Just wondering. We have several dialects in English-speaking North America. (Perhaps not as many as in the UK, where, I’ve heard, the speech you hear in the streets can change noticeably from one county to the next.) Is the Spanish spoken in Mexico the same as the Spanish spoken in Argentina?
I’m sure someone can expound but my wife is a Spanish language interpreter for a hospital (she was born & raised in Peru) and she would say that there is a ton of difference. Enough that she can usually guess where a speaker originates from based on how they speak. I can ask her for details when she gets home if some other Doper hasn’t already given you the run down.
I wouldn’t call the differences a dialect, though. Although there may be some bona fide dialects in indigenous regions, but then again you might just call them pidgins.
The Wikipedia article though seems to contradict my traditional understanding of what a dialect is versus regional variations.
In the same way English is spoken in the US in comparison to Australia. There may be words that are used in different form or context, but the Spanish used in Mexico, generally speaking, is the same Spanish used in Argentina. As in English, of course, there will be accents, native words, etc that may be present in Mexico than in Argentina and vice versa.
FWIW, Spanish has a had a more centralized and standardization of the language than English. What usually stands out for Spanish speakers is the accents and certain words that may be used more in one particular country than in others.
Yes, absolutely there are. Right now I take Spanish calls in a call center and I hear all sorts of different dialects rolling in every day. Puerto Ricans tend to be the hardest to understand because they speak rapid-fire and generally eliminate the ‘‘s’’ from the end of words and replace ‘‘s’’ with a ‘‘th’’ sound if it comes in the middle of the word. (Example, ‘’¿Cómo estás?’’ becomes ‘’¿Cómo ethtá?’’) I’ve heard other Spanish-speakers tease the Puerto Ricans for their ‘‘es de…’’ tic, which is a kind of filler like ‘‘um…’’ when they are trying to think of how to put something.
When I was in Mexico, there was a marked difference between the dialect of the city and the dialect of the country. The other day I had a caller from Mexico ask me if I was from Argentina, presumably because he was hearing an accent but couldn’t place it. (Yes, that is a very high complement, believe me, my Spanish is very inconsistent but I suppose my pronunciation is good enough to fool some people sometimes.)
I am told that Ecuador, on the other hand, is a great place for language learners because Ecuadorians speak slowly and clearly.
Then there is vocab. In certain parts of Latin America, ‘‘coger’’ means ‘‘to pick.’’
In other parts, it is a highly offensive word for having sex.
In (I think) Colombia, young girls call their girlfriends ‘‘maricón’’ as a term of endearment. In the Caribbean, this means ‘‘fag.’’
And I do remember a Mexican soap opera I watched where the ‘‘unnapreciative husband’’ mocked his wife for her pronunciation of certain words, telling her it made her sound stupid and poor. (Cannot for the life of me remember the grammar, but it indicated she was from the slums of Puerto Rico.)
I think it is safe to say, as a general rule, that dialects exist within all languages, not just English. I seem to remember once being told in a linguistics class that Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese are technically considered different dialects of one Chinese language, but in fact are mutually indistinguishable.
Hmmmm. That’s a new one for me. I do know that “'maricón” is a derogatory word for homosexual in all of Latin America. I just read the REA and it’s the only definition it gives, i.e., “fag.”
Is pronunciation or regional accents considered dialects? 
Just because you say tomato and I say tomato, it’s still tomato. Is it not? 
I was familiar with the derogatory connotation from a course I had on ‘‘Homosexuality in the Caribbean and its Diaspora,’’ (yes, that is the actual title of the course) but the non-offensive reference was in a book I read on Spanish regionalisms… I think it’s Hide This Spanish Book. The accuracy of the book is of course open to debate.
Re: the definition of dialect, I think you’re probably right that pronunciation doesn’t figure into the definition, but I’m not sure. There’s got to be a linguist around here to set us straight.
To give an English example, in my intro linguistics course we had a segment on African American Vernacular English dialect, which has some marked differences from what is often considered ‘‘standard’’ English, but follows strict grammatical rules and the changes actually make a lot of sense once you examine their structure.
I can’t imagine that Spanish–indeed, all languages–would not have something akin to this in some way.
Living in Florida, BG, you probably hear a lot of Caribbean Spanish, so you must hear the difference between that and what you hear on Univsion.
olivesmarch4th mentions Colombian Spanish, but doesn’t note that Colombia has a Caribbean cost, where people speak like Puerto Ricans or Cubans or coastal Venezuelans.
I never heard “maricon” as a term of endearment, but I spent most of my time on the coast when I lived there.
Any language spoken over such a vast area is going to have dialect variation. Even Swiss-German, spoken over a relatively small area, varies a lot.
FWIW Cubans sound like they have turbo boost when they get talking.
All right, here’s what the book says, for what it’s worth:
And then beneath, an italicized note:
I guess that could mean a lot of things. Must add the obligatory, ‘‘never actually been to Colombia’’ disclaimer.
Not a Spanish speaker here or even a student of the language, but I do remember reading somewhere that Argentina has preserved some older grammatical forms held over from colonial times that Spain herself and the rest of Latin America has lost – for example, use of a formal second person plural form vosotros. (Or maybe it was some other form where everyone else uses vosotros – as I said, I’m not really familiar with Spanish, just sort of exposed to it all the time.)
Just in case, never, ever call a guy “maricón” if you want to show appreciation.
I can say for sure that the pronunciation of Spanish is quite a bit different in Argentina than it is most (if not all) other places.
The major difference I’m aware of is the pronunciation of double “L”, which is “y” in most of the Spanish speaking world and “zh” in Argentina.
My understanding is that Mandarin and Cantonese are really two completely different languages, which both use the same written language.
I’ve been told that Arabic has many different dialects, and some are not mutually intelligible.
“Vosotros” is the formal of “Ustedes” such as in English “Thou” to “You.”
“Vosotros” as far as I know is still used in Spain and in particular regions, but “vosotros” is used also for informal conversation.
Argentinians say “vos” rather than “vosotros”. “Oye! Vos!” “Vos” is the informal and “Ustedes” the semi-formal.
As far as the rest of Latin America…it depends. As far as Mexico, we don’t use it. We consider it archaic and snobish. There may some small groups that may use it, but I have never run into a fellow Mexican that uses “vosotros” in everyday conversation.
Of course there are. Listening to Cubans have a conversation with each other, for example, is like trying to catch locusts in a Biblical plague. You may ‘get’ a word here and there, but God help you if you want to actually understand what’s going on.
As for Mexico and Argentina, two dialects of the same language in the same hemisphere could hardly be more different. Mexican Spanish is closer to Castilian Spanish (the collection of Spanish dialects native to Spain) than many other Latin American dialects; OTOH, River Plate Spanish or castellano rioplatense (the dialect spoken in Buenos Aires, some of Argentina and a substantial chunk of Uruguay) is a unique (to put it mildly) or maddeningly deviant (from the perspective of an eager second-language learner) dialect among Spanish speakers:
Yeísmo, the practice of pronouncing “ll” and “y” as the same sound, is pretty common in other dialects, but is prevalent in Rioplatense specifically as sheísmo and zheísmo. Sheísmo is the practice of pronouncing this sound like the “sh” in she, shoe, shower, etc, while zheísmo is the practice of pronouncing it like the “s” in measure, treasure, leisure, etc. These are both fairly distinctive quantities of Argentinian speech.
Fricatives like /s/ and /f/ tend to dissolve into /h/ or disappear altogether at the end of syllables; the final “r” sound in verb infinitives tends to be dropped.
The intonation patterns of Rioplatense Spanish resemble Italian in a way that no other Spanish dialect does, reflecting the high Italian population of Buenos Aires.
Voseo, an almost uniquely Rioplatense bastardization of the informal second-person singular, can drive second-language learners and transplants batty. It (pretty much) uses the conjugation of Spain’s informal second-person plural (vosotros) and shoves it into the singular form. (Ustedes is used for both informal second-person plural and formal second-person plural, as in the rest of Latin America.) I like to imagine that voseo can make a conversation between a Mexican, a Rioplatense and a Spaniard of equal age and socioeconomic class resemble an endless bullfight where the majestic matadors have had their swords stolen and must rely on sporks instead.
Short answer: Yes. 
Although as RGVChicano alluded to, those differences are abnormal in Spanish, which is a highly standardized language with a centralized language academy.
I think what you call “regional variations” are termed “dialects” in linguist-speak, and there’s precious little meaningful difference between those dialects and actual languages. It’s often said in linguistic circles that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. Take away the geopolitical considerations and “dialect” and “language” mean pretty much the same thing. The only logical basis for telling the difference between a language and a dialect is mutual intelligibility (ie, can speakers from each group understand each other?) and that sounds fine and dandy until you realize that:
An adult from New York City and a child from rural Scotland may both speak English, but they may very well not understand a single word the other is saying.
Speakers of Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish) can understand each other to varying degrees; in particular, Norwegian speakers can understand Danish and Swedish almost perfectly.
Speakers of the Low German dialects of northern Germany can hold conversations with Dutch speakers across the border just fine; in some cases, those two groups may understand each other better than the northern Germans can understand German speakers from the southeast of that country!
Portuguese speakers often understand Spanish, Ladino and Galician well.
Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects of the Chinese language, but are not mutually intelligible.
As for your original confusion, this list of English dialects may help you divine just what the linguists mean by “dialect”.
Some parts of Mexico, including (I think) rural Baja California, practice sheísmo, which sounds very Argentinian. I picked it up from my girlfriend of a few years ago, who was from Baja. Until I made an effort to standardize my Spanish, I got that very same question (well, more like “Did you learn Spanish from an Argentinian?”) from Mexicans who heard me speak the language.
Man oh man, euphemisms in Spanish. Terminology for sex, sexual positions, sexual orientations, genitalia, etc. may be one of the things that varies most between Latin American dialects. FWIW, I’ve always found “escoger” to be a safe alternative to “coger” for non-sexual use.
I’ve observed the latter usage in Puerto Ricans, so I think you’re onto something.
Sure it does. I’m not technically a linguist, BTW, but I am a linguistics student and I stay somewhat up-to-date on new developments in the field.
As I noted above (I’m nuking it from orbit), Mandarin and Cantonese are generally considered dialects of one language, Chinese, even though they’re not mutually intelligible. It’s mostly a political distinction. Again, the difference between “language” and “dialect” isn’t generally considered all that important in the world of linguistics, in no small part because the question of what differentiates one from the other makes our heads hurt.
My friend from Madrid pronounces this something like “mighty-cone”. Is this the same word, and is his pronunciation standard, or a dialect/accent?
Maybe just my untrained ear fooling me?
How would it be pronounced in Carribean Spanish?
That’s standard, and your untrained ear is fooling you. The first vowel is like “o” in object or soft. American ears tend to parse spoken language in a way that makes sense to the Americanized brain: since you subconsciously expect an “i” there, the phonology center in your brain puts one there.
ETA: There’s nothing uniquely American about that, and I don’t mean to imply that there is. Your brain is set up to distinguish “language” from “noise”, but if you hear something that falls into the “language I don’t speak” category, your processing center just gets confused and figures, “what the hell, let’s see what we can make out of this”. Even if you’re consciously aware that it’s not English, you’ll hear it in an English-like pattern unless you spend a good deal of effort learning the vowels and such of that language.
It would sound pretty much the same in Carribean Spanish AIUI, but then, that’s the kind of word that isn’t going to vary much in pronunciation from one region to another. You know, like in English: “pin” and “pen” may vary a lot, as may “Mary”, “merry” and “marry”, but a word like (for example) “baseball” isn’t going to sound that different from one dialect to the next.
Maricón would to you probably sound like “mah-dee-CONE”, with the ee and the CONE shorter than they would be in English.
Which, when taken with olivesmarch4th’s comment about español ecuatoriano being easy, makes me wonder if I’m some sort of freak. For me, los varios españoles caribenos are easier to understand than Mexican or various South American Spanishes – but that’s got to be a function of where I live and where the Spanish-speakers around me are from.
I’m so used to Caribbean accents (mostly Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban) that the few Ecuadorians and Peruvians I know must think I’m stupid some times with the difficulty I have understanding them.
Also:
Surely you mean informal? I know Argentina’s weird, but I thought their weirdness with this was just in the “Vos tenés” nonsense.