Learning Argentine Spanish

[Nava]

@Pyper

The Spanish I was taught in school seemed to be some bizarro amalgam of the vocabularies from multiple countries. Vosotros was de-emphasized and we were taught the generic Latin American accent, but a lot of the vocabulary did not match up with the Spanish I am familiar with people actually speaking here in California. For instance, we were taught “coche” for car, whereas people actually say “carro,” “boligrafo” for “pen” whereas “lapicera” is more commonly used, and “cuaderno” for “folder,” where people just usually say “libro.”

A cuaderno is not a folder, it’s a notebook; in Spain a bolígrafo is a ballpoint pen whereas a lapicera is one of those rechargeable pencil things and a lapicero or lápiz is a pencil - are ballpoint pens called lapicera in Cali? Also Spain-Spanish, a folder is a carpeta and libro means book.

Colibri, we were taught the Queen’s English (it seems to be difficult to find good educational materials for American, actually); my teachers used to raise their hands to Heaven in frustration over how the bloody blazes had I managed to come up with an American accent when I had never been to the US or watched any shows or movies in US-anian. My theory is that somehow the mixture of Spanish, Catalan, Irish-English and Her Majesty’s had produced something similar to US-anian.

[Colibri]

@Nava

Colibri, we were taught the Queen’s English (it seems to be difficult to find good educational materials for American, actually); my teachers used to raise their hands to Heaven in frustration over how the bloody blazes had I managed to come up with an American accent when I had never been to the US or watched any shows or movies in US-anian.

It makes sense to teach the Queen’s English (or the King’s Spanish) if you’re learning either language in Europe, unless you’re specifically intending to use the languages in the Americas.

The first English/Spanish dictionary I bought was Collins, which primarily uses British English and Castillian Spanish (but includes Americanisms). This turned out to frequently lead to confusion when I was trying to understand anything written in Latin American Spanish, so I’ve had to buy others that have primarily American usages.

[overlyverbose]

@Nava

Hombre, since you’re going to be dealing mostly with people who are (they or their close ancestors) from Mexico or Central America, what I’d recommend is Mexican, as Colibri said. Argentinian happens to be one of the most distinct Spanish dialects: there’s enough differences between it and the dialects you’re likely to encounter that the course will probably lead to confusion rather than synergy.

Quoted for truth. I learned to speak Spanish by living in Chile, which is just over the Andes from Argentina. It took me a long time to make heads or tails of what Argentines were saying even after I was fluent.

[Nava]

@Colibri

It makes sense to teach the Queen’s English (or the King’s Spanish) if you’re learning either language in Europe, unless you’re specifically intending to use the languages in the Americas.

The first English/Spanish dictionary I bought was Collins, which primarily uses British English and Castillian Spanish (but includes Americanisms). This turned out to frequently lead to confusion when I was trying to understand anything written in Latin American Spanish, so I’ve had to buy others that have primarily American usages.

Only, the immense majority of foreign speakers of English end up speaking something a lot closer to American Standard than to BBC English - and having your spelling taught one way but your phonetics end up the other simply ends up leading to a lot of confusion; same experience you had with the Collins.

[Colibri]

@Nava

Only, the immense majority of foreign speakers of English end up speaking something a lot closer to American Standard than to BBC English - and having your spelling taught one way but your phonetics end up the other simply ends up leading to a lot of confusion; same experience you had with the Collins.

Given that neither American nor British spelling conforms very strictly to English phonetics (although American is somewhat simplified) I’m surprised that this would be a source of confusion.

[Nava]

It was confusing for you, yet you’re surprised it’s confusing for others?

[Colibri]

@Nava

It was confusing for you, yet you’re surprised it’s confusing for others?

I don’t understand why learning British spelling and American phonetics would lead to more confusion than learning American spelling in the first place. (Which is what I think you implied. Maybe I misunderstood your point.) American spelling doesn’t conform to the phonetics either.

In Spanish it doesn’t make much difference. While pronunciation rules vary regionally, the spelling of particular sounds is (mostly) consistent within a region.