# Spanish speakers from different countries--difficult accents? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178 "2007-04-30T16:56:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/41 "2007-05-01T13:21:26Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] I’ve heard Americans complain at times about having problems understanding British accents, and I find it hard to take their complaints seriously. Nearly all Americans grow up hearing a reasonably wide variety of British accents on TV and in movies. An American will hear a standard British accent spoken as often as any of the more obscure American accents. I find it weird then that some Americans claim that they can’t understand a standard British accent. [/QUOTE] Which “standard” British accent? [The BBC accent once known as Received Pronunciation?](http://www.yaelf.com/rp.shtml) Extreme versions of this one can sound as stilted and phony to the American ear as “pure” _Castellano_ does to many Mexicans. But we can definitely understand it. However, shows set in The North of England & farther afield can be a bit more difficult. Of course, “the right people” speak a more standard English. But Tony Bourdain visited Ireland in a recent show. He toured historically troubled neighborhoods of Belfast with two cab drivers–Catholic & Protestant. Then he bought them both a drink. They got on well–things are improving. But the show supplied subtitles–which were quite useful. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/42 "2007-05-01T13:38:42Z")
[QUOTE=ChicanoRojo] Of all the accents that I find hard to get used to is Caribbean accent (Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican) and, ironically, some of regional Spain accents. Caribbean accent is just that they tend to speak way too fast and convert "r"s to "l"s. So. For example, “Yo quiero un nuevo carro.” To my mexican ears, they sound like “Yoquielounnuevocalo.” [/QUOTE] And to me, y’all sound like you’re talking _way too slow_. As I am a non-native speaker, I find Mexicans and Central Americans (especially the Ticos!) easier to understand than the Caribeños. But the dialects I’m most accustomed to are Caribbean, so they seem normal to me. I had a Honduran friend who used to act like she couldn’t understand me if I didn’t clearly enunciate every single damned S, like “a la tre” is so difficult. To me, hearing “Busco a mi mamá” instead of “Búcoa mimamá” is just strange. Also, my Y and LL are pretty much the same as English J and my J is like the German CH. I’m told I sound Cuban, and I think I do most of the time. It’s a function of what you’re used to. I will say this, though – I find most dialects easily intelligible except the Argentinian (_vos tenés_, anyone? “Me zhamo Ariel” for the LL?) and the Europeans. The “cinco” = “thinko” and “Me parethes cansada” and the use of _vosotros_ all throw me because I’m not used to them. They are different enough that I have to work on comprehension for now. If I heard them more often, it would eventually not be a problem. ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/43 "2007-05-01T13:58:25Z")
[QUOTE=Balthisar] Also in parts of Mexico I’ve heard something similar to the Carribean accent. Also anyone from Sinaloa was incomprehensible, and it took me a few weeks to fully understand people from Sonora. People from the central – Guanajuato, Michoacan, and Jalisco – are the most intelligible to me, but then again, that’s what I’m used to. [/quote] Certain areas of Mexican do have the Caribbean accent, specifically the coastal areas on the Caribbean areas such Tampico in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Yucatan. Also, in certain areas of Guerrero where there was mix of Indian, Spanish, and African cultures. > [@](#): > > My father-in-law semi-regularly clips “-ado” to Carribbean style “ao,” but he knows it’s wrong for the region and does it just for fun. Funny thing is, I catch myself doing it now when I’m being funny (or even less-than-funny). It depend. Northerners (Norteños) are stereotypically shown as SHOUTING everything and using “-ao” in certain words. For example, “Ah chingado!” a northerner is supposed to say 'AH, CHINGAO!". ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/44 "2007-05-01T14:16:38Z")
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer] And to me, y’all sound like you’re talking _way too slow_. [/quote] LOL…and we supposedly curse too much! 😃 > [@](#): > > I had a Honduran friend who used to act like she couldn’t understand me if I didn’t clearly enunciate every single damned S, like “a la tre” is so difficult. To me, hearing “Busco a mi mamá” instead of “Búcoa mimamá” is just strange. LOL…the easiest way for a Mexican to get into a fight with Boricua. “Say your r’s and s’s!” > [@](#): > > It’s a function of what you’re used to. I will say this, though – I find most dialects easily intelligible except the Argentinian (_vos tenés_, anyone? “Me zhamo Ariel” for the LL?) and the Europeans. The “cinco” = “thinko” and “Me parethes cansada” and the use of _vosotros_ all throw me because I’m not used to them. They are different enough that I have to work on comprehension for now. If I heard them more often, it would eventually not be a problem. If you follow Argentinan soccer and check out some movies from that country, you’ll eventually get the cadence of their Spanish. I met some Argies here in my region and I always find a hoot to hear their “LL” in a “zh” manner. Now. Spaniards. Depending on their region, their slang and accents can still make it hard for me. I can listen to TVEspaña w/o a problem, but once you get to other medium where is not for international consumption, I am lost. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/45 "2007-05-02T00:55:29Z")
[QUOTE=ChicanoRojo] LOL…and we supposedly curse too much! 😃 [/quote] No, you only use two curse words. 😉 > [@](#): > > LOL…the easiest way for a Mexican to get into a fight with Boricua. “Say your r’s and s’s!” I can, but I am not speaking with anybody important enough to merit correct pronunciation. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/46 "2007-05-02T01:58:41Z")
As an extra bit to the OP, most regional pronountiation variations are little next to assorted speech impediments that you encounter every day. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/47 "2007-05-02T12:36:25Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Maybe you weren’t so clear in the OP, because I thought the same thing as \*\*Wendell \*\*when I read it. Does she _really_ have difficulty understanding British actors? There are some British regional accents that are pretty thick, but do you have problems with, say, a James Bond movie? That’s kind of hard to imagine… [/QUOTE] Actually, I find this perfectly believable. My friend has a completely generic British accent (not regional, not cockney, standard Kensington-schooled English). He came back from a trip to NY & Florida absolutely baffled because half the people he spoke to couldn’t understand him, but the Swede and Australian he was travelling with had no such problems. Geordie, Scots, Sarf Lahndan etc. don’t even count as English… ---
**Author:** ![sugar\_and\_spice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@sugar\_and\_spice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sugar_and_spice)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/48 "2007-05-02T13:40:45Z")
The movie “Motorcycle Diaries”/“Diarios de motocicleta” is, among other things, an interesting survey of some of the dialects of South America. To summarize loosely, it is about a road trip in Argentina and winds thru Chile and Peru, with many interactions with the locals, and the main character is a young Che Guevara. I’m not a native speaker, accents are difficult for me to understand, and I can never ID them. But there is a scene where he is talking to an indigenous woman in Cuzco, she sounded clear as glass to me – I studied in Quito, Ecuador, also the Andian accent. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/49 "2007-05-02T13:41:15Z")
The problems I have are more educated vs. uneducated than due to regional accents. In the same team, we had: two Navarrese and one guy from Santander (northern accents) one guy from Tenerife (could pass for Argentinian most of the time) one guy from Huelva and a woman from Granada (southern accents) The southern accent includes problems pronouncing the Z and S phonemes; the guy was cultured enough to bypass this by choosing alternate words; he was able to provide definitions if needed. The woman? Oh God. Her lastname ended in an S. Let’s say it was Lunas. She pronounced it as Lunah, which is how people wrote it; then she got angry that they hadn’t understood; she’d just yell LU-NAJ! and then they wrote Lunaj; she’d get angrier and yell louder… never thought of providing some freaking ID (which is what I do from the start because my own lastname is just too bloody long) or of saying “Lunah with an s at the end” (Lunah con eze ar finá). I’ve heard her on the phone with friends and family and there were always things she had to repeat two, three times in any conversation, so it wasn’t “the rest of us” who had a problem. My experience is that most people automatically try to use their most “neutral” accent and vocabulary when in the presence of someone from a different accent. You still assume that there will be points when you have to explain a word but hey, it’s a big language and learning more words is Good For You. My first conversation with a group including people from Argentina, Colombia (altiplano mostly), two different regions of Mexico, Brasil (they insisted in speaking Spanish instead of teaching us Portuguese), Italy (these spoke Italian) and Spain where the only things that needed clarification were technical terms that myself and my coworkers were introducing to the rest of the group. That same group had “kodak moments” when the Mexicans found out that a certain word meant different things for both of them, that was funny. And there was that issue about finding a word for “take” (as in “takes the data from elsewhere in the database”) that wouldn’t be offensive or give the giggles to anybody… we settled on “jalar” but figured it’s probably offensive somewhere 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/50 "2007-05-02T13:49:47Z")
[QUOTE=Colibri] It has been said that an Argentinean is an Italian who speaks Spanish, acts French, and would like to be British. (No offense meant to any _porteños_😉 ). [/QUOTE] Actually, and this is very funny since their accent is also similar to that from one of the Canary Islands, Argentinian might be not so much a dialect of Spanish as… a mixture of Galego and Italian. We were watching an Italian soccer player who’d been living in Galicia for three weeks and if we hadn’t know who he was and where from, we would have pegged him as Rioplatense right there. Y’all don’t get a prize for figuring out the two most common sources of immigration to Argentina 🙂 I understand Portuguese; I can’t speak it because I haven’t had enough exposition to it. I think that’s like people who complain about not being able to understand Catalan… if you can’t, either you’re a furriner or you need to wash your ears. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/51 "2007-05-02T13:53:16Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] There are a wide range of accents, across Hispanic America and also the regions of Spain. The classic _theismo_ (which has nothing to do with theism, but rather with sounding the letter “c” as a theta (unvoiced th sound)) is Castilian. As I understand, Andalucians drop letters with abandon. Terminal -s is often unsounded in a couple of American dialects. [/QUOTE] Ergh, dude, you make that sound like a defect. It’s the standard. Seseo is when you CAN’T pronounce your c as z. ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/52 "2007-05-02T14:39:06Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] we settled on “jalar” but figured it’s probably offensive somewhere 😛 [/QUOTE] Mexicano a un Gallego: Oye, tio, me la jalas…digo…los datos.. 😃 ---
**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:** [May 2, 2007, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/53 "2007-05-02T14:42:04Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] And there was that issue about finding a word for “take” (as in “takes the data from elsewhere in the database”) that wouldn’t be offensive or give the giggles to anybody… we settled on “jalar” but figured it’s probably offensive somewhere 😛 [/QUOTE] My _Cassel’s Colloquial Spanish_ warns that in Mexico _jalarse_ can mean “to masturbate.” 🙂 Sometimes it seems that just about every verb meaning to catch, pull, throw, or hit can be risque _somewhere_. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/54 "2007-05-02T15:59:04Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Do you seriously have problems understanding a standard British accent? I can understand if you have problems understanding some of the more unusual British accents, since you’re not likely to hear them very much, but how could you have problems with a standard British accent? How could any American make it to adulthood without having listened to a reasonable number of British movies, TV shows, and British actors being interviewed on American TV talk shows? [/QUOTE] This is a question that bears deeper exploration, I think. A few weeks ago, I was down with broncho-pneumonia and spent a week in bed. I found that the only channels I could tolerate on basic-extended cable were AMC and TMC. I saw many old movies that purported to have English characters portrayed by Americans with really, really fake English accents. I’m guessing that until say 1965 or 1975, it was rare to see someone with a _genuine_ English accent in an American-made movie or television program. Actual British productions have always been favored by the educated, but that’s a limited and self-selected sample. Nowadays, the “standard British accent” or Received Pronunciation is no longer really the iron-clad standard for British productions. What about the Scots accents of _Trainspotting_ or the Northern accents of _The Full Monty_ or the Welsh accents of _The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain_? ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/55 "2007-05-02T16:08:21Z")
Actually this reminds me of the weekend camping in Canada that I spent with a Mexican, Italian, Colombian, and Liechtensteinian (no, this isn’t the prelude to a joke). I’m the only native English speaker; the rest are in Ontario for language school (and one is my wife). The Colombian speaks German, as she’s living in Germany with her husband, so she and the Liechtensteinian get along. I can still manage to mumble a few words of German myself. The Mexican and Colombian are naturally able to speak with each other, and I’m fluent-enough in Spanish. That leaves the Italian as the odd man out. Naturally as English students, we tried to speak English for everything, but when things got rough or they needed to speak in a hurry, the Italian would speak Italian, and the Colombian and Mexican would pick up enough to get the idea. They’d speak Spanish in turn, and he’d understand them just as well as they he. I mostly only understood the Spanish half of the conversations, of course. Now it’s not much of a trick to read Italian, Portuguese, or even French and get the gist, but I was impressed by their mutual comprehension while speaking and listening. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2007, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/56 "2007-05-02T23:56:50Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] Ergh, dude, you make that sound like a defect. It’s the standard. Seseo is when you CAN’T pronounce your c as z. [/QUOTE] Funny, that… In Spain that may be the standard, but for the Caribbean region, the seseo is the standard, NOT a defect. It is normal for us not to differentiate c, z or s in most cases. Not because we cannot pronounce it due to some physiological thing (we’re perfectly capable of doing so) but because no one here does that. I took good Spanish classes for 12 years (heck my whole education minus English was in Spanish). We were taught many things, but we were NEVER forced to “correct” our seseo. That (of all the things my accent has) is the least vulgar or incorrect of all. I do agree with you that the difference is mostly between educated and uneducated (or professional vs vulgar), not between regional accents. I can understand newscasts from every place, and I can talk with my friends from different countries, but don’t put me with Juan Bobo from Guatemala cuz I’m probably not going to understand what he says (well, the words, but they don’t make sense). ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/57 "2007-05-03T00:24:36Z")
[QUOTE=KarlGrenze] Funny, that… In Spain that may be the standard, but for the Caribbean region, the seseo is the standard, NOT a defect. It is normal for us not to differentiate c, z or s in most cases. Not because we cannot pronounce it due to some physiological thing (we’re perfectly capable of doing so) but because no one here does that. [/quote] I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the “z” from the “s”. In Mexico we don’t. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/58 "2007-05-03T00:44:26Z")
[QUOTE=Balthisar] Now it’s not much of a trick to read Italian, Portuguese, or even French and get the gist, but I was impressed by their mutual comprehension while speaking and listening. [/QUOTE] Where was the guy from in Italy? When I was in Florence, I found I could get by reasonably well by speaking Spanish and then trying to understand Italian (they did better then I did, of course). My guess is that if the Italian person had been from Sicily it would have been much harder. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/59 "2007-05-03T01:07:24Z")
[QUOTE=ChicanoRojo] I am not sure which country outside of Spain differentiates the “z” from the “s”. In Mexico we don’t. [/QUOTE] Aye, sorry for not including Mexicans (and I don’t think Guatemalans, Hondurans, Panamanians, Colombians, and Venezuelans do it either, unless it’s something very very regional). I just mentioned Caribbean because that’s the one I am more accustomed (and the one in which my education was done). ---
**Author:** ![ChicanoRojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@ChicanoRojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChicanoRojo)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2007, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178/60 "2007-05-03T02:03:45Z")
[QUOTE=KarlGrenze] Aye, sorry for not including Mexicans (and I don’t think Guatemalans, Hondurans, Panamanians, Colombians, and Venezuelans do it either, unless it’s something very very regional). [/QUOTE] AFAIK, seseo or pronouncing “s” and “z” similarly, is done across Latin America. When I went to public school in Mexico, I was thought that in Spain “s” and “z” are pronounced differently and that it is correct and proper usage of Spanish. But, since we were in Mexico, such differentiation should be noted, but not necessarily practiced. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-speakers-from-different-countries-difficult-accents/402178.md?page=4)