Similarly does Metropolitan French sound la-de-da to a Québecois?
An Gadaí, do you mean “Madrileños compared to other Castillian-speaking Spaniards”, or “Spaniards compared to Latin American Spanish speakers”?
I meant people from Spain speaking Castillian to other Spanish speakers in the Americas and wherever else. I’m aware in the specific there may be different perceptions depending on region in Spain but I’m talking in the most general, stereotypic sense.
I lived in Spain and frequently an Argentinian accent was used to portray a snobby-type character. I have no idea why this is.
As far as Spanish accents sounding posh to other Castilian speakers, what you need to be aware of is that there are many, many different regional accents in Spain. Every Andalusian province has its own separate accent, all of which are distinct from Madrid accents, which are distinct from the multiple northern accents, etc.
In general, I’m not aware of any perception of Spanish people being “posher” than Latin Americans in the way that British people are perceived to be posher than North Americans.
But not every Brit sounds posh.
There is some sort of “acquired” accent in Spanish. The regional accent might still be present but greatly reduced. I call it Standard Spanish (see newscasters, politicians), that sounds posh. Or more accurately, it sounds intellectual.
Depends a lot on the specific accent and on the person. Anecdote isn’t the plural of data, but:
- Aragonese and Andalusian accents are often used in Spanish movies and jokes to portray “country bumpkin.” Mind you, quite a few comedians from those regions have exaggerated their accents into gold.
*, * and * There are parts of Colombia where the accent is about as Castilian as in Valladolid, my first reaction to many of them is “funny, he doesn’t have an accent” (then I realize he does, it simply happens to be the same as mine). I’ve been accused by a USMC sergeant who was recruiting at my US Uni of “copying a Colombian accent” and had to explain that they got the accent from us, thank you much. A Colombian coworker whose father was from Sevilla spent his 15th summer there at his grandma’s: for the first time in his life he was surrounded by people who talked by his Dad - and his Andalusian cousins made fun of him for “speaking like the TV” :smack: - Conversely in Costa Rica, those of us with hard Andalusian accents (Huelva and Granada, only they said Güerba and Granaá) had communication problems; those with more “Castilian” accents (northern and southern Navarra, Cantabria and Madrid) got “oh, my, you sound like the guys on TVE! So sexy/cute/cool!” (Spanish Public TV, or TVE, has an International channel which can be viewed in all of Latin America; many local chains record their programs and re-emit them shamelessly… original TVE logo and all, which they wouldn’t get if they’d paid for the program)
So to some people it sounds posh, to some it sounds affected, and sometimes those of us who more or less have it (my natural accent is closer to Aragonese, but basically all I need to do to go “Castilian” is stop using -ico for diminutives, avoid localisms and make sure I stress every word in the right syllable; we don’t have strange grammar) may find ourselves on the receiving end of anything from hugs from Cubans saying “ooooh, from the Motherland!” to questions about why the hell are you trying to speak like a TV.
A lot of people can’t tell an accent from a cow, too.
Recent conversation, in Bilbao. Almost everybody at the table was from Bilbao or within one hour of it. One of the guys mentioned that he’d moved to Bilbao following a woman and someone asked
“oh, where are you from, then?”
Me, before I could stop myself: “this one? From Getafe, man, with that accent.” (southern Madrid)
People around the table: 
The guy in question, laughing: “ok, yes I am, not just from Madrid, but from Getafe. But how did you figure it out?”
me: “AJ you kiddin’ me? You guyj turn every final s into a J! An’ anything elj you can, you’re the only people who say Ma-drij instead of Ma-drí, Ma-driz or Ma-drid.” (Saying Mad-rid, making sure you enunciate the final -d clearly, sounds overdone)
Dude was laughing so hard he had to stop eating. People who’d known and worked with him for two years hadn’t noticed…
No. Spaniard accents are not commonly thought of as posh in Latin America. In fact, some Spaniard accents are actually used to convey either old school or a backwards mentality in humor
Argentinians have a reputation for arrogance (at least as far as ethnic jokes go). The classic joke is the ad for any product being “the best in the world and one of the best in Argentina”.
So what would be a “hillbilly” accent in Spanish? I mean like Jethro Clampet?
The only time I’ve seen “The Lion King” was in Spanish, and I recall that there were some characters that had Cuban accents. I don’t know what that was supposed to mean.
Hey i resemble that remark! 
I have no idea who the frag that guy is, but it would change by location. In Spain as I said it can be an Aragonese accent or an Andalusian one - those accents, if not exaggerated, do not necessarily imply “hillbilly,” but it’s difficult to get more “hillbilly” (no six-fingered children from excess intermarriage, tho) than a Paco Martinez Soria movie. Although if you’re looking for coal country specifically it’s got to be Asturias, man…
Something else, which has come up in previous threads re. accents: same as a certain Colombian accent is very Castillian, same as accents in Spain vary a lot, there’s a lot of other cases of accents on both sides of the pond being close enough to be mistaken. One of the Canary Islands (I’m never sure which one) has an accent that sounds very much Rioplatense, as do Italian footballers living in Galicia (no surprise there, as those were two of the biggest ethnic groups to move to the Rio de la Plata region - it’s akin to discovering an influence of Irish in Glaswegian).
guizot, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. An accent can be used to convey some subtext, but it’s not every time, and it’s not automatic. The vultures in Jungle Book and the crows in Dumbo have the same accent, but all it means is that they got dubbed by the same actors. Promise.
Seriously, the Spanish accent sounds extremely funny to us Argentinians, probably because our “Rioplatense” dialect is a lot different from it, to the point that when i see Spanish movies, if they talk to fast, i have to “rewind” and hear it again a couple of times in order to understand what is being said.
Some girls think its sexy (i think in the same way that american girls think british accent is sexy).
It’s often imitated (poorly) when telling “Gallegos” jokes (in jokes and such things all Spaniards are “Gallegos”), those jokes push the stereotype of Spaniards as dumb, like Polish jokes in the U.S.
One of the funnier things about the difference between the Argentinan dialect and Spanish is that the verb “Coger” means “to get something” in Spain and “To fuck something” in Argentina :O.
I used to have something of a (facetious) vendetta against spaniards for they horrible translations of Comics and Videogames (The intro of the Heavy Gear game was something to behold!), to the point of jokingly refer to my “secret plan to invade Spain and forcibly reeducate them”.
I forgave them for all that when I discovered the singers Sabina and Serrat and the author Arturo Perez Reverte.
frodo, if it’s any consolation, those translations get bashed a lot in Spain too.
I was in a round table re. “professional translators vs esquiroles” once and the only translator there who had a related degree (i.e., the only one who wasn’t an esquirol) was - the one who always, always, every single time, screws up any geographical reference and calls any “gun” or “weapon” a “revólver”. And she translated the Punisher! ARGH!
You mean “El Castigador”
Note to the legion of Spanish translators that read the dope:
Repeat after me.
Proper Names are NOT translated
Proper Names are NOT translated
Proper Names are **NOT **translated (Wolverine != Lobezno for Christ’s Sake!)
I asked a Portugese mate if Spanish and Portugese were mutually comprehensible.
He said that he could understand what they were saying but it sounded as though they were speaking with a mouthful of bubble gum.
That wasn’t decided by the translators. Like translating names of people and (urghhhh) places in WoW, it was decided by the copyright owners. (Forjaz? who the bleeding… eyes of the baby jesus in the cross came up with that?)
For those still reading, “Castigador” would be a direct translation of “Punisher” (and yes, it’s the name that Frank Castle, born Castiglione, got in Spanish), but it also means a pimp :smack:
Ahem
That double meaning is not unique to Argentina.
It is not used that way in Puerto Rico, but after having dealt with people from other parts of Latin America, I ended up knowing the difference.
When that particular word came up during a project involving people from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela, a Latin American proposed pillar.
You guys get a cookie for guessing what that one means in Spain…
We ending up settling on “jalar” as the only verb meaning “to grab” we could come up with without anybody getting the giggles.
Jethro appears at 0:11 in this clip. His character, and the television show Beverly Hillbillies are iconic in American culture. If you call someone a “Jethro”, a precise mental image comes to mind for most all Americans.
I’m fond of films from Mexico’s Golden Age/Epoca de Oro; Houston has several Spanish language TV channels.
En tiempos de la inquisición stars the great Jorge Negrete as an upper class Spaniard–who speaks like an upper class Mexican. But the villains of the Inquisition all use the lisping Castilian accent.