--Catholic & Protestant. Then he bought them both a drink. They got on well--things are improving. But the show supplied subtitles--which were quite useful.

[Bambi Hassenpfeffer]

Of all the accents that I find hard to get used to is Caribbean accent (Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican) and, ironically, some of regional Spain accents. Caribbean accent is just that they tend to speak way too fast and convert "r"s to "l"s. So. For example, "Yo quiero un nuevo carro." To my mexican ears, they sound like "Yoquielounnuevocalo."
And to me, y'all sound like you're talking way too slow. As I am a non-native speaker, I find Mexicans and Central Americans (especially the Ticos!) easier to understand than the Caribeños. But the dialects I'm most accustomed to are Caribbean, so they seem normal to me.

I had a Honduran friend who used to act like she couldn't understand me if I didn't clearly enunciate every single damned S, like "a la tre" is so difficult. To me, hearing "Busco a mi mamá" instead of "Búcoa mimamá" is just strange. Also, my Y and LL are pretty much the same as English J and my J is like the German CH. I'm told I sound Cuban, and I think I do most of the time.

It's a function of what you're used to. I will say this, though -- I find most dialects easily intelligible except the Argentinian (vos tenés, anyone? "Me zhamo Ariel" for the LL?) and the Europeans. The "cinco" = "thinko" and "Me parethes cansada" and the use of vosotros all throw me because I'm not used to them. They are different enough that I have to work on comprehension for now. If I heard them more often, it would eventually not be a problem.

[ChicanoRojo]

Also in parts of Mexico I've heard something similar to the Carribean accent. Also anyone from Sinaloa was incomprehensible, and it took me a few weeks to fully understand people from Sonora. People from the central -- Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Jalisco -- are the most intelligible to me, but then again, that's what I'm used to.

Certain areas of Mexican do have the Caribbean accent, specifically the coastal areas on the Caribbean areas such Tampico in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Yucatan. Also, in certain areas of Guerrero where there was mix of Indian, Spanish, and African cultures.

My father-in-law semi-regularly clips "-ado" to Carribbean style "ao," but he knows it's wrong for the region and does it just for fun. Funny thing is, I catch myself doing it now when I'm being funny (or even less-than-funny).


It depend. Northerners (Norteños) are stereotypically shown as SHOUTING everything and using "-ao" in certain words. For example, "Ah chingado!" a northerner is supposed to say 'AH, CHINGAO!".

[ChicanoRojo]

And to me, y'all sound like you're talking way too slow.

LOL....and we supposedly curse too much! :D


I had a Honduran friend who used to act like she couldn't understand me if I didn't clearly enunciate every single damned S, like "a la tre" is so difficult. To me, hearing "Busco a mi mamá" instead of "Búcoa mimamá" is just strange.

LOL...the easiest way for a Mexican to get into a fight with Boricua. "Say your r's and s's!"

It's a function of what you're used to. I will say this, though -- I find most dialects easily intelligible except the Argentinian (vos tenés, anyone? "Me zhamo Ariel" for the LL?) and the Europeans. The "cinco" = "thinko" and "Me parethes cansada" and the use of vosotros all throw me because I'm not used to them. They are different enough that I have to work on comprehension for now. If I heard them more often, it would eventually not be a problem.

If you follow Argentinan soccer and check out some movies from that country, you'll eventually get the cadence of their Spanish. I met some Argies here in my region and I always find a hoot to hear their "LL" in a "zh" manner. Now. Spaniards. Depending on their region, their slang and accents can still make it hard for me. I can listen to TVEspaña w/o a problem, but once you get to other medium where is not for international consumption, I am lost.

[KarlGrenze]

LOL....and we supposedly curse too much! :D

No, you only use two curse words. ;)



LOL...the easiest way for a Mexican to get into a fight with Boricua. "Say your r's and s's!"


I can, but I am not speaking with anybody important enough to merit correct pronunciation. :p

[Sapo]

As an extra bit to the OP, most regional pronountiation variations are little next to assorted speech impediments that you encounter every day.

[slaphead]

Maybe you weren't so clear in the OP, because I thought the same thing as Wendell when I read it. Does she really have difficulty understanding British actors? There are some British regional accents that are pretty thick, but do you have problems with, say, a James Bond movie? That's kind of hard to imagine...
Actually, I find this perfectly believable. My friend has a completely generic British accent (not regional, not cockney, standard Kensington-schooled English). He came back from a trip to NY & Florida absolutely baffled because half the people he spoke to couldn't understand him, but the Swede and Australian he was travelling with had no such problems.
Geordie, Scots, Sarf Lahndan etc. don't even count as English...

[sugar and spice]

The movie "Motorcycle Diaries"/"Diarios de motocicleta" is, among other things, an interesting survey of some of the dialects of South America. To summarize loosely, it is about a road trip in Argentina and winds thru Chile and Peru, with many interactions with the locals, and the main character is a young Che Guevara. I'm not a native speaker, accents are difficult for me to understand, and I can never ID them. But there is a scene where he is talking to an indigenous woman in Cuzco, she sounded clear as glass to me -- I studied in Quito, Ecuador, also the Andian accent.

[Nava]

The problems I have are more educated vs. uneducated than due to regional accents.

In the same team, we had:
two Navarrese and one guy from Santander (northern accents)
one guy from Tenerife (could pass for Argentinian most of the time)
one guy from Huelva and a woman from Granada (southern accents)

The southern accent includes problems pronouncing the Z and S phonemes; the guy was cultured enough to bypass this by choosing alternate words; he was able to provide definitions if needed. The woman? Oh God. Her lastname ended in an S. Let's say it was Lunas. She pronounced it as Lunah, which is how people wrote it; then she got angry that they hadn't understood; she'd just yell LU-NAJ! and then they wrote Lunaj; she'd get angrier and yell louder... never thought of providing some freaking ID (which is what I do from the start because my own lastname is just too bloody long) or of saying "Lunah with an s at the end" (Lunah con eze ar finá). I've heard her on the phone with friends and family and there were always things she had to repeat two, three times in any conversation, so it wasn't "the rest of us" who had a problem.

My experience is that most people automatically try to use their most "neutral" accent and vocabulary when in the presence of someone from a different accent. You still assume that there will be points when you have to explain a word but hey, it's a big language and learning more words is Good For You.

My first conversation with a group including people from Argentina, Colombia (altiplano mostly), two different regions of Mexico, Brasil (they insisted in speaking Spanish instead of teaching us Portuguese), Italy (these spoke Italian) and Spain where the only things that needed clarification were technical terms that myself and my coworkers were introducing to the rest of the group. That same group had "kodak moments" when the Mexicans found out that a certain word meant different things for both of them, that was funny. And there was that issue about finding a word for "take" (as in "takes the data from elsewhere in the database") that wouldn't be offensive or give the giggles to anybody... we settled on "jalar" but figured it's probably offensive somewhere :p

[Nava]

It has been said that an Argentinean is an Italian who speaks Spanish, acts French, and would like to be British. (No offense meant to any porteños ;) ).

Actually, and this is very funny since their accent is also similar to that from one of the Canary Islands, Argentinian might be not so much a dialect of Spanish as... a mixture of Galego and Italian.

We were watching an Italian soccer player who'd been living in Galicia for three weeks and if we hadn't know who he was and where from, we would have pegged him as Rioplatense right there.

Y'all don't get a prize for figuring out the two most common sources of immigration to Argentina :)



I understand Portuguese; I can't speak it because I haven't had enough exposition to it. I think that's like people who complain about not being able to understand Catalan... if you can't, either you're a furriner or you need to wash your ears.

[Nava]

There are a wide range of accents, across Hispanic America and also the regions of Spain. The classic theismo (which has nothing to do with theism, but rather with sounding the letter "c" as a theta (unvoiced th sound)) is Castilian. As I understand, Andalucians drop letters with abandon. Terminal -s is often unsounded in a couple of American dialects.


Ergh, dude, you make that sound like a defect. It's the standard. Seseo is when you CAN'T pronounce your c as z.

[ChicanoRojo]

we settled on "jalar" but figured it's probably offensive somewhere :p

Mexicano a un Gallego: Oye, tio, me la jalas......digo...los datos.. :D

[Colibri]

And there was that issue about finding a word for "take" (as in "takes the data from elsewhere in the database") that wouldn't be offensive or give the giggles to anybody... we settled on "jalar" but figured it's probably offensive somewhere :p

My Cassel's Colloquial Spanish warns that in Mexico jalarse can mean "to masturbate." :)

Sometimes it seems that just about every verb meaning to catch, pull, throw, or hit can be risque somewhere.

[Acsenray]

Do you seriously have problems understanding a standard British accent? I can understand if you have problems understanding some of the more unusual British accents, since you're not likely to hear them very much, but how could you have problems with a standard British accent? How could any American make it to adulthood without having listened to a reasonable number of British movies, TV shows, and British actors being interviewed on American TV talk shows?

This is a question that bears deeper exploration, I think.

A few weeks ago, I was down with broncho-pneumonia and spent a week in bed. I found that the only channels I could tolerate on basic-extended cable were AMC and TMC. I saw many old movies that purported to have English characters portrayed by Americans with really, really fake English accents.

I'm guessing that until say 1965 or 1975, it was rare to see someone with a genuine English accent in an American-made movie or television program. Actual British productions have always been favored by the educated, but that's a limited and self-selected sample.

Nowadays, the "standard British accent" or Received Pronunciation is no longer really the iron-clad standard for British productions. What about the Scots accents of Trainspotting or the Northern accents of The Full Monty or the Welsh accents of The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain?

[Balthisar]

Actually this reminds me of the weekend camping in Canada that I spent with a Mexican, Italian, Colombian, and Liechtensteinian (no, this isn't the prelude to a joke). I'm the only native English speaker; the rest are in Ontario for language school (and one is my wife). The Colombian speaks German, as she's living in Germany with her husband, so she and the Liechtensteinian get along. I can still manage to mumble a few words of German myself. The Mexican and Colombian are naturally able to speak with each other, and I'm fluent-enough in Spanish. That leaves the Italian as the odd man out. Naturally as English students, we tried to speak English for everything, but when things got rough or they needed to speak in a hurry, the Italian would speak Italian, and the Colombian and Mexican would pick up enough to get the idea. They'd speak Spanish in turn, and he'd understand them just as well as they he. I mostly only understood the Spanish half of the conversations, of course.

Now it's not much of a trick to read Italian, Portuguese, or even French and get the gist, but I was impressed by their mutual comprehension while speaking and listening.

[KarlGrenze]

Ergh, dude, you make that sound like a defect. It's the standard. Seseo is when you CAN'T pronounce your c as z.

Funny, that... In Spain that may be the standard, but for the Caribbean region, the seseo is the standard, NOT a defect. It is normal for us not to differentiate c, z or s in most cases. Not because we cannot pronounce it due to some physiological thing (we're perfectly capable of doing so) but because no one here does that.

I took good Spanish classes for 12 years (heck my whole education minus English was in Spanish). We were taught many things, but we were NEVER forced to "correct" our seseo. That (of all the things my accent has) is the least vulgar or incorrect of all.

I do agree with you that the difference is mostly between educated and uneducated (or professional vs vulgar), not between regional accents. I can understand newscasts from every place, and I can talk with my friends from different countries, but don't put me with Juan Bobo from Guatemala cuz I'm probably not going to understand what he says (well, the words, but they don't make sense).

[ChicanoRojo]

Funny, that... In Spain that may be the standard, but for the Caribbean region, the seseo is the standard, NOT a defect. It is normal for us not to differentiate c, z or s in most cases. Not because we cannot pronounce it due to some physiological thing (we're perfectly capable of doing so) but because no one here does that.

I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the "z" from the "s". In Mexico we don't.

[John Mace]

Now it's not much of a trick to read Italian, Portuguese, or even French and get the gist, but I was impressed by their mutual comprehension while speaking and listening.
Where was the guy from in Italy? When I was in Florence, I found I could get by reasonably well by speaking Spanish and then trying to understand Italian (they did better then I did, of course). My guess is that if the Italian person had been from Sicily it would have been much harder.

[KarlGrenze]

I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the "z" from the "s". In Mexico we don't.

Aye, sorry for not including Mexicans (and I don't think Guatemalans, Hondurans, Panamanians, Colombians, and Venezuelans do it either, unless it's something very very regional).

I just mentioned Caribbean because that's the one I am more accustomed (and the one in which my education was done).

[ChicanoRojo]

Aye, sorry for not including Mexicans (and I don't think Guatemalans, Hondurans, Panamanians, Colombians, and Venezuelans do it either, unless it's something very very regional).


AFAIK, seseo or pronouncing "s" and "z" similarly, is done across Latin America. When I went to public school in Mexico, I was thought that in Spain "s" and "z" are pronounced differently and that it is correct and proper usage of Spanish. But, since we were in Mexico, such differentiation should be noted, but not necessarily practiced.

[Nava]

I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the "z" from the "s". In Mexico we don't.

Altiplano colombiano, altiplano peruano, Costa Rica... basically those where a lot of the settlers were from Northern Spain.

ChicanoRojo, your teachers apparently forgot that in Spain there's a lot of different accents. Ce, ci are pronounced ze, zi in northern accents, but not in southern ones; actually, the worst southern ones sometimes overcompensate with ceceo, pronouncing the s as z (as in that example in one of my posts, "Lunah con eze ar finá"). Most of the emigration to the Americans was from Andalusia and Extremadura, so you guys inherited their accent and evolved from there.

Seseo is always a regional variant, never a physical defect. Ceceo can be a regional variant like for my coworker, or a physical defect (many people go into ceceo when they 'abe a go'd abd deid doze iz clogged).

[Balthisar]

Where was the guy from in Italy? When I was in Florence, I found I could get by reasonably well by speaking Spanish and then trying to understand Italian (they did better then I did, of course). My guess is that if the Italian person had been from Sicily it would have been much harder.
Actually, it was Sicily, Sciacca to be exact. Maybe if here were from Florence, though, I'd have been able to understand better!

[Sapo]

I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the "z" from the "s". In Mexico we don't.
Some people in Venezuela do differentiate their Z's from their S's. And all elementary school teachers do for dictations

[ChicanoRojo]

ChicanoRojo, your teachers apparently forgot that in Spain there's a lot of different accents. Ce, ci are pronounced ze, zi in northern accents, but not in southern ones; actually, the worst southern ones sometimes overcompensate with ceceo, pronouncing the s as z (as in that example in one of my posts, "Lunah con eze ar finá"). Most of the emigration to the Americans was from Andalusia and Extremadura, so you guys inherited their accent and evolved from there.

Well. This was elementary school, so I don't think they would get too far on linguistics w/ seven year olds. The point was that at least as far as I know, the differentiation between "s" and "z" is generally something practiced in Spain . From reading another posts, in certain areas of Venezuela this also the case.

[John Mace]

Actually, it was Sicily, Sciacca to be exact. Maybe if here were from Florence, though, I'd have been able to understand better!
Well, so much for my theory. :)

Or maybe when he spoke to them, he used more "standard" Italian rather than his regional dialect.

As people have noted in other threads about similar languages, people speaking them can often understanding each other when they are making an effort to do so, even if one couldn't understand the other when listening to him speaking to his compatriots.

[Sapo]

Well. This was elementary school, so I don't think they would get too far on linguistics w/ seven year olds. The point was that at least as far as I know, the differentiation between "s" and "z" is generally something practiced in Spain . From reading another posts, in certain areas of Venezuela this also the case.
I think it is not so much a regional thing but more of a personal thing in Venezuela. Then again, we did get a large spanish influx in recent history (both from the civil war and WWII) so we have plenty of models to copy.

And when most teachers do it for dictation, it sounds artificial and just for the purpose of clarifying the spelling.

[Acsenray]

Sorry, wrong thread, I think.

[Hostile Dialect]

Absolutely yes. I am Cuban and when I talk to Argentinians I know they're speaking spanish, but I can't understand more than every other word.

Frankly, I don't even think of Cuba as a Spanish-speaking country because it's so different from other Latin American dialects. River Plate Spanish (roughly Argentinian Spanish, for the uninitiated) is an odd little duck, too; its informal vernacular is pretty unique IME.

Then again, I learned most of my Spanish from a girlfriend from Baja California, Mexico; and a lot of Spanish speakers, even Mexicans, mistake my dialect for Argentinian. (I and my ex pronounce "y" and "ll" like Argentinians; that is, like the "s" in treasure or pleasure.)

Note: this doesn't contradict Polycarp--a number of dialects including River Plate have speakers that range from pronouncing "y" and "ll" anywhere from treasure to shopping to Jones.

My Brazilian friends all tell me they have no trouble understanding spoken/written spanish. But a spaniard in Brazil-he cannot speak or understand portuguese-why is this? many of the verbs are the same.

Portuguese is a pluricentric language, meaning it's not mutually intelligible among speakers of different dialects. That is, if a Brazilian tried to have a conversation with a Portuguese or an Angolan, he would almost feel that they were literally speaking two different languages. Spaniards in Brazil can't understand Portuguese because the Portuguese in Brazil have trouble understanding Portuguese. More info. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_dialects)


Do you seriously have problems understanding a standard British accent?

If by "standard British accent" you mean Received Pronunciation, the standard dialect of middle-class-and-up London, I would imagine almost no Americans have trouble with it. But the UK is amazing in its language variation, and there are a lot of accents within the British Isles that even Britons have trouble with. Last night I saw Hot Fuzz and I missed a couple of lines because of the accents; the protagonist from London met two people in a small English country town who he couldn't understand without translators. They could understand him though--because "everyone and their mum" had seen countless middle-class Londoners on TV and in the movies.

Really, it's hard to find a wide variety of British accents even in British film and TV. It seems like most reasonably successful British actors are Londoners or have conditioned themselves to sound like Londoners. Consider that most Hollywood actors sound like Southern Californians or Midwesterners in 90% of their roles.

[Martha Medea]

Like almost all Latin American Spanish accents, people in the Dominican Republic definitely don't make a distinction between s, the soft c and z. Imagine my surprise ;) when today someone pronounced a z the Spanish way (th) to clarify that the place name he was mentioning was spelled with a z, not an s. I don't think I've ever heard anyone doing that here before. It's almost as if they were saying - this is how z/c really should be pronounced, even if we don't do it that way here.

And Nava - I haven't met that many people from Canarias but one bloke I spoke to could have been Cuban, the accent was so similar.

[An Gadaí]

Slightly off topic but one accent peculiarity I've seen several times on American television and films is that Irish and Scottish accents are seen to be interchangeable to a certain degree. David O'Hara (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0641244/) has been cast in The District and The Departed as an Irish person and to my ears has a quite strong Scottish accent. Then of course Sean Connery has played an Irish character several times without really attempting to modify his accent.

[Caffeine.addict]

Portuguese is a pluricentric language, meaning it's not mutually intelligible among speakers of different dialects. That is, if a Brazilian tried to have a conversation with a Portuguese or an Angolan, he would almost feel that they were literally speaking two different languages. Spaniards in Brazil can't understand Portuguese because the Portuguese in Brazil have trouble understanding Portuguese. More info. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_dialects)




That's not right. I speak Brazilian Portuguese and when I was in Portugal, I didn't have that much trouble with the accent. It took me an afternoon to get used to the accents of some of the people I met in the service industries in Porto but that was the worst of it. They had less trouble with my accent since they get a lot of Brazilian telenovelas in Portugal. Even when I used Brazilian terms, they knew what I meant. An example was I ordered a draft beer using the term chopp, they don't use the term there, but they had heard it on TV.

[Mighty_Girl]

Lunah con eze ar fináThat cracked me up!

I always thought that the strangest versions of Spanish, at least to my Caribbean ears, was that of Northern Spain and Argentina. There's too much Italian in the Argentinian Spanish, and to us it sound just too funny. Luckily I am fluent in Argentinian after years of watching an Argentinian cooking channel (donde hablan un español bastante prolijo ;) ).

The closest I have heard to Dominican Spanish was in Panama, it was much closer than the Spanish from Puerto Rico (with their French-sounding Rs) and Cuba. I never have any trouble understanding people from other Spanish speaking countries, the problems is usually a matter of local slang. One has to be careful, you never now what word has a sexual connotation where.

[Hostile Dialect]

That's not right. I speak Brazilian Portuguese and when I was in Portugal, I didn't have that much trouble with the accent. It took me an afternoon to get used to the accents of some of the people I met in the service industries in Porto but that was the worst of it. They had less trouble with my accent since they get a lot of Brazilian telenovelas in Portugal. Even when I used Brazilian terms, they knew what I meant. An example was I ordered a draft beer using the term chopp, they don't use the term there, but they had heard it on TV.

Huh. Ignorance fought. The Wiki article was my only exposure to the issue, and that made it sound like the typical speaker of Brazilian Portuguese would struggle to communicate in (say) Porto.

Would you say, though, that the difference between the two dialects is unusually large? Compared to, say, Received Pronunciation vs. Standard American English, or Castilian vs. Latin American Spanish?

[Colibri]

The closest I have heard to Dominican Spanish was in Panama, it was much closer than the Spanish from Puerto Rico (with their French-sounding Rs) and Cuba.

That's very interesting. I know that Panamanian Spanish is basically a Caribbean dialect, and perceive similarities with Puerto Rican and Cuban dialects. But I am not familiar with Dominican Spanish. It perhaps has something to do with when the areas fell out of direct contact with Spain - the DR and Panama (as part of Colombia) gained independence by the early 1800s, while Cuba and PR remained colonies until 1898.

[Caffeine.addict]

Huh. Ignorance fought. The Wiki article was my only exposure to the issue, and that made it sound like the typical speaker of Brazilian Portuguese would struggle to communicate in (say) Porto.

Would you say, though, that the difference between the two dialects is unusually large? Compared to, say, Received Pronunciation vs. Standard American English, or Castilian vs. Latin American Spanish?

I'd say that the difference is about the same as Castilian Spanish vs Latin American Spanish. There is a bit more difference than Received pronuniciation and Standard American English, but not much more. There are a few differences in how you might say things and the slang may differ but thats about it. What differs is the way they might pronounce things but that isn't that hard to get used to.

Brazilian telenovelas are shown in Portugal and in the other Portuguese speaking countries. They are shown in other parts of the world as well. I've heard that they are popular in Russia as well.

As a result of that, a lot of Brazilian terms are fairly well understood by other Portuguese speakers. I've met folks from Mozambique as well and didn't have much trouble with their accent either.

[Hostile Dialect]

Well who'da thunk. It's funny how TV seems to be making "New World" dialects--American English, Mexican and Argentinian Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, maybe even Quebecois French?--ubiquituous in places that "should be" influenced more by Europe.