Is Mexican Spanish fairly understandable to someone from Spain? Don’t laugh, it’s a serious question! English is essentially English, but there are accents and dialects that make communication difficult, same with Arabic, so I figure Spanish has to be in the same boat.
You get where this is going–what’s the Dope on Mexican Spanish: Dialect? Accent? Model of perfect high-society elocution?
Let it be known that I’m an American with a decent understanding of what is taught under the heading of “conversational Spanish” at the high school/college level.
That said, my impression has always been that- as you suspect- a discussion of the differences in the Spanish language with regard to Mexico and Spain is analogous to a discussion of the differences in the English language with regard to America and England. Naturally there are differences in slang, and speakers of “Mexican Spanish” generally eschew the second-person plural (vosotros) verb conjugation form as it is often regarded as excessively formal. Since the use of this conjugation is something of a courtesy in Spain, I suppose it is possible that a subset of Spaniards might view Mexican Spanish as “low-class” but it’d probably be better to let someone who, ya know, actually lives there to comment on that. 
My gut feeling is that they’re both aware of how “the other guy does it” and are capable of adjusting as needed. There might be a pause here and there for clarification, but it wouldn’t be terribly hard.
Well. Mexicans and all of us Latinos speak Castellano or Castillian Spanish. So. Yes. We all understand e/a other pretty well. Pronunciation aside, we don’t speak a dialect if by dialect you define it as “[…] a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed, but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and grammar.” [Wikipedia] Also from Wikipedia, “The differences between Spanish from Spain and Mexican Spanish are no greater than those one might find when comparing American and British English.” Of course, there are words that come Nahuatl or other Native Mexican languages that come into our vocabulary, but either they are regional or understood at an international level. For example, turkey (as in the bird), is “pavo” in spanish, but in Mexico we may use “pavo” or nahuat derived “guajolote” (derived from huexolotl ).
One thing that is is worth emphasizing, is that you don’t have to learn a new Spanish just because you going to speaking to somebody from a different Latin American country. Same way with English. You don’t have to learn Australian English, South African English, etc.
An outmoded. English had “Thou”, but pretty much replaced it with “You.” To Mexican ears, “vosotros” sounds high falluting and outmoded.
And it depends from what medium you are exchanging information. Most mainstream media (press, tv, radio, and internet) from Spanish speaking countries try to avoid using local usage of words, try to use vocabulary that is found in Diccionario de la Lengua Española de la Real Academia Española as their basis, and generally avoid pronunciation that is hard on the ears. Same with English. Many of us who live in the US can follow closely BBC news, watch Rugby matches from Australia, and listen to EPL games over the internet without much problem.
My older brother learned his Spanish in Barcelona, and works as a court interpreter in Portland, OR (so, most Spanish speakers around are from Mexico). His wife is Peruvian. Everybody seems to understand each other. I think she talks kinda fast and slurry, but my California/Mexican accent seems to get across. Like others have said, its like UK/USA/Australia. Sometimes tough, but totally workable.
Alot of spanish speakers taht live near the border, or in the US code switch between Spanish and English. For example on a construction job you might hear.
Spanish, Spanish, Spanish, Spanish, Goddamn two by four, Spanish, Spanish. (and that may come from a worker that would be stumped in English right after “Hello”)
I have never heard dos Y quatro, all ways two by four.
Might make it a bit harder on a person from Spain.
Generally, “code switching” refers to changing registers depending upon context. Mixing up Spanish and English with the same audience isn’t code switching.
As discussed elsewhere at this very moment, yes, they will understand each other if both parties are making an honest effort to understand each other. Following a soccer game on the radio, good luck with that.
You’ll hear that in our plants, and it’s not code switching. Lots of those technical automotive words are just the same in both languages. You’ll sometimes see them written in a Spanish orthography, though. And then some of the technical words are translated and leave you scratching you head – like Spanish “eyebrow” for meaning “flange” (in the sheet metal context).
Well. Depends. As a Mexicano, I get to see different soccer games via Dish through different Latin American games and never had any problem following the game. I get to see games from Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Guatemala, Salvador, and Colombia and never had an issue in so far as understanding.
Every single Dicccionario de la RAE is actually de laS AcademiaS and does its best to include local usages. Depending on which specific edition you get (i.e., how fat it is) you’ll get more local words or less.
I have a question:
To me, “Castellano” is either the dialect spoken in Valladolid (definitely not in Mexico), in which case I’d translate it as “Castillian Spanish”, or the Spanish language including all its dialects (definitely spoken in Mexico), in which case I’d translate it as plain “Spanish”. What would you consider “non-Castillian Spanish”?
Yea, the definitions are the same. They used non-Castilian Spanish to cover all the other dialects that the regions had before the consodilation of the Spanish crown during Reconquista. Or to point out that there are other dialects/languages spoken in Spain, Galician and Catalan, and that our Spanish didn’t evolve from those.
Ergh…
first, “the consolidation of the Spanish crown” did not finish until 1844. 1517 if you wish to ignore things like separate Parliaments, legal systems, taxation systems, coinages, inheritance lines for each of the kingdoms, etc. The Reconquista finished on January 4, 1492.
Second, it did not lead to a dissapearance of regional dialects. I’d ask you to please pretty please watch a movie with Lola Flores in it and another with Paco Martínez Soria, neither of whom spoke “Castillian Spanish.” Both were alive many years after 1492.
Third, Galician, Catalan and Basque are other languages, each with their own dialects. Neither of them would be considered “Spanish” and two of them (Catalan and Basque) are spoken also in France and (for Catalan) parts of the US and of Italy.
Fourth, I was asking ChicanoRojo, ok?
Spoken like a true fan
In elementary school, they called spanish classes “Castellano” which I guess would be useful in differentiating it from Catalan but not much more else. Claiming that we speak Castellano in the Americas is only appropriate when you want to piss our fellows from the motherland.
That would fail as a joke, Sapo, given that our current Constitution calls it Castellano to make the Catalanists happy. We’ve spent the last 29 years being told that Español is politically incorrect. I have a laugh every time my Catalanist friends and family go to any of our ex-colonies (or, currently, meet yet another “colonial” immigrant) who insists in calling it Español 
I’d love to see a “short history of the unification of Spain” from a Navarrese insider’s perspective if you feel like addressing it. (I don’t have a clue where you got 1844 from, and I thought I knew something of Spanish history.)
:::: goes and hides behind large rock as La Guerra GQ-isca de <<Las Otras Lenguas Españolas>> resumes :::
I understand there’s a substantial Basque settlement somewhere in Nevada, though I don’t know if they preserved Euskadi as an in-home language or not.
Thank you for giving me more information about Spanish history than the one they gave me in school.
I know it didn’t lead it to the disappearance of regional dialects, I’m just pointing out why they would say that in my Spanish classes.
Third, I also know about Catalan and Basque being spoken in France, but thanks for pointing it out.
Fourth, I do apologize if I pissed you off.
Euskera 
Euskadi is the name the former Basque Country has now.
I actually mixed two dates, which I often do, sorry. It’s 1841.
1492: Conquest of Granada by Castilla. Granada becomes a part of Castilla.
1517: Conquest of the lower Navarra by Aragonese troops, ending (sort of) the hereditary mess caused by the overgrabiness of Juan II of Aragon, husband of Blanca I of Navarra. Ferdinand I of Aragon, husband of Isabel I of Castilla, is proclaimed king of (the lower) Navarra as well as already being king of Aragon. The two kingdoms remain independant, though; also, the upper Navarra (the SW corner of France) is in the hands of the French king, who is a descendant of Navarra-born Henri II and whose claim to the Navarrese throne is actually more legitimate than that of Fernando (who is not related by blood to Blanca at all, he was a child of Juan II’s second marriage; the original heir, Carlos, Príncipe de Viana, son of Juan and Blanca, was murdered by Juan - who needs soap operas when you have the Trastamaras?; Carlos’ sister, Blanca the Youngest, was the first wife of Isabel’s uncle, bastard-born Castillian king Enrique de Trastamara “he who could not get it up” according to the divorce proceedings from said Blanca, who’d gained the throne by beating his legitimate brother Pedro II the Cruel)
For the next two centuries the French and Spaniards spend more than a summer raiding across the Pyrinees, but it’s generally small raids which most history books don’t ever mention.
Carlos I of Castille, I of Aragon, IV or V of Navarre (depending on whether you count his great-half-uncle or not) is king of all three kingdoms, but each kingdom keeps its own Parliament, Laws and Customs. This situation remains through the Habsburg reign.
c. 1700, the last Habsburg dies without issue. An Englishman is the closest heir for Aragon; a Frenchman for Navarra; Castilla has no clear heir, but there is a part of Castilla (the Vascongadas… nowadays, Euskadi) which pressures to help the French candidate, and wins Castillian allegiance for him. After some smacking of heads, the french Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, wins. He declares Aragon “conquered land”, dissolving their Parliaments, all local and, uhm, kingdom-wide laws, imposing Castillian laws, taxation… People from the Crown of Aragon are nooooot particularly fond of him, for some reason.
He would have liked to do the same with the Vascongadas (which for many things had their own local laws, separate from those of Castilla and more similar to those of Navarra) and to Navarra, but since there was no way he could declare those “conquered lands”, he just had to suck and grunt. The expression “Contrafuero: se obedece pero no se cumple”, which my Catalan mother claims is a perfect explanation of many Navarrese peculiarities, is from this period: the king kept sending orders that went against our Law and Tradition (Fuero), so the Diputación Foral (the group of 7 “deputies” which represented Parliament when it was not in season) kept writing back: “Against the Law: we obey your majesty, but we can not do as you order.”
Also from this period are two groups of Probanzas de Sangre; another tack that Philip tried in order to subdue the Diputaciones of Navarra, Álava, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa was by claiming that those “stubborn” deputies did not have the right to sit in Parliament, therefore did not have the right to be Deputies. So everybody from those areas who claimed a right to sit in Parliament had to go and prove that they had the bloodright.
Both the Habsburgs and the Borbones avoided calling the Navarrese Parliament into season or visiting the Diputaciones of either location, but the Diputaciones had mechanisms to continue indefinitely. So the kings could dance jotas on a pin if they wanted, our Diputados would just inform them when they missed a step
Early XIX century, Napoleonic invasion, restoration of the Borbones. Fernando VII “the wished for” is, in my I’m-not-a-historian’s opinion, one of the worst kings any of our kingdoms ever had. He kept swinging from far left to far right and back, always without any regard for such niceties as Law, Tradition and Proper Procedure. He didn’t try to fight the Diputaciones; he just did his best to ignore them. One of the things in which he completely disregarded his own laws was the naming of his heir, which was the excuse for the First Carlista War (my Carlista relatives count the Civil War of 1936 as being the Sixth Carlista War).
1841 is the year of the Ley Paccionada, the “tratado de hermandad” by which Castilla and Navarra become a single kingdom, “keeping each of the two parts its own Laws, Customs and Parliament.” We got rid of the official border between both kingdoms (still, it’s the same line followed by the present-day Province of Navarra), of the Navarrese mint, and little more. The Estatua de los Fueros, at the foot of Paseo Sarasate in Pamplona, celebrates both this Brotherhood Treaty and the Gamazada, the 1894 rebellion defending it (when, once more and we’re in 2007 and they still do it, Madrid tried to force our Diputación to copy their taxation system; nowadays we just throw the lawyers at them and they end up having to pay judicial costs as well as lick their wounds).
Sorry, Karl :o
I wrote the “lower Navarra” where it should have been the “upper” and vice versa. The Lower Navarra (Baja Navarra, Iparralde, Behe Napar) is the French side; the Upper Navarra (Navarra) is the Spanish side. Some people say this is because the Upper is more mountainous; my historian cousin says it’s because the kingdom started in the Spanish side (in Nájera, nowadays province of Logroño, region La Rioja) and the “Upper” is in the sense of “more prominent, more important,” which of course would not be politically correct nowadays but nobody cared a whit about that back in the XI century or so.
I had a couple years of Spanish in high school and then a couple more in college. All my teachers taught Castillian dialect. I was reasonably fluent in it when I moved to Laredo TX to teach. The kids understood me perfectly well but laughed at the “Castillian accent.” When I asked them why they found it funny they said “you sound like a joto!”