From whence come this Spanish accent?

[Excalibre]

@11811

And to be more precise:

It happens to the letter c only when followed by an e or an i. If followed by an o, a u, or an a, it is pronounced like a k. The z (pronounced “theta” in proper Castilian Spanish) takes the th sound everywhere.

Once again, it doesn’t “happen” to “c” and “z”, the /T/ sound is what those letters represent. See my earlier posts in this very thread.

[Excalibre]

@Dr. Woo

Once again, The Dope provides the answer to a question I had before I even had to ask it! Coincidentally, I just returned from a week in Mexico, and really noticed and wondered about the missing 's" sound in some words. Of course I turned to the SDMB and found this thread right up front.

A somewhat related question: my traveling companions asked me last week how different Mexican Spanish is from, say, that spoken in Spain. My response was that it was pretty much like British English and American English: different words in some cases, different expressions and certainly different accents that might make a Spaniard difficult at times to understand to a Mexican, but it’s the same language. New World Spanish of course is going to diverge from Castillian because it’s been quite some time since this hemisphere was colonized.

Was I correct, or is my mixture of classroom Spanish and Sabado Gigante Spanish screwing me up?

There’s no enormous difference. While some corners of the Spanish speaking world have dialects quite dissimilar from standard varieties, in most of Spain and Latin America, there’s not too terribly much divergence. Seseo has already been discussed. The pronoun system has been restructured some in Latin America - the informal second person plural vosotros is not used outside of deliberately archaic speech in most of Latin America. The second person singular tú has been replaced by vos in some areas (a descendent of the second person plural vos before the otros got attached to it.) The corresponding verb forms are different as well, so tu eres is vos sos; tu tienes is vos tenés.

There’s obviously variation in word usage as well. But on the whole, the language is rarely different enough from place to place to cause serious trouble communicating. American and European Spanish are far more similar than, say, American and European Portuguese.

[11811]

@Excalibre

Once again, it doesn’t “happen” to “c” and “z”, the /T/ sound is what those letters represent. See my earlier posts in this very thread.

Fair enough. I was merely continuing the thought expressed earlier and apparently ignoring your clarification. Hopefully you were able to translate my “happens” and get my point that not every “c” is pronounced as a /T/ (theta).

[Dr.Woo]

Thanks, Excalibre - that’s going to come in handy when I go to Spain next year.

[Bambi_Hassenpfeffer]

@Excalibre

There’s no enormous difference. While some corners of the Spanish speaking world have dialects quite dissimilar from standard varieties, in most of Spain and Latin America, there’s not too terribly much divergence. Seseo has already been discussed. The pronoun system has been restructured some in Latin America - the informal second person plural vosotros is not used outside of deliberately archaic speech in most of Latin America. The second person singular tú has been replaced by vos in some areas (a descendent of the second person plural vos before the otros got attached to it.) The corresponding verb forms are different as well, so tu eres is vos sos; tu tienes is vos tenés.

Slight addition: To get the vos conjugations (in most dialects) for most verbs and tenses, drop the I from the vosotros conjugation (for example, tener: vosotros tenéis therefore vos tenés). The exception (AFAIK – I never use vos) is the present of the -IR verbs, which is the same for both vos and vosotros. As for the imperatives, drop the -D from the vosotros to form the vos.

Vos also takes the same pronouns as tu in non-nominative cases.

[Excalibre]

@Bambi Hassenpfeffer

Vos also takes the same pronouns as tu in non-nominative cases.

Excellent point, which I forgot to mention. So it involves a restructuring of the etymological pronoun system - when using voseo, you’re using what was originally a plural pronoun for the nominative, while continuing to use the originally singular pronouns for other cases.

Even more radical restructuring of the historical pronoun system occurred in Brazilian Portuguese as compared to Continental Portuguese.

[Nava]

@Excalibre

American and European Spanish are far more similar than, say, American and European Portuguese.

I wouldn’t know about the Portuguese (I understand both versions about as well, which isn’t necessarily very well), but for Spanish it’s definitely a lot less of a problem than between, say, Yorkshire and Kentucky.

A lot of it is a matter of whether your momma taught you manners or not. If someone interrupts you to ask about a word they didn’t understand, the polite thing to do is explain or define it and continue once they’ve understood it. Also, TV programs jump overseas both ways so we’re all kind of used to hearing how “the rest” talk. Movies used to be dubbed only once, now they often get double dubbing but that’s pretty silly (although I’m fine with knowing that means the dubbing feeds two families instead of one). Old Disney movies are great as a “melting pot” of accents… the vultures in Jungle Book are Mexican