# Guatemalan Spanish/Spanish dialect? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2018, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161 "2018-08-24T02:45:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/21 "2018-08-25T08:05:17Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > That second one is pretty hilarious. > > As mentioned, Colombia alone has several different accents. In the coastal areas they speak Caribbean-type Spanish (which also includes Panamanian, Dominican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican), which is very fast and drops half the letters, while in the highlands they speak a highland type of Spanish which to my ear is much easier to understand. In general, I find highland Spanish as in Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru the easiest to understand. Argentinian might be the most distinctive American accent on several counts. I’ve had a Colombian Highlander coworker whose Southern Spanish cousins made fun of him for “speaking like the TV people” (hearing him on the phone with his mother, it was the kind of dialect that makes academics swoon), and another one whose everyday “business-like” dialect was good enough for Spanish TV News and whose home dialect was so close to mine I could place which village his family apparently came from (Navarrese Jews; his home dialect happens to match ek-amazingly-sactly that of a village where I know there used to be a small Jewish community). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/22 "2018-08-25T08:24:51Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Thank you for the responses. I wasn’t clear in my initial post–I was referring to our TEXT communications, where boy=voy and grasias=gracias. Obviously I understand the spoken word gracias (however mentally spelt) when she says it, and if I’m working my way through a verbal conversation I might get from context what she meant by “boy.” It sounds as if she’s transcribing the way she speaks; she’s using the Spanish version of phonics. While this will make things difficult with google translate until you figure out which are her most common misspellings, it’s pretty common in people with little schooling and in fact those of us with better spelling tend to be OK with it. To us it’s more like “someone who forgets apostrophes, since they arent pronounced” than like the people who think “apo’strophe mean’s here come’s an 's”. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/23 "2018-08-25T14:47:32Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > [Here](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=15249773), more than you ever wanted to learn about seseo 🙂 > > **SmartAleq** , you just got given homework: read all those threads. Every single post. Then write 1000000 times “I will not refer to standard Spanish pronounciation as a lisp.” > [@](#): > > Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms. That’s a short reading assignment, **Nava**. Your homework assignment is writing a short script to print “I’ll learn how to link to a search” 1000000 times. [Here](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=seseo+site%3Aboards.straightdope.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8), **SmartAleq** , I’m sucking my way through learning Spanish, and was interested in learning more. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/24 "2018-08-25T14:50:39Z")
Must agree with **Nava** ’s last post as to the source of the spellings. > [@Colibri](#): > > Intially, and after m or n, b/v are pronounced much as English “b.” In other situations it is not quite the same; to my ears it is somewhat intermediate between English b and v (but b and v are still pronounced the same). Bilabial fricative, it’s called. You pronounce it with the lips, not the teeth. I’ve heard and seen a lot of people on my Puertorrican TV as well as on Univisión and Telemundo using the labio-dental “English V” even for initial “B”, and it’s fingernails on blackboard to my ears. But evidently not for enough other members of the public to make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/25 "2018-08-25T15:04:37Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > That’s a short reading assignment, **Nava**. Your homework assignment is writing a short script to print “I’ll learn how to link to a search” 1000000 times. > > [Here](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=seseo+site%3Aboards.straightdope.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8), **SmartAleq** , I’m sucking my way through learning Spanish, and was interested in learning more. That’s strange, I’ve linked my searches many other times and they were fine. [Let’s try again](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=15252983). For me it works, maybe the way the Dope provides links for searches has changed? I’ve included both the word “seseo” as key and my own username as “poster who’s up to here of talking about seseo”. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/26 "2018-08-25T15:11:48Z")
Wait, I failed to answer this question… > [@Colibri](#): > > I’m interested in hearing from **Nava** or other native Spanish speakers as to how an English speaker pronouncing “v” in Spanish like English “v” is perceived. Is this something that’s viewed as part of an English accent in Spanish, or do Spanish speakers even notice the difference? If it’s a primary Anglophone (including those of Hispanic descent) making a good faith effort at actually speaking Spanish, their keeping the B and V as in English is to me no issue whatsoever. That is a harmess matter of accent. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/27 "2018-08-25T15:13:40Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That’s strange, I’ve linked my searches many other times and they were fine. [Let’s try again](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=15252983). That one worked, at least for now. It links to a search id, and I’m not sure that those persist for very long after they are made. I was just ribbing you for that one, really. But did you think that linking to a page in Spanish was going to help someone who didn’t know the correct term? I understand Spanish well enough to read it, but it’s still pretty short on details. 😃 Either way, now that I knew what it was called, it was easy to find [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanish_coronal_fricatives) wiki page. It certainly has more than I needed to know, including that there’s no evidence linking it to a member of the royalty with an actual lisp. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/28 "2018-08-25T15:25:29Z")
I thought linking to DRAE might help someone who is trying to improve his Spanish (DRAE being the Spanish dictionary) and who clearly knows how to use google translate (which isn’t half-bad for the most frequent translation pair in the WWW). I’ve got a question about the “royal” thing. The first time I heard it was from Trevor Noah a few weeks back, now from you. Where did you hear it? In his case I’d thought he’d been trolled by someone in Spain\*, but if you’d hear it elsewhere it seems the trolling is older. Just as an additional linguistic curiosity, some people think the Spanish word _trola_ (meaning “lie” as per DRAE, but more “a lie intended to pull someone’s leg until it springs back, and one which is evidently a lie if the target would just stop and think” in current use) comes from the English trolling, but it’s medieval. - in theory the appropriate response to “stupid words” is “deaf ears”, but sometimes it may be a nice copy of the Golden Gate Bridge with extra arches. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/29 "2018-08-25T17:21:52Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > That second one is pretty hilarious. That’s Joanna Hausmann. She also did [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n85ya9Q8YyI) (in Spanish but it has English subtitles) about the various accents in English-speaking countries ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/30 "2018-08-25T17:33:37Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’ve got a question about the “royal” thing. The first time I heard it was from Trevor Noah a few weeks back, now from you. Where did you hear it? In his case I’d thought he’d been trolled by someone in Spain\*, but if you’d hear it elsewhere it seems the trolling is older. I’m sure I must have heard that story when I first took Spanish in high school in the 1960s. My first Spanish teacher was from Madrid and the Puerto Ricans in my class thought her accent was pretty funny. Wiki cites a researcher who debunked the legend as early as 1947, so it’s been around a while. > [@](#): > > Castilian ‘lisp’ > A persistent urban legend claims that the prevalence of the sound /θ/ in Spanish can be traced back to a Spanish king who spoke with a lisp, and whose pronunciation spread by prestige borrowing to the rest of the population. This myth has been discredited by scholars for lack of evidence.[9] Lundeberg (1947) traces the origins of the legend back to a chronicle of Pero López de Ayala stating that Peter of Castile “lisped a little” (“ceceaba un poco”) however he reigned in the 14th century and the sound /θ/ began to develop in the 16th century (see below). I am currently working with Spaniards from Barcelona and Sevilla who _don’t_ pronounce c’s and z’s as th. (The most immediately noticeable thing about Peninsular Spanish to me is the use of the second person plural verb and pronoun forms, which are jarring because I never hear them in Latin America.) ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/31 "2018-08-25T17:51:21Z")
Thank you, for some reason I hadn’t run into that particular bit of stupidity. Sevillanos definitely don’t pronounce /θ/. The ones from Barcelona are unexpected, although they may be “Andalusians from Catalonia” (note that the expression is too often intended as a pejorative and not merely a description). A lot of towns in Vallès and in Barcelona’s Metro area have Andalusian accents and people who are quite sick of hearing that they’re not Catalan [enough] despite having been born in Catalonia of born-in-Catalonia parents, always attended school in Catalan, etc. Isn’t xenophobia great? They may also be Catalan-as-first-language speakers who mix Catalan and Spanish; in Catalan Barcelona has an /s/, not a /θ/ (“barsalona”, if y’all will pardon the transcription to Spanish). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/32 "2018-08-25T18:29:28Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’ve got a question about the “royal” thing. The first time I heard it was from Trevor Noah a few weeks back, now from you. Where did you hear it? In his case I’d thought he’d been trolled by someone in Spain\*, but if you’d hear it elsewhere it seems the trolling is older. > [@Colibri](#): > > I’m sure I must have heard that story when I first took Spanish in high school in the 1960s. My first Spanish teacher was from Madrid and the Puerto Ricans in my class thought her accent was pretty funny. Wiki cites a researcher who debunked the legend as early as 1947, so it’s been around a while. I heard it from my Spanish language teacher when I was in high school in the seventies. So, true or false, the story isn’t some recent invention. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/33 "2018-08-25T19:08:35Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I thought linking to DRAE might help someone who is trying to improve his Spanish (DRAE being the Spanish dictionary) and who clearly knows how to use google translate (which isn’t half-bad for the most frequent translation pair in the WWW). OK, reasonable assumptions. > [@Nava](#): > > I’ve got a question about the “royal” thing. The first time I heard it was from Trevor Noah a few weeks back, now from you. Where did you hear it? In his case I’d thought he’d been trolled by someone in Spain\*, but if you’d hear it elsewhere it seems the trolling is older. Yeah, as **Collibri** noted, it predates my birth. I first heard it from a girlfriend who generally enjoyed bagging on the royals of Europe. It’s good to hear that one’s almost certainly not true. > [@Nava](#): > > Just as an additional linguistic curiosity, some people think the Spanish word _trola_ (meaning “lie” as per DRAE, but more “a lie intended to pull someone’s leg until it springs back, and one which is evidently a lie if the target would just stop and think” in current use) comes from the English trolling, but it’s medieval. > > - in theory the appropriate response to “stupid words” is “deaf ears”, but sometimes it may be a nice copy of the Golden Gate Bridge with extra arches. Heh, I learned several things there. Thankya! ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2018, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161/34 "2018-08-25T19:10:01Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Sevillanos definitely don’t pronounce /θ/. The ones from Barcelona are unexpected, although they may be “Andalusians from Catalonia” (note that the expression is too often intended as a pejorative and not merely a description). A lot of towns in Vallès and in Barcelona’s Metro area have Andalusian accents and people who are quite sick of hearing that they’re not Catalan [enough] despite having been born in Catalonia of born-in-Catalonia parents, always attended school in Catalan, etc. Isn’t xenophobia great? > > They may also be Catalan-as-first-language speakers who mix Catalan and Spanish; in Catalan Barcelona has an /s/, not a /θ/ (“barsalona”, if y’all will pardon the transcription to Spanish). The ones from Barcelona have weird last names they they told me are of Basque origin. I do not, however, have the impression they are native Basque or Catalan speakers. Someone else I have worked with actually is a native Catalan speaker, and she has an accent in Spanish that even I can pick as distinctive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guatemalan-spanish-spanish-dialect/820161.md?page=1)