So, lately I’ve thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun—and useful—to learn Spanish!”
However, as you no doubt know, there are many varieties of español. Some of these varieties are more prestigious/literary/etc. (such as, perhaps, Peninsular Spanish (the Spanish of madilenos)), however, I am given to understand that Iberian Spanish is not often encountered in the United States.
Someone I know (who speaks Mexican Spanish), was throwing shade at Puerto Rico, saying that their Spanish is “shit.” He recommended Riplatense Spanish, but looking into it, it seems that Argentine Spanish is marked by voseo, which is generally considered a sort of country bumpkin regionalism everywhere else.
So, of the dialects of Spanish that are found in the Americas, what is considered the most glamorous variant (like a Hispanic* version of William F. Buckley)? Also, I cannot trill my r’s, so dialects that are light on that feature would be good too.
Hispanic in the sense of “pertaining to using or speaking the Spanish language.”
** Yes, I know that the title should have a restrictive that rather than a non-restrictive which. If I am going to go on about learning literary variants of Spanish, it would help if I exhibited proper use of English. Don’t bother pointing that out.
I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’m fairly sure that the only one which could be considered “glamorous” in any way would be Castilian. That and Mexican are the defaults in the United States.
I think (as a speaker of the dialect that was called shit), that part of the reason the regional academias de la lengua exist is so that they are not treated or considered superior one to the other. It is also a touchy subject, as the saying “you speak it wrong” has been used to put down groups when they should not.
In general, most of the differences in the dialect (pronunciation and preferred vocabulary) are only noticeable if you talk Spanish every single day with a variety of people from different countries. Technical/professional language tends to be the same in every region. And reading/grammar is standard in all regions.
The voseo is not bumpkin… It’s just not used anywhere else. Same with the dialects that pronounce the z sound. It’s not bumpkin, it’s just foreign to those who don’t speak that.
For my ears, though, I find standard Colombian novelas (soap opera) Spanish to be the most easy. Not too musical, light, good pronunciation.
For the U.S. I’d say the Bogotá accent (IMO the best, especially in women) or Lima accent. Very neutral for everybody, you avoid the common Mexican and caribbean accents of the US hispanics and the very particular Argentina/Uruguay accent.
Just realize that this is a lot like asking which is the best English dialect to learn. Most of the differences are subtle, and as a beginner to speaking the language it’s kind of pointless to try to acquire a specific accent when your accent is pretty much going to be gringo.
I agree with this, but there are some pronunciation quirks that can be learned early on which make a small difference. Some of them are here (including the pronunciation of ceceo vs seseo, or different pronunciations of “y” and “ll”).
My college Spanish professor was from Argentina, and pronounced “ella” closer to “ay-juh” than “ay-yuh,” and that’s how I pronounce ll’s to this day. (Cue the next poster telling me I’m doing it wrong!)
Right. Rioplatense , Old Castillian, Sevillan Andalucian, Havanan Cuban – they all have Business/Academic forms that are very easily understood by others, but just have very, very characteristic phonetic markers (and dialect vocabulary) and may be distracting. I’m going to have to join in voting for Educated-Class Bogotá Colombian as the one that best bridges the gap and avoids using sounds that a majority of the Hispanosphere does not.
And if someone has an issue with Puerto Rican Spanish I’ll ask to take a walk with them through Mexico City and see if everyone there sounds like Octavio Paz.
BTW, interesting that the OP is looking at a W.F.Buckley “brahmin” accent as exemplifying the “glamorous variant” of English. Many people would find that accent annoying if someone were deliberately affecting it. If anything I would have expected BBC Received Pronunciation to hold the pride of place.
No, I know there is some weird Mexican-Boricua rivalry, so I didn’t take this person’s remark as the last word on the relative merits of Puerto Rican Spanish. I only have lovely things to say about el Municipio de la Ciudad Capital de San Juan Bautista. In PR’s defense, I will say they are better looking (which, really, who cares how bastardized the language is when you have that).
Two: In my OP, I wrote “madilenos.” That was a typo. I know it is madrilenos
Three: The Boston Brahmin accent is the greatest and best American accent. I don’t want an RP accent, because I’m not a goddamn Englishman.
Indeed, I’d concentrate on learning Spanish *really well *before worrying about which “dialect” to use. Where do you live? What do the Spanish language classes there offer? Which Spanish speakers do you want to reach? Once you’ve become fluent, you can consider adjusting your vocabulary & pronunciation.
If you live and are studying in the New World, leave the Castilian to folks who learned it during their years in Madrid. Unless you want to be considered a wanna-be stuck up snob.
Destinos is a language course in the form of a telenovela. You can hear the language as it’s used throughout the Spanish speaking world. Note that the less educated people use the more distinct “dialects.”
Note: William F Buckley’s family traveled. Spanish & French were his first languages; he began English at age 7 in London…
Puerto Rican Spanish is freakingly astonishingly cool.
In a slangy hick hillbilly sort of way. And Iberian Spanish makes you sound like the BBC.
Best, in my opinion, to approach it in between- learn the words as ‘book Spanish’, Iberian, but try to have a more local accent.
This will make you look like what you are, a student of the language.
Book Spanish is not Iberian, and even a Spaniard will tell you the accents vary a lot by region… Again, there is not supposed to be a more prestigious dialect than other. The correct academia form of each dialect is considered adequate and cultured.
Again, if you want to learn, you’ll still sound “foreigner” while you’re learning. If you want to listen to something in order to understand, then the dialect we have said above (Bogotá/Colombian Spanish) will be the easiest to understand.
I second Destinos. I watched it, and not to speak the language! It was a cool series.
No, and anyway not an apt comparison. The Hispanosphere is large and diverse, and our schools committed to liberal education rather than uniformity, enough so that UNAM, UPR, San Marcos and Salamanca will not teach one standard dialect any more than Harvard, Oxford, UT Austin and the University of New South Wales will.
OTOH, in every one of the subdivisions you will have folks who will get all in your grill if you mention that they have a “dialect”. I understand not every variant is a “dialect” – is there one Antillan dialect with Cuban (Havana), Cuban (Oriente), Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Insular Venezuelan accents, or are those five dialects? – but some people take offense at being told theirs is one.
The schools teach a standard grammar and lexicon for common academic and commercial discourse. But not something identified with one particular region.
The most it can get is that, although they taught us the form vos and the conjugations for it, we were not require to know them as well as the other conjugations. It was more of a “and if you go somewhere else, you may encounter this”.
Or they’d differentiate the c, s, and z sounds only during a spelling test. They would say the word by itself, and then in context, to help us learn it. But this was all the way back in elementary school.
Again, grammar and lexicon will be mostly uniform throughout. That’s part of the academias’ work. When my Chilean coworker and I talk about work-related or professional matters, there is little to no difference (exept our accents and one word). When we start talking about what each of us did over the weekend, then yes, hilarity occasionally ensues.
If you’re starting from ground zero in any language, it will be a while before dialect differences start to become attainable. At least that’s what they told us when we started to learn French; there’s so much work involved in learning the very basics that dialectical details weren’t important for quite some time. I’m in Intermediate II in French and only now am I learning some of the different expressions in Québecois and Metropolitain French. It was only last year that I could really pick out a Québecois accent, even.
You need the bones of the language before you can start picking out the cladding.
If you can’t roll rr’s you are going to sound like a gringo no matter what regional dialect you attempt to affect. So go for Puerto Rican. They roll their r’s, and rrrrreally rrrrroll their rr’s.
