# How is Castillian Spanish viewed by other Spanish-speaking countries?



## JLanguage

I would like to hear especially about Mexico, but would like also to hear from natives of any other Spanish speakers countries or even non-native speakers if they feel they can contribute.

PS: Feel free to translate this question into Spanish for more universal understanding.

Thanks,
-Jonathan.


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## cuchuflete

Jonathan, I fear there are as many answers as there are people willing to answer.

Rather than giving a personal opinion, I'll offer a few anecdotes...you draw whatever conclusions you wish.

I assume you mean the Spanish of Spain when you write 'Castilian Spanish'. For me, because español=castellano, Castilian can be either Spanish, in general, or the variety of it spoken in much of Spain. 

I've heard native Castilian/Spanish speakers from many countries, including Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela and others do imitations of Iberian Spanish. This is similar to people in the US 'putting on a British accent'.

When I've traveled to Spanish speaking countries other than Spain, I've had numerous encounters with not very well educated people, who, when they hear me speak with a ceceo and the Iberian rhythm and intonation, try to do the same. The results can be....well, that's besides the point. What's fascinating to me, is the apparent effort on the part of these folks to speak "correctly" when they here what they assume to be Iberian/Castilian/Peninsular Spanish.


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## JLanguage

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Jonathan, I fear there are as many answers as there are people willing to answer.
> 
> Rather than giving a personal opinion, I'll offer a few anecdotes...you draw whatever conclusions you wish.
> 
> I assume you mean the Spanish of Spain when you write 'Castilian Spanish'. For me, because español=castellano, Castilian can be either Spanish, in general, or the variety of it spoken in much of Spain.
> 
> I've heard native Castilian/Spanish speakers from many countries, including Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela and others do imitations of Iberian Spanish. This is similar to people in the US 'putting on a British accent'.
> 
> When I've traveled to Spanish speaking countries other than Spain, I've had numerous encounters with not very well educated people, who, when they hear me speak with a ceceo and the Iberian rhythm and intonation, try to do the same. The results can be....well, that's besides the point. What's fascinating to me, is the apparent effort on the part of these folks to speak "correctly" when they here what they assume to be Iberian/Castilian/Peninsular Spanish.


 
But we put a British accent on for fun. I personally, and most Americans as well I presume do not consider BE more correct than AE, despite that BE* used to be *considered *"the standard". *Therefore the two cases are not truly analogous.


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## elroy

JLanguage said:
			
		

> But we put a British accent on for fun. I personally, and most Americans as well I presume do not consider BE more correct than AE, despite that BE* used to be *considered *"the standard". *Therefore the two cases are not truly analogous.


 
They are analogous in that you have an original standard that has evolved into a multiplicity of dialects and forms.  I think that's what Cuchu was highlighting.

People's reactions, of course, differ as much in the Spanish-speaking world as they do in the English-speaking world.  After all, there are pedantic sycophants in America who attempt to acquire the "Queen's English" (it doesn't work) and I'm sure there are Latin Americans who aren't particularly fond of the peninsular variety.


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## cuchuflete

I tried to avoid too many conclusions, but reading your two posts has made me reflect on what I believe are the two, or at least two of "X" motivations when Spanish Americans 'put on' or imitiate peninsular speech patterns.  One, of course, is humorous.
By humorous I do not mean disparaging...rather, just being jocular.  Another, far less frequent, is an attempt by the less educated to sound more educated...at least in terms of what they think 'educated' may be.


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## ILT

Eventhough I agree with Cuchu, please don't forget that there are people who acquire an accent really easily, I'm one of those.  I meet a person from Yucatan, and a couple of hours later I'm talking with his accent.  Same thing if I spend some time at another Spanish speaking country, I return with an accent not my own.


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## JLanguage

I love translating said:
			
		

> Eventhough I agree with Cuchu, please don't forget that there are people who acquire an accent really easily, I'm one of those. I meet a person from Yucatan, and a couple of hours later I'm talking with his accent. Same thing if I spend some time at another Spanish speaking country, I return with an accent not my own.


 
I'm not at all like that - I always sound like an American even in Hebrew and Spanish. Ocasionally I'll randomly put on a really poor British accent, but it sounds really fake or so I've been told.


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## foxfirebrand

elroy said:
			
		

> After all, there are pedantic sycophants in America who attempt to acquire the "Queen's English" (it doesn't work) and I'm sure there are Latin Americans who aren't particularly fond of the peninsular variety.


 
This is definitely still true.  But do you know who I think singlehandedly shifted the trend in the other direction, toward spoofing rather than fawning?   Monty Python.

It could be argued that, especially among young people, more Americans are doing English-accent imitations now than ever before-- but the attitude is almost universally irreverent now instead of worshipful.

As for Spanish-- there are parts of México where proper "Castellano" is sneered at, even without the _ceceo._  I'm thinking of Chiapas and Tabasco, where some people have to be coaxed into even responding to Spanish.  And then you get among middle-class people, and they insist that they _are_ Spanish-- I mean as opposed to being Mexican.

My direct experience with this is from long ago, but I wonder if it's changed-- it would be great to find out that it has.  I hope native speakers who join the thread will touch on this question.


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## JLanguage

foxfirebrand said:
			
		

> This is definitely still true. But do you know who I think singlehandedly shifted the trend in the other direction, toward spoofing rather than fawning? Monty Python.
> 
> It could be argued that, especially among young people, more Americans are doing English-accent imitations now than ever before-- but the attitude is almost universally irreverent now instead of worshipful.
> 
> As for Spanish-- there are parts of México where proper "Castellano" is sneered at, even without the _ceceo._ I'm thinking of Chiapas and Tabasco, where some people have to be coaxed into even responding to Spanish. And then you get among middle-class people, and they insist that they _are_ Spanish-- I mean as opposed to being Mexican.
> 
> My direct experience with this is from long ago, but I wonder if it's changed-- it would be great to find out that it has. I hope native speakers who join the thread will touch on this question.


 
Perhaps these posts about how is BE perceived in the US, should be moved to a new thread? Are they helpful in answering and understanding my original question?

To answer your question, I think the general trend is that due to the prominence of the US, the idea of "the queen's English" has largely diminished in popularity. The only time where I find BE (BRP) clearly superior to AE, is in recitation of Shakespeare and anything, such as the King James, written in Shakespearean English.


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## murena

Obviously, I think that the spanish spoken in Mexico sounds very good and that is a very correct form of spanish. Anyway, I guess everyone from the different spanish speaking countries thinks the same of their own dialect.

About the spanish from Spain, personally I find it very old fashion. The use of vosotros, os and some verb conjugations just sounds very old to me. 

I also note that they have a very strong resistance to new english terms adapted to spanish, like the word ordenador instead of computadora. I think sometimes it is impractical (I do not mean to say it is wrong) being so ortodox about the purity of the language, specially with all the new technology terms that appear everyday.

I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun, and maybe some people who are very proud of their Spanish heritage and are in certain contexts like a bull fight or a spanish bar, with some tintorros already in.


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## beatrizg

murena said:
			
		

> I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun, and maybe some people who are very proud of their Spanish heritage and are in certain contexts like a bull fight or a spanish bar, with some tintorros already in.


 
I also disagree. I've never heard anyone doing a Spanish-Spanish accent in order to sound 'educated'.  We do imitate Spanish, Argentineans and maybe Mexicans just for fun. There's something fascinating about hearing your own language spoken differently. 
Colombians also think they speak a correct form of Spanish, some even say it's the best Spanish spoken!... Well, I personally think these are estupideces...to me it's just a nice and slightly different version of the same language. 



I often find the Spanish spoken in Spain a bit strong to my ears, but generally speaking Spanish people have a very rich and more precise choice of vocabulary. 

In any case it's difficult to compare considering the education gap between Spain and most of the Spanish speaking countries. 

(I apologize for my rursty English  )


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## jmx

JLanguage said:
			
		

> *How is Castillian Spanish viewed by other Spanish speaking countries?*


I see you have changed the thread's title, but I still think it's important to be aware that there are several dialects of Spanish in the peninsula alone. It is particularly important to be aware that, contrary to what seems to be a widespread misconception outside Spain (and sometimes in Spain too), the Spanish spoken in northern Spain is quite different from the one spoken in Madrid. Which makes the expression "Castillian Spanish" preposterous.

So what are you talking about when you say "Spanish from Spain" ? I'm afraid you are simply speaking of "distinguishing the s's and z's". And, the way I see it, that's useful for little more than a few jokes.


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## jmx

foxfirebrand said:
			
		

> As for Spanish-- there are parts of México where proper "Castellano" is sneered at, even without the _ceceo._ I'm thinking of Chiapas and Tabasco, where some people have to be coaxed into even responding to Spanish. And then you get among middle-class people, and they insist that they _are_ Spanish-- I mean as opposed to being Mexican.


Do you mean that people in Southern Mexico whose parents were spanish immigrants don't consider themselves Mexican ? I had a completely different idea. :-(


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## cirrus

I speak as a native English speaker who originally learned Spanish in Spain and then went to teach English whilst living in Colombia.  From day one I was strongly discouraged from using the theta and threw out my use of vosotros as well on the basis that it just made people laugh.  I got the impression that to sound "Spanish" when I am not was viewed as a bit colonial.  I toned down how strongly I sounded my jotas and erres.  To Colombian ears at least Jorge pronounced by someone from Madrid has too hard a J and G and an RR as opposed to a R.  

The fun starts when you start coming back to Spain and can't decide which form to use - if I start using vosotros I feel like I am speaking Spanish from the bible, but if I don't I might sound stuck up, whereas if I use vos, people giggle, let alone being out and out mystified when I say aca instead of aqui.


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## Mei

Hi Cirrus,

If I hear you maybe I can laugh if you speak like someone of South America, (I mean that can shock me hear an English man talking like that) but if you tell me this I can understand, I think that happens the same with English, don't you think? Here in Spain we learn the UK English, and if I speak to US people they will see the difference. 

Mei


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## cirrus

I think the issue is that apart from slang and use of the subjunctive to me the difference between American and European English seems smaller than South American Spanish vs Spanish Spanish. I wonder whether others agree.


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## damianvila

Well...
As an argentinian living in Madrid, aside from the pronuntiation, wich is rather different, I believe there are not 'big' differences. It depends on the type of _castellano_ you are talking about.
There are big differences in the slang used everyday. For example "mola mazo!" (Spain) is the equivalent to "está re-copado!" (Argentina), the loose meaning being "rules!" in USA. Those kind of phrases are the most difficult to get.
But if you speak of a more formal use of the language, I think there are not big differences.
Some people here (in Spain) told me they consider the _castellano_ used here more archaic thant the one used in Hispanic-America (sorry, I'm not using Latin America since it includes the brazilians, latins too, wich speaks portugese), wich may be partly true. Younger societies tend to evolve their language more quickly than older ones.
A trivial example: in Madrid you refer to a car like a "coche" wich means "carriage". In Argentina we use "auto" from "automóvil", a more modern word.
But all in all, the differences are subtle.
Maybe I agree with murena and my friends, it sounds a little "archaic" to an hispanic-american.
But it's very funny and interesting (once I did a comparison of everyday terms with a chilean and a spanish friend, and we could not help but laugh!)
Regards.


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## astronauta

Cuchu, I don't think some Spanish speakers would adopt an accent to sound more educated, they may adopt a more florid language or a more articulate vocabulary, but not another accent.

I think that applies more to non-British English speakers, I've noticed that sometimes if anyone wants to make a smart cremark they adopt a British accent; Frasier and Stewie Griffin come to mind.

I was born in Spain and lived ten years in Mexico and I can switch accent  and slang back and forth no problem, but I normally speak with Spanish accent.


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## cuchuflete

This is an extremely minor point, but three or more people have now disagreed with my statement, so I'll clarify it.  I have had personal experience in Mexico and in Argentina and in Venezuela with taxi drivers and shop attendants. These natives of the countries I was visiting adopted, very temporarily, an attempt at a ceceo when speaking with me.
Perhaps it was an act of courtesy or their part.  I mean no criticism by mentioning it.
But there is not doubt that it has happened.

If you want to claim that you have never heard or heard of such a thing, I would have no reason to disagree with you.  Nonetheless, I have experienced it.  I have no way of knowing what the speakers' motivations or intentions were.  It struck me as odd each time it occurred, and I had totally forgotten about it before reading the thread topic.
I don't have any reason to believe either that it is a rarity or that it is a frequent event. 

Un saludo,
Cuchu


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## Everness

damianvila said:
			
		

> Some people here (in Spain) told me they consider the _castellano_ used here more archaic thant the one used in Hispanic-America




Para variar un poco, la prosa de Paz no tiene desperdicio. 

http://www.elcastellano.org/paz.html

_El español del siglo XX, el que se habla y se escribe en Hispanoamérica y en España, es muchos españoles, cada uno distinto y único, con su genio propio; no obstante, es el mismo en Sevilla, Santiago o La Habana. No es muchos arboles: es un solo árbol pero inmenso, con un follaje rico y variado, bajo el que verdean y florecen muchas ramas y ramajes. Cada uno de nosotros, los que hablamos español, es una hoja de ese árbol._


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## astronauta

Cuchu, I commented on the possible reason why this guy may have swithched to such accent, not whether you were lying; on the contrary, I think very highly of you.

 I apologize if it sounded any other way.


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## Roi Marphille

jmartins said:
			
		

> ... the Spanish spoken in northern Spain is quite different from the one spoken in Madrid. Which makes the expression "Castillian Spanish" preposterous.


really? I didn't know. Or at least, I have not realised. 
I guess that you mean that the Castellano spoken in Salamanca is more, let's say "pure" (not better) which, in my opinion,  may have a point. The reason, I would dare to say, is the migration of thousands of Andalusians, Extremeños and Galicians mainly ...to Madrid during the 1950-75. That big migration might have changed the accent in many people and I would say that this is what you noticed when stated that the Spanish spoken in Northern Spain is quite different from the one spoken in Madrid. 

Anyway, I admit that I hardly distinguish a different accent from someone from Santander vs. someone from Madrid whose relatives are also from Madrid.
I think that, from Filological point of view, migrations are very important and I may say that the Castellano spoken in North-Castilla or Cantabria has suffered relatively few alterations in their language because they did not have newcomers, or at least very few, from other parts of Spain or other lands.   

Anyone thinks the same?

Salu2, 
Roi


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## Noedatorre

I agree with Roi Marphille. I guess that big cities are more influenced by inmigrants from everywhere, and, as you said before 





> the Castellano spoken in Salamanca is more, let's say "pure"


 But it's very curious to me the fact that Hispano-Americans think Spanish from Spain is old fashioned because, I thought it is the opposite! 
Excuse my ignorance but I think this is due to TV and films in general (partly). Here all the films are dubbed, and when the story takes place in, for instance, the 19th century, the characters use some vocabulary that we only here to Hispano-Americans. And maybe it's because of that that I associate words like 'carro' to 'carruaje'. I don't know if this make sense! :?
What it's sure for me is that Hispano-Americans have a very sweet accent that, by the way, I love it!


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## jmx

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> really? I didn't know. Or at least, I have not realised.
> I guess that you mean that the Castellano spoken in Salamanca is more, let's say "pure" (not better) which, in my opinion, may have a point.


No, that's not what I meant. It is neither better nor "purer".

The Spanish spoken by some Hispanic in the USA, who speaks Spanish at home but has had an education only in English, might be regarded as "impure", as it is likely that he/she sometimes fails to find a Spanish expression for what he/she means, and has to use an English one instead. In all cases where there isn't an interference of this kind, I don't see any reason to regard any language variant as "impure".



			
				Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> The reason, I would dare to say, is the migration of thousands of Andalusians, Extremeños and Galicians mainly ...to Madrid during the 1950-75. That big migration might have changed the accent in many people and I would say that this is what you noticed when stated that the Spanish spoken in Northern Spain is quite different from the one spoken in Madrid.


Of course the big internal migrations that took place in Spain in the 1950-60-70's must have altered the linguistic map, but it took me some time to realise that in fact the change in Madrid hasn't been that large, as the proper madrilenian dialect is quite similar to the one in La Mancha or Extremadura. In case you don't believe me, here's what a madrilenian said in other thread :



			
				Fernando said:
			
		

> La 's' se converte en 'h' aspirada en Madrid (los madrileños de toda la vida). Los de fuera de Madrid suelen imitar a los madrileños diciendo "ejque" = "es que". Se considera vulgar.


(The underlining is mine). Source : http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=36073 .

I hope that you agree with me that the "aspiración de eses y zetas" is a significant marker of dialectal boundaries.



			
				Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> Anyway, I admit that I hardly distinguish a different accent from someone from Santander vs. someone from Madrid whose relatives are also from Madrid.


The other point you should consider is that people in Madrid, as well as in La Mancha and some other parts of Spain, are pressed in school and other places, almost brainwashed, to accept a different way of speaking as the correct one, because supposedly they are "castillian" and therefore they should speak like people in Burgos or Salamanca. This has to do with the spanish nationalistic ideology, and would need several more posts to be explained in detail.

For that reason, when you meet someone from Madrid, he will probably adopt that "false" accent that you take as "castillian", and that also deceived me for some time.

What I hope is that people are liberated from despising their own dialect, as there isn't any objective reason to consider any dialect better than other.


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## Roi Marphille

jmartins said:
			
		

> ...in fact the change in Madrid hasn't been that large, as the proper madrilenian dialect is quite similar to the one in La Mancha or Extremadura.


Honestly, I didn't know it. All my friends from Madrid speak quite Standard Castilian (the one in the news). Some of them have Andalusian relatives, some are "gatos" (for one who doesn't know, it means with relatives originaly from Madrid). Thus, I have seen many movies where people speak the way you described, I though the reason it was because they have been influenced by Andalusian dialect. I might be wrong. 



			
				jmartins said:
			
		

> The other point you should consider is that people in Madrid, as well as in La Mancha and some other parts of Spain, are pressed in school and other places, almost brainwashed, to accept a different way of speaking as the correct one, because supposedly they are "castillian" and therefore they should speak like people in Burgos or Salamanca. This has to do with the spanish nationalistic ideology, and would need several more posts to be explained in detail.


I'm afraid I disagree with you here. I think all languages have their Standard form taken from the majoritary dialect most of the times. It is the one the news and Government use. *I think it is the way it must be*. 
I speak Central-Catalan, which is the Standard in Catalonia and the one television uses, for this reason, I would never say that I speak better Catalan than others, I respect and like other variations such Oriental-Catalan, North-Catalan, Balearic, Valencian etc.. 
When I speak Castilian I tend to speak Standard Castilian, despite my unevitable accent. This is the one I learned in the school and from the TV.

I think the King and the Government members should use, or at least try, the Standard Castilian form when addressing to the citizens. It does not mean that the Standard Castilian is better. For me it's not nice if they say something like: "he estao ocupao"


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## jmx

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> I think all languages have their Standard form taken from the majoritary dialect most of the times. It is the one the news and Government use. *I think it is the way it must be*.


 Not only you, but probably most people in most or all countries think that way.

Anyway, let's push it a little more. Do you think an andalusian should adopt that "standard Spanish" when he or she talks to a stranger ? What about a Canary islander ? what about a mexican ? a colombian ?

In other words: Who decides what the standard language should be ? And who decides who is required to use it ?


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## Outsider

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> I think all languages have their Standard form taken from the majoritary dialect most of the times. It is the one the news and Government use. *I think it is the way it must be*.


Speaking of languages in general, I would disagree. In Europe, at least, the standard dialect is usually not that of the majority (often, there simply _isn't_ any dialect common to the majority), but the dialect of some region or social class which has, historically, been privileged (the dialect of the capital, for example, or the dialect of the snobbish upper class). Other times, the standard is even an artificial dialect which isn't anyone's natural language, but combines 'favorite' features of a couple of natural dialects.

There's one thing I love about watching the news on BBC. Many years ago, they made all reporters learn the Received Pronunciation (the 'Queen's English'), but today they have newscasters with all sorts of different accents presenting the news. One lady has a very thick accent that I can't place. It's sometimes hard for me to make out what she's saying, but I admire the fact that she's allowed to speak naturally.


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## Roi Marphille

jmartins said:
			
		

> Anyway, let's push it a little more. Do you think an andalusian should adopt that "standard Spanish" when he or she talks to a stranger ? What about a Canary islander ? what about a mexican ? a colombian ?
> 
> In other words: Who decides what the standard language should be ? And who decides who is required to use it ?


 
Well, maybe we should start another thread for that.. 

Answering your questions, I think everybody should use the form he/she prefers when addressing to a stranger or whoever. Communication is the most important. From my personal experience, I don't feel threatened for non-Standard forms. They should be treasured and respected as well. 

I don't know who decides which is the Standard form, I guess the Government. There is a very special case in Norway, others may explain it better than me. 

Caro Outsider, 
Yes, I guess you are right.  

And I must admit that I like to hear non-Standard forms in the National Catalan TV or radio. For instance, I love the Balearic! the one Ms.Belén speaks.


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## manana

Hola a todos, 

No tengo ningún conocimiento de lingüística y me atrevo a opinar como cualquier mortal que aprecia las lenguas de una manera más bien sensual. En lo personal me gusta mucho el castellano que hablan en España; me encantan las terminaciones de sus formas verbales ya que me suena y me parece mucho más musical decir "sabéis, hacéis, queréis", que "sabes, haces, quieres" . Me suena más ensoñador y novelesco decir "¿os habéis vuelto loco?" que "¿te has vuelto loco?"; "¡sois un malvado!" que "¡eres un malvado!"; "¿os parece?" que "¿te parece?", y aunque para muchos en este lado del charco estas formas suenen un poco anticuadas, para mí no lo son, y creo que esto es más bien un prejuicio. En mi opinión creo que, en general, los españoles  "le sacan mejor el jugo" a nuestra lengua, que los chilenos. Por otra parte a mis oídos resulta atractivo el "ceceo" pues pareciera que al hablar estuvieran susurrando y que las palabras les fueran saliendo directamente desde el corazón que para mí  tiene un efecto bastante hipnótico y suena más intimo.
Otro aspecto que me gusta y me conquista de su forma de hablar es esa resistencia a incorporar anglicismo en el habla cotidiana y al empeño en castellanizar cada nuevo término que aparece por el vecindario. Creo que inconscientemente están poniendo  un dique  para mantener la pureza de nuestra lengua materna.

Para contestar mejor a la pregunta inicial contaré una experiencia que ocurrió hace poco más de un año en Chile y que de alguna manera puede graficar los sentimientos (en Chile) de adhesión o rechazo al castellano que se habla en España.

En nuestro canal de televisión nacional, cuyo director es nombrado por el Gobierno de turno, contrataron a un nuevo locutor que se crió y ha vivido gran parte de su vida en España para que leyera y comentara las noticias en el principal noticiero del día. En un comienzo se armó una gran batahola y hubo una discusión en los diarios y en diversos medios con comentarios en contra ante el hecho de que un hombre con acento español leyera las noticias en este canal. Se lo criticó mucho por su acento y sobre todo por su ceceo, e incluso hasta hoy en día algunas personas encuentran inaceptable que en todo este tiempo no haya corregido o "chilenizado" su forma de hablar. Se dijo que iba a bajar el raiting del noticiero, que la gente se cambiaría de canal, que era insufrible, que era una falta de consideración para los chilenos, que era casi como un atentado a nuestra soberanía etc... Pero lo cierto es que el raiting no bajó y con el tiempo gran parte de las críticas quedaron en el olvido y les diría que, en general, hoy en día esta persona es querida, aceptada y respetada por casi todo el mundo. Esos que lo siguen criticando son unos pocos y con unas ideas bastante retrógradas y sus críticas no tiene fundamentos ya que es un agrado sentarse a ver las noticias con este conductor que se expresa en nuestro idioma en forma ilustrada y amena a la vez.

Pienso que una vez superado el prejuicio inicial que, como siempre, se supera con un sinnúmero de tallas, imitaciones, caracterizaciones o ridiculizando la situación, finalmente, si lo ponemos en una balanza , creo que a los chilenos nos gusta y sobre todo nos atrae la forma de hablar de los españoles.

Desde Chile os saludo,


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## sergio11

Interesting thread. Let's get the humorous part taken care of first: 

The thread title was changed, as JMartins well noticed, but not to "Spanish from Spain"





			
				jmartins said:
			
		

> So what are you talking about when you say "Spanish from Spain" ?


If you read it carefully, the question is another one:





			
				JLanguage said:
			
		

> How is the Spain of Spanish viewed by other Spanish-speaking countries?


 
Next, let's go to the serious part. When we talk about Castilian Spanish, we are talking about "standard" Spanish, as much as JMartins does not like this characterization.





			
				jmartins said:
			
		

> Not only you, but probably most people in most or all countries think that way.
> Anyway, let's push it a little more. Do you think an andalusian should adopt that "standard Spanish" when he or she talks to a stranger ? What about a Canary islander ? what about a mexican ? a colombian ?
> In other words: Who decides what the standard language should be ? And who decides who is required to use it ?


What I call "standard" Spanish is the Spanish you find in a textbook, in the DRAE, in the works of Unamuno, Azorín, Bécquer, Menéndez Pidal, Ortega y Gasset, Rubén Darío, etc. and in the newspapers and the media. 

If you look for "Castilian" in an English dictionary, you find the following:





> The Spanish dialect of Castile.
> The standard literary and official form of Spanish, which is based on this dialect.




and in the DRAE you find 





> 4. m. Lengua española, especialmente cuando se quiere introducir una distinción respecto a otras lenguas habladas también como propias en España.


 
Linguistically the Castilian or Spanish is exactly the same everywhere the Spanish language is spoken. There are regional variations of usage, where people from one region may not understand some words or expressions used in another region, and the use of "vos" and its special conjugation of some geographic areas, but apart from that the language is exactly the same. 

Someone who wants to read a textbook or a novel written in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile, Peru or Guatemala, does not have to learn different languages or dialects each time. 

If you end up in the streets of a city in these countries, and the person you are talking to starts using all regional words, you will not understand anything, but then, nobody else will, unless they are natives of that city or that neighborhood; but if the person talks in a "standard" way, the way he learned it at school, the way he writes his articles about economics, politics or chemistry, the way he writes a college term paper, the way he writes his proposals for Congress, or his communiqués for the military junta, you will have no trouble whatsoever understanding him. 

I know that a lot of people disagree with this, because they think we are trying to impose a "right" way of talking on them, or because they go to a café in a very "local" neighborhood in some country and the waiter doesn't understand what they are trying to order, but that is not because of differences in the language structure or the difference of dialects. It is merely that some words are more common in one region and not in others. That does not constitute a different language or a dialect. 

I have said these things in other threads and have been attacked fiercely by both English speaking people and Spanish speaking people. So feel free to comment pro or con. My skin has been hardened from previous experiences. 

By the way, my vacation just ended, so I am going back to work. If I don't answer to other comments it is not because I got offended, but because of time constraints.

Saludos


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## cuchuflete

Estimado Sergio,

If people attack you, they are attacking common sense and truth. You have not advocated for any causes. Rather, you have objectively described the facts as they exist. Having learned a little Spanish in norther Spain, I found myself some years later in Buenos Aires. Other than the use of 'vos' and some local words that were quickly and easily learned, there were few noteworthy distinctions between the two varieties of Spanish. Sure, the speech rhythms are different, but easy to adapt to as a listener, if not as a speaker.

So palta means aguacate, or the other way around, if one prefers. In México I had to learn that durazno was what I had previously thought of as a melocotón. In short, big deal. My Mexican friends say "¿Qué hubo?" instead of "¿Qué hay?". Those localisms hardly constitute a major difference.

Thanks for your clarity.

Un abrazo,
Cuchu


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## Mariaguadalupe

I agree with many of you who say that there is no basic difference in our language, be it spoken in America (should I say, Latin America) or in Spain. 

Despite a few differences in how we use language, we can all understand each other.

I too, am one of those who tends to follow the speech patterns of the person with whom I'm speaking with. This is not funny and most of the time, I can't help myself. 
There is a very lovely lady near my house who was born and raised in Spain. Although, she has lived here in northern México for many years, she still keeps her accent from Spain. On several occasions I've turned many shades because while chatting to her, I've realized I've been "imitating" her accent! Some people do not like it when others copy their speech patterns! Sometimes its harder to explain if the person you are imitating is your boss! (My boss was from Yucatán!)

I'm an avid reader, and it is easy for me to follow works from Spain, Argentina, Colombia, etc.

As to the people in the south of Mexico, most of them are bilingual, not mainstream languages, but Mayan, Nahuatl, etc. They too tend to imitate other speech patterns. Some of them refuse to learn Spanish too. I once employed a cleaning woman from the "huasteca veracruzana" where they still speak "Huasteco" a dialect of Nahuatl origin; she then learned to speak a smattering of English. She was able to speak her own Huasteco, Spanish and understood English. Quite an accomplishment!

As Sergio put it, sometimes it is more difficult to understand people speaking a language that is exclusive for their region than understanding "mainstream" Spanish.


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## Outsider

sergio11 said:
			
		

> I know that a lot of people disagree with this, because they think we are trying to impose a "right" way of talking on them, or because they go to a café in a very "local" neighborhood in some country and the waiter doesn't understand what they are trying to order, but that is not because of differences in the language structure or the difference of dialects. It is merely that some words are more common in one region and not in others. That does not constitute a different language or a dialect.


Some people might argue that the differences you've described in your post prove that there are different dialects -- not different languages, note -- within the Spanish language.


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## mandarina_82

All differents kinds of Spanish are right, they are just different.
Whe I have had the opportinuty to talk to people from American Spanish-speakers countries , the just didn't change their accent, because is yours and it is very intrinsic. But is right that some people are easy to change their natural accent a little bit, cause I don't think none of us can change it completly.
In my case one one has change his/her accent to be more kind with me.
The only strange happend to me was when being in Usa, taking a drawing class and the teacher asked me where i was from, suddenly a girl with caribbean (i guess she was from venezuela or over there) accent said "me to...." and i was like What? she said she was from Madrid... thing I didn't belive for her sweet accent ,the opposite to madrilean accent !!
and i never talked to her because she was a liar. i wasn't interested even in knowing where she really was from. 
Being in Usa, and for the one happened to me I heard from some american spanish-speakers that some white people from American Spanish-speakers countries say that they are Spanish, and the idea is that the migrate there but they don't want to be considered as "simply migrants" and i guess to be european sounds better... this is the conclusion i got from the anecdote happened to me. I must say that it was the only odd thing happened to me there with taling to other spanish speakers from American continent.
They kept their accent and they were proud of their countries.


The accent in Spain is very different, as you can guess it depends on the part of Spain.
The northen accent is hard and very vocalized.
If you go to Canarian Islands you will find a sweet accent.
And the andalusian one is unique, i wouldn't know how to define it, in my opinion there are several andalusian accents.
mostly the spanish accent depends on the intonation and there are many.
you should take a course to know all of them i guess haha 

I'm going to leave here some spanish tv and radio links, so that way if you hear at them you can get some spanish accents (not the conductors' one, of course, that's neutral)

www.rtve.es (you can see tv on this one)
www.cadena100.es
http://www.cadenaser.com/player_radio.html
www.ondacero.es
www.cope.es



Mandarina


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## Terry Mount

Gracias a todos los que han contribuido a este hilo.... especialmente le agradezco a Sergio11 por su clara y sensible explicación. De hecho, mandé sus comentarios a mis estudiantes porque muchos creen que para aprender el español es mejor ir acá o allá.... Recientemente, una estudiante me dijo que quería estudiar en España porque alguien le había dicho que es mejor aprender el castellano de España puesto que si lo hablas así (como en Madrid o Santander), los hispanoparlantes en todos los países te pueden comprender...pero si lo aprendes en Chile o en Ecuador (los otros países que había considerado) no te va a servir tan bien...no todos te pueden entender. Traté de decirle lo que ha dicho Sergio pero él lo ha expresado mucho mejor. Esta chica ya tiene las palabras de Sergio en su correo electrónico. ¡Gracias y vivan los foreros!


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## Roi Marphille

mandarina_82 said:
			
		

> The accent in Spain is very different, as you can guess it depends on the part of Spain.
> The northen accent is hard and very vocalized.
> If you go to Canarian Islands you will find a sweet accent.
> And the andalusian one is unique, i wouldn't know how to define it, in my opinion there are several andalusian accents.
> mostly the spanish accent depends on the intonation and there are many.
> you should take a course to know all of them i guess haha


hi mandarina and other foreros, 
I'm just wondering load if we could consider Standard-Castilian an accent too  . I can locate like, I don't know, maybe twenty different accents of Spanish but I would not consider the Standard an accent itself. 
What do you guys think? Do you ever say "this guy has no accent?"


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## mandarina_82

yeah! we can't count all the many accents there are in spain, and we can't consider that there is only one.

"neutral accent"


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## AlfonsoHKG

murena said:
			
		

> I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun...quote]
> 
> Mexican Spanish on your TV news tends to be closer to Castilian from Spain than the one you speak in the streets.
> That is the same case for the rest of the Americas.
> Just wonder why


----------



## AlfonsoHKG

Roi Marphille said:
			
		

> really? I didn't know. Or at least, I have not realised.
> I guess that you mean that the Castellano spoken in Salamanca is more, let's say "pure" (not better) which, in my opinion, may have a point. The reason, I would dare to say, is the migration of thousands of Andalusians, Extremeños and Galicians mainly ...to Madrid during the 1950-75. That big migration might have changed the accent in many people and I would say that this is what you noticed when stated that the Spanish spoken in Northern Spain is quite different from the one spoken in Madrid.
> 
> Anyway, I admit that I hardly distinguish a different accent from someone from Santander vs. someone from Madrid whose relatives are also from Madrid.
> I think that, from Filological point of view, migrations are very important and I may say that the Castellano spoken in North-Castilla or Cantabria has suffered relatively few alterations in their language because they did not have newcomers, or at least very few, from other parts of Spain or other lands.
> 
> Anyone thinks the same?
> 
> Salu2,
> Roi


 
Hola, soy de Madrid y aunque tengo un poco de tono valenciano por mi madre y por estancias largas en Alicante puedo decir que no noto la diferencia entre el castellano de Alava, Madrid o Santander.

Quizas se referia, el que citaba las diferencias, a la gente mayor del llamado "cinturon rojo" de la Provincia de Madrid (similar a muchas poblaciones de la periferia barcelonesa) donde mucha gente procede del sur de Espanya.

Supongo que el que cita tan abultada diferencia estaba alojado en un Hotel en Alcorcon, jajaja

De cualquier forma no hace falta recorrer muchos Km. Si estas en el Parque de las Avenidas de Madrid y andas un par de minutos hacia el Barrio de la Concepcion el acento cambia, especialmente en los jovenes.


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## Terry Mount

AlfonsoHKG said:
			
		

> murena said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun...quote]
> 
> Mexican Spanish on your TV news tends to be closer to Castilian from Spain than the one you speak in the streets.
> That is the same case for the rest of the Americas.
> Just wonder why
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe because the language spoken in broadcasting, which is directed to a a general audience, tends to be free from noticeable "accents" and regional peculiarities (therefore it is "neutral"). It is not imitation of anything, but perhaps even a "dialect" that nobody actually speaks, but everybody understands?
> 
> In the US we are attuned to the so-called mid-west neutral accent for TV, etc.; in addition to the reasons offered above, acquiring this accent for "work purposes" gives the "locutor" more mobility within the U.S. (and Canada?) He may be working in Alabama for a couple of years and then move to Philadelphia without having to be "retrained" (i.e. without getting an "extreme makeover" for his accent.
> 
> BTW, we certainly are not "imitating" the British accent, which does have a general sort of "prestige," I suppose, worldwide, nor are we "imitating" an "upper crust" accent of any of the regions of the US. It seems to me that something similar to this may be operating in Latin America as well as in Spain.
Click to expand...


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## hedonist

murena said:
			
		

> Obviously, I think that the spanish spoken in Mexico sounds very good and that is a very correct form of spanish. Anyway, I guess everyone from the different spanish speaking countries thinks the same of their own dialect.
> 
> About the spanish from Spain, personally I find it very old fashion. The use of vosotros, os and some verb conjugations just sounds very old to me.
> 
> I also note that they have a very strong resistance to new english terms adapted to spanish, like the word ordenador instead of computadora. I think sometimes it is impractical (I do not mean to say it is wrong) being so ortodox about the purity of the language, specially with all the new technology terms that appear everyday.
> 
> I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun, and maybe some people who are very proud of their Spanish heritage and are in certain contexts like a bull fight or a spanish bar, with some tintorros already in.





> At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun, and maybe some people who are very proud of their Spanish heritage and are in certain contexts like a bull fight or a spanish bar, with some tintorros already in.


Oh I coulnd't agree more. As far as I know very few Latin Americans perceive the Peninsular variety as prestigious or what-have-you. And I imagine that Spaniards aren’t any different in that respect either. I doubt that there is any Spaniard that thinks Argentines speak more correctly than him/her. On the contrary accents from the Peninsular are often derided, subject to ridicule and facetiously mimicked and not held in the highest of esteem as some pretentiously assume. The most common targets of this ridicule are the “effeminate” lisp and the harsh guttural jota sound which are features not found in the Americas. I think some people make the honest mistake of trying to find a parallel between the English and Spanish speaking worlds where, perhaps to their disappointment, non exists. It is true that there is a tendency among some English-speakers to view the British variety, specifically RP, as the unofficial proper, posh version of the language. Fortunately/Unfortunately (depending on the individual) an equivalen does not exist in the Spanish speaking world.


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## hedonist

AlfonsoHKG said:
			
		

> Mexican Spanish on your TV news tends to be closer to Castilian from Spain than the one you speak in the streets.
> That is the same case for the rest of the Americas.
> Just wonder why


Errr….I don’t think so. Funnily enough the same can be said of Spaniards and therefore mount the same argument in favour of the Mexicans due to the fact that the general Spanish population doesn’t sound anything like their news reporters. It could well be that you have it the wrong way around and it's the Spanish reporters that are basing their accent on the Mexicans jejeje… 

In my opinion cultivated Spanish speakers over the world have a propensity to sound more alike. And it's not because their deliberately imitating Spaniards as there isn't one homogeneous Peninsular accent in Spain.


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## hedonist

Terry Mount said:
			
		

> Maybe because the language spoken in broadcasting, which is directed to a a general audience, tends to be free from noticeable "accents" and regional peculiarities (therefore it is "neutral"). It is not imitation of anything, but perhaps even a "dialect" that nobody actually speaks, but everybody understands?
> 
> In the US we are attuned to the so-called mid-west neutral accent for TV, etc.; in addition to the reasons offered above, acquiring this accent for "work purposes" gives the "locutor" more mobility within the U.S. (and Canada?) He may be working in Alabama for a couple of years and then move to Philadelphia without having to be "retrained" (i.e. without getting an "extreme makeover" for his accent.
> 
> BTW, we certainly are not "imitating" the British accent, which does have a general sort of "prestige," I suppose, worldwide, nor are we "imitating" an "upper crust" accent of any of the regions of the US. It seems to me that something similar to this may be operating in Latin America as well as in Spain.



I more or less agree with the observations you've made.


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## AlfonsoHKG

Hedonista,

Intentas que tus opiniones personales basadas en sentimientos sean proyectadas a premisas validas en terminos generales.

No has basado nada en terminos cientificos o datos cotejables. La pena es que no encuentro la informacion del uso del numero de palabras por pais hispanohablantes donde os goleamos desde el 1er minuto del partido.

Y si el prestigio se basa en la efectividad echale un vistazo a la renta per capita donde nuestros datos duplican, triplican e incluso cuadriplican a todos los paises iberoamericanos.


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## nanel

Creo que nos estamos apartando de la pregunta inicial. Desafortunadamente yo no puedo responder porque soy española, lo que sí puedo decir es que la mayoría de los acentos de los países hispanoamericanos me encantan. Mi opinión es que, igual que a nosotros sus acentos nos suenan muy suaves generalmente, a ellos el nuestro les suena bastante fuerte ¿Me equivoco?

También me ha hecho gracia ver que consideran nuestra forma de hablar antigua, porque eso es exactamente lo que pensamos nosotros de vuestro acento, suena como en una película de época, el vos, querés, casi me parece sacado de Romeo y Julieta, pero precioso anyway.


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## coconcho

"About the spanish from Spain, personally I find it very old fashion. The use of vosotros, os and some verb conjugations just sounds very old to me. "

Well, well, you murena. You possibly might find "castellano antigüo" old fashioned, but actually the word "ustedes" (that you use instead of vosotros) comes from the old form "vuesa merced or vuestra merced, dating back S.XV. So, I dont think your word "ustedes", which is also used by us in other contexts, is very modern. On the other way, the word "vos" in Argentina, is centuries old. It is not used here any more. It's just ridiculous that you say spanish is old, for you in South-america keep a larger number of old words (you started to develop a S.XV spanish, never forget). Spanish from Spain developed faster and you remained with older words. And about the restrictions to english words, well, i have nothing in particular against english, which i love, BUT spanish being a latin language, i prefer adopting latin words, such as "ordenateur" coming from french to better preserve the language. Apart from that, this is the rule of a magnificent Language Academy we have, and that stop our language from getting bigger, in change of keeping it pure.


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## coconcho

Para matizar lo que he dicho antes, me limito a decir que una de las características del español de América es la de arcaizar y la de adoptar neologismos casi siempre venidos del norte, de los EEUU. Así que me repito, es ridículo decir que el español de España te suena a "viejo" a algo así, cuando está comprobado que es al revés, aquí te dejo una muestra para que la próxima vez hables con fundamento. ¿ah! y una cosita más, ¿cuáles son las declinaciones verbales que te parecen pasadas de moda? Es sólo por curiosidad de comprobar como hablas de una lengua como de una moda pasajera de vestuario. Y ya para rematar la faena, sería bastante patético que intentaráis hablar con acento español, porque no sois españoles y porque sería una falta de identidad y personalidad abrumadora. Y porque aunque la mayoría estais mexclados con españoles, aunque los tachais de asesinos y déspotas, en vez de pararos a pensar, que os lo estáis llamando a vosotros mismos. Pues eso sois.


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## coconcho

Escribe en google español de América y comprueba lo que te digo.¡ Salud!


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## Namakemono

People seem to think that the Spanish speak with ceceo. Ceceo (pronouncing s, c, and z as c all the time) only exists in a small region of Andalusia. Most Spaniards make a clear distinction between s, and c and z.


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## Julito_Maraña

Namakemono said:


> People seem to think that the Spanish speak with ceceo. Ceceo (pronouncing s, c, and z as c all the time) only exists in a small region of Andalusia. Most Spaniards make a clear distinction between s, and c and z.



Sí pero comprendes por qué, ¿verda? Si yo digo *casa *y *caza *de la misma manera (*/kasa/*) y a esto se le llama _seseo _entonces _cecear _debe ser lo que hacen los que no sesean ya que la gran mayoría de los que seseamos no tenemos la menor idea que hay gente que sí dice *casa *y *caza *de la misma manera pero no como nosotros porque para ambos dicen algo parecido acusticamente a : */kaθ**a/.

*Como muchos de los fenómenos fonolingüísticos de norte y centro de España, el decir */kasa/*y */kaθ**a/* por *casa *y *caza *es simplemente hablar normalmente o el español estándar peninsular, o hacer la diferencia. La verdad es que no se considera un vicio del idioma así es que no tiene nombre.  Una palabra que se usa exclusivamente en América es un _américanismo _pero una que se usa solo es España no es un _iberismo_.

Un «normal»    :  Para ir a la caza hay que salir de la casa.
Un seseante    :  Para ir a la casa hay que salir de la casa.
Un ceceante ~:  Para ir a la caza hay que zalir de la caza.


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## solinvictus

I love translating said:


> Eventhough I agree with Cuchu, please don't forget that there are people who acquire an accent really easily, I'm one of those. I meet a person from Yucatan, and a couple of hours later I'm talking with his accent. Same thing if I spend some time at another Spanish speaking country, I return with an accent not my own.


 
Have you experienced speaking with Argentinians? What is the more obvious result? Impossible not to start speaking like them. Has the tangos of Gardel anything to do with this?

And in Portugal, where people have a very good ear for foreign languages (especially if compared with the french or the spaniards), after a week in Brazil, they all start helplessly speaking "Brazilian" Portuguese. Mysteries...

Now, trying to understand what the spaniard gentleman (sorry I didn't fix the nick) says about illiterate people cameleonizing his peninsular Spanish, let me have a guess.
There are regions in South America were the Spanish has a "classical" quality (regions of highland Colombia, some chilean rural provinces, regions in Perú, etc., etc.) and it is true that we S.-A. feel attracted to this way of speaking. This classical quality has elements in common with peninsular Spanish, mostly a more accurate pronunciation (id est, more Old-Castilian and less Andalusian-Canarian), that is what makes us recognize it as an "icon" Spanish and react consequently in an affective way. I think peninsular Spanish in general, its pronunciation, rhythm, and overall vivacity that characterizes it, are more shocking than admired by South-Americans, except for those "classical" elements of accuracy in vocabulary and pronunciation, which as I've said are not exclusive to it.

What do you think?

All of this being an outrageous generalization of course, I think this has helped settle my own ideas on the subject. Thanks to all.


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## solinvictus

coconcho said:


> "About the spanish from Spain, personally I find it very old fashion. The use of vosotros, os and some verb conjugations just sounds very old to me. "
> 
> Well, well, you murena. You possibly might find "castellano antigüo" old fashioned, but actually the word "ustedes" (that you use instead of vosotros) comes from the old form "vuesa merced or vuestra merced, dating back S.XV. So, I dont think your word "ustedes", which is also used by us in other contexts, is very modern. On the other way, the word "vos" in Argentina, is centuries old. It is not used here any more. It's just ridiculous that you say spanish is old, for you in South-america keep a larger number of old words (you started to develop a S.XV spanish, never forget). Spanish from Spain developed faster and you remained with older words. And about the restrictions to english words, well, i have nothing in particular against english, which i love, BUT spanish being a latin language, i prefer adopting latin words, such as "ordenateur" coming from french to better preserve the language. Apart from that, this is the rule of a magnificent Language Academy we have, and that stop our language from getting bigger, in change of keeping it pure.


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## solinvictus

Hello!
I am apalled with this. Not knowing where to start from, I will remind you that both ordenador and computador where created on latin roots. Ordinare=order sequentially (late latin) and Computare=counting(rather late latin too).
Ignorance is a very sad thing (this is not pesonal), especially when you see that this ordenador/computador, as is the case here, is one of the most common-place of the artificial flags of this pseudo conflict that is such a nuisance for the Spanish language, wherever it is spoken.


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## xOoeL

Interesante todo esto.
Soy de España, así que no debería contestar, pero lo voy a hacer.
Estando tan separados geográficamente, es normal que hayan surgido diferencias, más si tenemos en cuenta que tenemos influencias distintas.
Ya se ha hablado de ordinateur (francés) y computer (inglés), pero la lista es mucho más larga.  Una vez hecha e interiorizada la diferencia, comienza a ser un signo de identidad que nadie está dispuesto a cambiar.  
Además, no hay un español normalizado, porque no lo ha habido nunca.  El español que se habla ahora en España es diferente del que los conquistadores llevaron a América, y ya había modalidades entonces.
Para mí lo único importante es que sigamos entendiéndonos todos.  No con esto digo que haya que evitar las evoluciones propias de cada zona, sino conocerlas.  Yo sé las palabras que sólo se dicen en mi ciudad, las que sólo se usan en mi región y las que sólo se usan en mi país (no todas, cada día aprendo algo nuevo), y evitaría usarlas si se que no voy a ser entendido.  Para algo tenemos los sinónimos.  De todas formas también me gusta aprender palabras "locales".
Siendo de Andalucía (seseante) tengo un un habla más parecida a la de América, y también me _chirría _el "tengo un hiJo piJo" de algunos madrileños, por ejemplo, pero está clarísimo que entiendo lo que dicen, igual que entiendo a los chilenos, argentinos,...  Si no a la primera, a la segunda.
Eso es lo único que me importa y que debería importarnos.


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## coconcho

solinvictus said:


> Hello!
> I am apalled with this. Not knowing where to start from, I will remind you that both ordenador and computador where created on latin roots. Ordinare=order sequentially (late latin) and Computare=counting(rather late latin too).
> Ignorance is a very sad thing (this is not pesonal), especially when you see that this ordenador/computador, as is the case here, is one of the most common-place of the artificial flags of this pseudo conflict that is such a nuisance for the Spanish language, wherever it is spoken.


 
I absolutely agree with you on that both words come from the latin mother tongue;HOWEVER, ordenador, coming from latin "ordinator" came into Spanish via french. Computer derives from latin "computus". "Computer" was already used in the 1600's in English, referring a person, able to calculate mathematichs! In 1897 the word was used to refer to THE device. Consequently, Anglos, way back, coined that word from Latin, and hence, its the word for them. And now the question... WHY ordinateur in French? really easy! The french etymology relates to "placing things in order" -- the connection is clear. The english etymology is that the secretary who operated the calculating machine was the "computer" -- the person who computed. The term was transfered from the person to the machine (s)he operated. AND now i SAY:
we adopted the term ordenador from the French, out of proximity, and probably out of a formal treat of the word. Of course, in this case, both words are basically latin, but that's not the point. The point is that Spanish tend to adopt other words in the same way because they are more latinized than the anglos' words, being the former original latin or not. So, i paraphrase you, ignorance is sad for clever people, right? But i think it's really more sad when you suddenly realize you are ignorant. How u feel it? sad or just ignorant?


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## xOoeL

Tengo entendido que la palabra "ordinateur" viene de Dios, al que en francés llaman también *le **Grand Ordinateur*.
Cuando presentaron los ordenadores por primera vez en Francia y estaban explicando todas sus funciones, alguien exclamó que era como el *Grand Ordinateur.
*No sé qué parte de leyenda hay en esto, pero me parece interesante contarlo.


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## solinvictus

coconcho said:


> I absolutely agree with you on that both words come from the latin mother tongue;HOWEVER, ordenador, coming from latin "ordinator" came into Spanish via french. Computer derives from latin "computus". "Computer" was already used in the 1600's in English, referring a person, able to calculate mathematichs! In 1897 the word was used to refer to THE device. Consequently, Anglos, way back, coined that word from Latin, and hence, its the word for them. And now the question... WHY ordinateur in French? really easy! The french etymology relates to "placing things in order" -- the connection is clear. The english etymology is that the secretary who operated the calculating machine was the "computer" -- the person who computed. The term was transfered from the person to the machine (s)he operated. AND now i SAY:
> we adopted the term ordenador from the French, out of proximity, and probably out of a formal treat of the word. Of course, in this case, both words are basically latin, but that's not the point. The point is that Spanish tend to adopt other words in the same way because they are more latinized than the anglos' words, being the former original latin or not. So, i paraphrase you, ignorance is sad for clever people, right? But i think it's really more sad when you suddenly realize you are ignorant. How u feel it? sad or just ignorant?


----------



## solinvictus

If you must know, I feel completely ignorant: I don't think I understand your point.
So, there are this two words of latin origin, right?
I prefer to think it was out of francophilia than out of proximity that did the trick. It would be interesting to discuss Anglophilia and Francophilia but I'm afraid this is not the right place.


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## xOoeL

Yo no creo que sea por francofilia, sino realmente por proximidad.
Aparte está el hecho, de que com*puta*dora puede sonar un poco mal en España.
Por ejemplo, en España hay _recomendaciones _sobre por dónde *no *dividir las palabras al final de línea.  Ejemplos:  di-putación, Ptolo-meo.
Me parece que lo estoy terminando de liar todo, pero de verdad *pienso *que esa es otra de las razones que hicieron triunfar en España la palabra ordenador y no computador(a).
Si no estáis de acuerdo, simplemente ignorad este mensaje, por favor.


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## solinvictus

xOoeL said:


> Tengo entendido que la palabra "ordinateur" viene de Dios, al que en francés llaman también *le **Grand Ordinateur*.
> Cuando presentaron los ordenadores por primera vez en Francia y estaban explicando todas sus funciones, alguien exclamó que era como el *Grand Ordinateur.*
> No sé qué parte de leyenda hay en esto, pero me parece interesante contarlo.


 
Hay algo de leyenda en ello ... _se non è vero, e ben trovato_!
A los franceses no les gustan los anglicismos, mucho menos con "pute" en ellos, y decidieron inventarse un substituto para la palabra Computer. Extraigo de este site

http://mediateur.free.fr/web/histoire.html 
1954 L'ordinateur chasse le computer Le vieux terme oublié de l'Église même, « ordinateur » (1491 - mettre en ordre, celui qui institue - en parlant du Christ, _« Dieu, grand ordinateur du monde »)_ est proposé à la demande d'IBM par Jacques Perret, professeur de latin à la Sorbonne pour remplacer celui de _computer_ ou de « computeur ».


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## xOoeL

De acuerdo.  En mi anterior mensaje expongo una teoría similar con "puta".


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## solinvictus

xOoeL said:


> Yo no creo que sea por francofilia, sino realmente por proximidad.
> Aparte está el hecho, de que com*puta*dora puede sonar un poco mal en España.
> Por ejemplo, en España hay _recomendaciones _sobre por dónde *no *dividir las palabras al final de línea. Ejemplos: di-putación, Ptolo-meo.
> Me parece que lo estoy terminando de liar todo, pero de verdad *pienso *que esa es otra de las razones que hicieron triunfar en España la palabra ordenador y no computador(a).
> Si no estáis de acuerdo, simplemente ignorad este mensaje, por favor.


 
Puede ser, sois unos mal pensados.
Que tal cripto-francofilia?
PS: Quisquis ranam amat, *puta*t ranam esse Dianam (esto del latín siempre causa desconciertos)


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## Dueño de Brucéfalo

JLanguage said:


> Perhaps these posts about how is BE perceived in the US, should be moved to a new thread? Are they helpful in answering and understanding my original question?
> 
> To answer your question, I think the general trend is that due to the prominence of the US, the idea of "the queen's English" has largely diminished in popularity. The only time where I find BE (BRP) clearly superior to AE, is in recitation of Shakespeare and anything, such as the King James, written in Shakespearean English.



Personally, I never put on a BE accent when reciting Shakespeare. I see no reason to change the way I speak just because the man who wrote it spoke with a different accent.


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## Dueño de Brucéfalo

cirrus said:


> I think the issue is that apart from slang and use of the subjunctive to me the difference between American and European English seems smaller than South American Spanish vs Spanish Spanish. I wonder whether others agree.



That is a question that I would dearly like to know the answer to. I feel like I'm missing out in a big way, not understaning the level of difference and being not being able to recognize certain accents. To the best of my knowledge, the only *major* difference between BE and AE is the slang, which presents an enormous disparity when combined with the strong accents that some British people have (to my ear, anyway).


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## Dueño de Brucéfalo

astronauta said:


> Cuchu, I don't think some Spanish speakers would adopt an accent to sound more educated, they may adopt a more florid language or a more articulate vocabulary, but not another accent.
> 
> I think that applies more to non-British English speakers, I've noticed that sometimes if anyone wants to make a smart cremark they adopt a British accent; Frasier and Stewie Griffin come to mind.
> 
> I was born in Spain and lived ten years in Mexico and I can switch accent  and slang back and forth no problem, but I normally speak with Spanish accent.



I love Stewie Griffin!  More to the point, I envy you for having that level of facility. I can usually tell by the ceceo if someone is from Spain, but sometimes even the ceceo is hardly noticable!! As for me differentiating between Colombia and Chile or Uruguay and Paraguay, forget about it!


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## caballoschica

Well, the ceceo is different in andaluz than in castellano. Andaluz doesn't distinguish between the s and z sound, but instead of pronouncing them like 's' like Latin America, they pronounce them like "th" like the castellano s sound.  Castellano covers the central region of Spain, not its entirety.  There's the gallego region, the catalan, vasco, andaluz, canary islands, isles baleares, and of course castellano all Spanish Spanish. Each having their own dialect.  Castellano, however, is the "official" Spanish.  It spread throughout Spain and regional dialects had covered larger areas.  The regional dialects receded to their smaller parts of Spain while Castellano took up the central part of Spain and the majority.  What would people imitate if they were to imitate a Spanish accent?

I can guess at the difference between places like Argentina/Uruguay and Chile, and the rest of Latin America, but they're only guesses.  I know the basic differences linguistically.   At least I should.  From class. 

I think our theatre people here like to at least talk in a somewhat different register, if not attempt BE to recite Shakespeare.  

I do think that Spanish Spanish and LA Spanish are more different than AE and BE.  As previously mentioned, AE and BE have some spelling differences and slang differences, but that's really it.  Sure we talk differently, but you can get used to hearing different accents. Every language has those.  I've never had a problem listening to BE, though. 

Excluding all the factors common in dialect difference you get:
AE Spelling in English VS BE Spelling
Vosotros vs Not even using it and maybe using a different verb form in the "tu" place and of course not using vosotros.


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## kurumin

cuchuflete said:


> I tried to avoid too many conclusions, but reading your two posts has made me reflect on what I believe are the two, or at least two of "X" motivations when Spanish Americans 'put on' or imitiate peninsular speech patterns.  One, of course, is humorous.
> By humorous I do not mean disparaging...rather, just being jocular.  Another, far less frequent, is an attempt by the less educated to sound more educated...at least in terms of what they think 'educated' may be.



This is true with Americans living in UK, or Brazilian people in Portugal, they end up accepting European usage...


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## kurumin

I love translating said:


> Eventhough I agree with Cuchu, please don't forget that there are people who acquire an accent really easily, I'm one of those.  I meet a person from Yucatan, and a couple of hours later I'm talking with his accent.  Same thing if I spend some time at another Spanish speaking country, I return with an accent not my own.


accent includes both 1. pronunciaton; and 2. intonation

pronunciation is not that easy to change/obtain;
intonation patterns are more easy to acquire


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## Argónida

caballoschica said:


> Well, the ceceo is different in andaluz than in castellano. Andaluz doesn't distinguish between the s and z sound, but instead of pronouncing them like 's' like Latin America, they pronounce them like "th" like the castellano s sound. .


 
El ceceo se da sólo en algunas zonas de Andalucía. En otras hay seseo, y en otras ninguno de los dos.


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## panjabigator

Could the usage of vosotros and ustedes between Spain and LA be a good comparison to the US and its usage of the word ya'all?  Acceptable in some regions and not heard in others?


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## cuchuflete

panjabigator said:


> Could the usage of vosotros and ustedes between Spain and LA be a good comparison to the US and its usage of the word ya'all?  Acceptable in some regions and not heard in others?



No.

Vosotros is used in Spain and perhaps a few other places.
Where ustedes is used in place of the second person plural, it is not a regionalism, but a part of standard grammar and usage.

Ya'all is colloquial, informal and non-standard.


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## San

caballoschica said:


> Well, the ceceo is different in andaluz than in castellano. Andaluz doesn't distinguish between the s and z sound, but instead of pronouncing them like 's' like Latin America, they pronounce them like "th" like the castellano s sound.



I think you're wrong, until I know there isn't ceceo in the Castillian dialect of Spanish. There is only distinction. And about Andaluz, there is indeed ceceo, but also seseo, distinction and heheo. Have a look at this:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagen:Andalucía_ceceante_y_seseante.PNG

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialec...l_nivel_fon.C3.A9tico_.28y_fonol.C3.B3gico.29


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## Outsider

caballoschica said:


> Well, the ceceo is different in andaluz than in castellano.


Tecnically, the 'ceceo' of European Spanish is not called 'ceceo' at all. See this thread.



caballoschica said:


> I do think that Spanish Spanish and LA Spanish are more different than AE and BE.


It seems that most people get that impression about the dialects of foreign languages. For me, for instance, Scottish English is virtually impossible to understand.


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## HUMBERT0

panjabigator said:


> Could the usage of vosotros and ustedes between Spain and LA be a good comparison to the US and its usage of the word ya'all? Acceptable in some regions and not heard in others?


No. 
Además, aunque para comunicarnos el uso de vosotros haya caído en desuso por estos lares, el uso en la literatura no es desconocido, si lees a Quevedo, Cervantes, Góngora, y aun a los escritores novohispanos, etc. hacen uso del vosotros. Me acaban de prestar a Fausto de Goethe y hace uso del vosotros. Mi lectura de la Biblia, es en una Reina-Valera de 1905 y también en la de 1960, y ambas usan vosotros..


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## tvdxer

Being from Minnesota, I can't speak for Spanish-speaking countries, but I think Americans who are familliar with it tend to think of the Castellano accent as sounding very lispy.  (Personal fact: I underwent "speech therapy" to correct my lisp and inability to pronounce the "th" sound.)


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## Cecilio

manana said:


> Hola a todos,
> 
> No tengo ningún conocimiento de lingüística y me atrevo a opinar como cualquier mortal que aprecia las lenguas de una manera más bien sensual. En lo personal me gusta mucho el castellano que hablan en España; me encantan las terminaciones de sus formas verbales ya que me suena y me parece mucho más musical decir "sabéis, hacéis, queréis", que "sabes, haces, quieres" . Me suena más ensoñador y novelesco decir "¿os habéis vuelto loco?" que "¿te has vuelto loco?"; "¡sois un malvado!" que "¡eres un malvado!"; "¿os parece?" que "¿te parece?", y aunque para muchos en este lado del charco estas formas suenen un poco anticuadas, para mí no lo son, y creo que esto es más bien un prejuicio. En mi opinión creo que, en general, los españoles  "le sacan mejor el jugo" a nuestra lengua, que los chilenos. Por otra parte a mis oídos resulta atractivo el "ceceo" pues pareciera que al hablar estuvieran susurrando y que las palabras les fueran saliendo directamente desde el corazón que para mí  tiene un efecto bastante hipnótico y suena más intimo.



The title of this thread is "How is Castilian Spanish viewed by other Spanish speaking countries?", but it could be interesting to substitute the word "viewed" with the word "understood". I have underlined some of manana's sentences because they're a good example of misunderstanding between dialects. When we say in Spain "habéis" or "sois" these are exclusively PLURAL FORMS, connected with "vosotros", plural of "tú". We never ever use "vos sois", etc. Let's imagine I send an e-mail to someone in Colombia or Mexico with this sentence:

"Hola, Carlos, ¿cómo estáis?"

What will he understand? I'm not sure, but what I mean to say is clear: "Hello, Carlos, how are you and your familiy (or friends, or wife, etc.)?". The verb is in the plural.

If I write:

"Hola, Carlos, ¿cómo estáis (vos)".

It means one of two things: a) I'm just trying to make a joke; b) This is not an e-mail but a letter written with a quill in the 17th century.


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## Sylphadora

murena said:


> Obviously, I think that the spanish spoken in Mexico sounds very good and that is a very correct form of spanish. Anyway, I guess everyone from the different spanish speaking countries thinks the same of their own dialect.
> 
> About the spanish from Spain, personally I find it very old fashion. The use of vosotros, os and some verb conjugations just sounds very old to me.
> 
> I also note that they have a very strong resistance to new english terms adapted to spanish, like the word ordenador instead of computadora. I think sometimes it is impractical (I do not mean to say it is wrong) being so ortodox about the purity of the language, specially with all the new technology terms that appear everyday.
> 
> I disagree with cuchuflete. At least in the mexican context, I do not think that anybody will imitate the Spain accent to pretend to be more educated, we just do that for fun, and maybe some people who are very proud of their Spanish heritage and are in certain contexts like a bull fight or a spanish bar, with some tintorros already in.


 
I didn't know that "vosotros" sounded old-fashioned there!! XD Well, here in Spain the use of "vosotros" it's very important, because it's different than "ustedes". The difference between "ustedes" and "vosotros" is the same difference that there is between "tú" and "usted". In fact, "ustedes" is the plural of "usted" and "vosotros" is the plural of "tú". For us it's important, because one word is used to talk to people respectfully, and the other one is used to talk to equals or people one trust.


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## Ornitorrinco

cuchuflete said:


> I have had personal experience in Mexico and in Argentina and in Venezuela with taxi drivers and shop attendants. These natives of the countries I was visiting adopted, very temporarily, an attempt at a ceceo when speaking with me.



That's truly amazing and, honestly, I can't believe it. I wouldn't trust your ears really. Latinamerican people who didn't study Linguistics or Philology or at least English just can't pronounce [θ].

And those who have studied English normally don't associate the English 'th' with Spanish 'z'.


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## Bettie

I love translating said:


> Eventhough I agree with Cuchu, please don't forget that there are people who acquire an accent really easily, I'm one of those. I meet a person from Yucatan, and a couple of hours later I'm talking with his accent. Same thing if I spend some time at another Spanish speaking country, I return with an accent not my own.


 
Same here!!!

Besides, sometimes mexicans don't understand Spaniard people, I am sorry, when I watched the Sea Inside I had a lot of trouble to understand and was happy when they spoke in Gallician (is that correct?) because they had subtitles.


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## Minimagpro

You can´t say that in Andalucía we all speak with the   s,z,c all sounding the same!

the "s" sounds just like an english "s" but the "c" and "z" take on the "th" sound.

I am from Cádiz (Gaditano) and we have our own special accent and things but there are places near us that speak like that!

There is a town near me called Medina and they speak every c,s,z with the th and it gets very hard to understand!


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## marchie

murena said:


> I also note that they have a very strong resistance to new english terms adapted to spanish, like the word ordenador instead of computadora. I think sometimes it is impractical (I do not mean to say it is wrong) being so ortodox about the purity of the language, specially with all the new technology terms that appear everyday.


 
I wouldn't think of it as a resistance to anything, rather I believe it's something related to the proximity of certain Latin America countries to the USA, and the consequent influence in the language, which is not the case of Spain. 
Anyway, I don't consider that the spanish spoken in Spain is purer than the one spoken in other countries, and I sincerely can't understand why there are some people in Latin and South America that believe that we spaniards are arrogants concerning this, maybe it's a matter that steems from colonial times (I'm just kidding  , I don't mean to offend anyone).


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## donector

this is a interesting topic. I can't tell much about american countries attitude in general, only about Chile, where I'm from

User Manana has already hinted it somehow but I'll try to be clearer from my point of view

chileans (oposed to other american countries already mentioned) are highly "malinches" (sellers of our nationality)+ siuticos (snobs): devoid of identity and quick to adopt whatever "looks like" or "sounds" european or statesider... 

it's  as simple to note as to have a look at the tv, media, they're alway showing tall thin blonde people without the least native mix: when 90% of chileans have black hair, are not that white, further and also they're naming all they can in english!!.. to make it look posh

It's very common to hear from chileans whose ancestor came to live to chile from europe, "no, yo soy ingles", "no, yo soy italiano", "no, yo soy aleman" and even "no, yo soy espanol" (!!!!???)..  and maybe "y segundo, chileno" despising our nationality, puting it in the 2nd place at the most

this applies to spanish culture and its language, I think it is usually considered, more educated, higher level, (some people even call it "madre de la patria") .., anyway we would not speak like thatbc it'd sound really funny, and as you saw in the previous post we dont really know/understand it...but it's still traditionally considered as more elegant, you'll never listen a chilean say "our spanish is the correct"  no way

the example of the tv commentator says it all. in the biggest (and "national") tv company they just put a plain spaniard with a very strong castilian accent to read the news (and in chile, the news are the most important/ and seen tv show)... instead of people feeling unrepresented, with a respectable but misplaced foreigner. with light hair, looking and speaking european, him reading our news, people like it and adopt it feel identified(?). If he was peruvian, Argentinian, bolivian people would have made such a demonstration against such "aberration" but as he's spanish he's "higher", we dig it

I wonder if other countries proud of their culture would place a foreigner, speaking like that for their news... it might work like a joke... but in chile it's taken very seriously as "now we have a more elegant news reader" 

however thanks to the current telecommunications, young people might have the chance to start to see more movies, maybe read more news, communicate and so realize that Spain/ europe and usa are not better than us.... but still, there's a very old tradition to think all the opposite...and I think that's the current state of affairs... it's a big shame


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## Soy Yo

I can't speak for Chile or for other countries.... I'll just make an observation that in Mexico years ago I was struck by the number of TV ads that featured people with light skin and European features.... And this was when the government was proclaiming as a point of pride the indigenous element in the population.

This is not a criticism of anything. Just an observation that struck me as a bit strange at the time.


----------



## Cecilio

Soy Yo said:


> I can't speak for Chile or for other countries.... I'll just make an observation that in Mexico years ago I was struck by the number of TV ads that featured people with light skin and European features.... And this was when the government was proclaiming as a point of pride the indigenous element in the population.
> 
> This is not a criticism of anything. Just an observation that struck me as a bit strange at the time.



That sounds interesting but, what about the language spoken in those ads? What kind of Spanish was it?


----------



## deveras

Soy Yo said:


> I can't speak for Chile or for other countries.... I'll just make an observation that in Mexico years ago I was struck by the number of TV ads that featured people with light skin and European features.... And this was when the government was proclaiming as a point of pride the indigenous element in the population.
> 
> This is not a criticism of anything. Just an observation that struck me as a bit strange at the time.



There is a lot of discrimination against darker-skinned, or more "indio" people. The majority of Mexicans are mestizos (fyi, mixed European/Amerindian descent), some more native than European and vice versa, yet many try to ignore their indio background because they are insecure about themselves. Anyway, speaking along those lines, I will say that there are some significant differences in dialect, within Mexico alone. For example, people from Mexico City speak with different accents than those from Zacatecas, and those from Merida (Yucatán). Honestly, to me, the only dialect of Castellano that I cannot understand are Carribean/Yucatán accents where the "D" and "R" are dropped out of words such as "empezaron" vs "empezaon." I also have trouble understanding slang and Mexico City accents because the Spanish I learned was from my parents and grandparents who speak Spanish from Zacatecas, which in my opinion, pronounces every letter in the word (with the exception of "h"). I could be completely wrong since this is all information that I have gathered and made sense of myself, without any data to prove it.


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## mirx

How is Castillian Spanish viewed by other Spanish speakers?

In México we make fun of it, and MR Cuchuflete, I am almost sure those taxi drivers were A) mocking you're accent or B) They were so impressed by it that they uncounsciuosly started compying you.

Although we do make fun of Castillian accent, we also make fun of every other accent different to ours, and more so withing México itself.

We (most of us) beleive Iberean Spanish to be too strong and old-fashioned, sometimes rude, they use words in normal contexts, which to us would only be used in extreme situations to express our anger or discomfort about something. But they seem very natural around them (words).

Of course we don't know all the accents used in Spain and regard Spanish accent as Andalusian accent, where Manolo (name of male spaniards) talks to Almudena??? the female counterpart of the story skiping his "d´s" pronouncing everything with "theta" and moving his hands while speaking.

No one thinks of Spanish accents as neat and purer, is just another (funny) way of speaking. Still most of us will say that our greatgreatgreatgreatgrandparents were from Spain.

Cheers.


----------



## deveras

mirx said:


> How is Castillian Spanish viewed by other Spanish speakers?
> 
> In México we make fun of it, and MR Cuchuflete, I am almost sure those taxi drivers were A) mocking you're accent or B) They were so impressed by it that they uncounsciuosly started compying you.
> 
> Although we do make fun of Castillian accent, we also make fun of every other accent different to ours, and more so withing México itself.
> 
> We (most of us) beleive Iberean Spanish to be too strong and old-fashioned, sometimes rude, they use words in normal contexts, which to us would only be used in extreme situations to express our anger or discomfort about something. But they seem very natural around them (words).
> 
> Of course we don't know all the accents used in Spain and regard Spanish accent as Andalusian accent, where Manolo (name of male spaniards) talks to Almudena??? the female counterpart of the story skiping his "d´s" pronouncing everything with "theta" and moving his hands while speaking.
> 
> No one thinks of Spanish accents as neat and purer, is just another (funny) way of speaking. Still most of us will say that our greatgreatgreatgreatgrandparents were from Spain.
> 
> Cheers.



As far as I'm concerned, Spanish spoken in all of Latin America is Castilian Spanish, correct?


----------



## mirx

deveras said:


> As far as I'm concerned, Spanish spoken in all of Latin America is Castilian Spanish, correct?


 
It is, but not with a Castillian accent.


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## Ornitorrinco

deveras said:


> As far as I'm concerned, Spanish spoken in all of Latin America is Castilian Spanish, correct?



Correct.

***
BTW, the so called "castilian accent" means for me the "accent" in which the 10th century speakers used to speak. I wouldn't ever say "omnes" instead of hombres.



sergio11 said:


> If you look for "Castilian" in an English dictionary, you find the following:
> 1. The Spanish dialect of Castile.
> 2. The *standard literary and official form of Spanish*, which is based on this dialect.


 (My bold)

I should ask where is it the standard literary and official form of Spanish? We at Latin America refuse to call our friends "uncle" ('tío', as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain), we at Latin America pronounce 'pintado' and 'amargado' and refuse to say "pintao" and "amargao" (as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain). We at Latin America *can* pronounce the group [tl] without problems (like in 'Océano Atlántico') and refuse to pronounce [Océano A*r*lantico] (as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain).

What I mean is go and get a less ideological dictionary. Every form of Spanish is the standard, literary and official form of Spanish anywhere!!!


----------



## ampurdan

All the linguistic features you've mentioned, which indeed occur in Spain, are not considered to be "the standard, literary and official form of Spanish", not even in Spain.

It's true that the Spanish of Spain is not the standard for all the Spanish-speaking countries. However, I don't think that "every form of Spanish" is the standard, literary and official form of Spanish.


----------



## Fernando

As Ampurdan has pointed out all the expressions and pronunciation that Ornitorrinco has noticed are not considered "standard" in no way.

As a matter of fact all of them are considered incorrect. You will not find it on the RAE dictionary (or they are indulgued as casual speaking).


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## Totopi

Ornitorrinco said:


> ***
> We at Latin America refuse to call our friends "uncle" ('tío', as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain), we at Latin America pronounce 'pintado' and 'amargado' and refuse to say "pintao" and "amargao" (as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain).
> As Ampurdan and Fernando say, this is not "standard literary and official form of Spanish in Spain", they are only colloquial forms that some people use in a familiar context.
> ***
> We at Latin America *can* pronounce the group [tl] without problems (like in 'Océano Atlántico') I can also pronounce this group without problems and refuse to pronounce [Océano A*r*lantico] (as they do in the so called standard literary and official form of Spanish, in Spain). "A*R*lántico"  I've never heard this before!!
> ***
> Every form of Spanish is the standard, literary and official form of Spanish anywhere!!! I agree with you


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## josue_ernesto

I came late to the party, but thought I's add my two bits

I learned my castellano in Barcelona, and I have mantained my theta and speak with vosotros even though I speak to Central and South Americans every day.  My wife is from Méjico and she constantly gives me a hard time, at which point I start to make fun of her sing-songy accent.

To answer the original question of the thread,  I have been told by many of my Latin American friends that the pennisular accent sounds more romantic in music and more official in speeches.  I find that funny, simply because I lived in areas where one would not hear something romantic or official coming out of the lips of the speaker.  Generalizations!  

Anyway. Ahí lo teneís! Suerte!


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## sicoticosandro

donector said:


> this is a interesting topic. I can't tell much about american countries attitude in general, only about Chile, where I'm from
> 
> User Manana has already hinted it somehow but I'll try to be clearer from my point of view
> 
> chileans (oposed to other american countries already mentioned) are highly "malinches" (sellers of our nationality)+ siuticos (snobs): devoid of identity and quick to adopt whatever "looks like" or "sounds" european or statesider...
> 
> it's  as simple to note as to have a look at the tv, media, they're alway showing tall thin blonde people without the least native mix: when 90% of chileans have black hair, are not that white, further and also they're naming all they can in english!!.. to make it look posh
> 
> It's very common to hear from chileans whose ancestor came to live to chile from europe, "no, yo soy ingles", "no, yo soy italiano", "no, yo soy aleman" and even "no, yo soy espanol" (!!!!???)..  and maybe "y segundo, chileno" despising our nationality, puting it in the 2nd place at the most
> 
> this applies to spanish culture and its language, I think it is usually considered, more educated, higher level, (some people even call it "madre de la patria") .., anyway we would not speak like thatbc it'd sound really funny, and as you saw in the previous post we dont really know/understand it...but it's still traditionally considered as more elegant, you'll never listen a chilean say "our spanish is the correct"  no way
> 
> the example of the tv commentator says it all. in the biggest (and "national") tv company they just put a plain spaniard with a very strong castilian accent to read the news (and in chile, the news are the most important/ and seen tv show)... instead of people feeling unrepresented, with a respectable but misplaced foreigner. with light hair, looking and speaking european, him reading our news, people like it and adopt it feel identified(?). If he was peruvian, Argentinian, bolivian people would have made such a demonstration against such "aberration" but as he's spanish he's "higher", we dig it
> 
> I wonder if other countries proud of their culture would place a foreigner, speaking like that for their news... it might work like a joke... but in chile it's taken very seriously as "now we have a more elegant news reader"
> 
> however thanks to the current telecommunications, young people might have the chance to start to see more movies, maybe read more news, communicate and so realize that Spain/ europe and usa are not better than us.... but still, there's a very old tradition to think all the opposite...and I think that's the current state of affairs... it's a big shame



i'm nothing but in disagree with you. althought there are a lot of snobish people, is not that much as you say.second. the spaniard reading the news was very unaccepted at first. now he is more accepted. third i'm seriuosly doubting taht you are chilean. you're too critical with this country wich although is not perfect. it's not that snobbish and "malinches" i have friewnds with german ancesters, and they dont feel superior to me. or whatever you say. we are all the same between us.


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## jmx

sicoticosandro said:


> the spaniard reading the news was very unaccepted at first. now he is more accepted.


I was curious about that news anchor with spanish accent, and I've made a little research. His name is Amaro Gómez-Pablos, and here is his biography :
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaro_Gómez-Pablos

You can hear him in some YouTube videos like this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi3ZWdBQhQ0

No wonder chileans find his accent strange.


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## HUMBERT0

It has become more common to here other accents in local or national television, at least in my country especially Argentinean, Spanish, Colombian accents.  For example I’ve seen Andrés Oppenheimer on national television.
 In my city at one of the local TV stations, the guy that reads entertainment news is Argentinean, and no one is bothered by his accent.


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## PABLO DE SOTO

jmartins said:


> I was curious about that news anchor with spanish accent, and I've made a little research. His name is Amaro Gómez-Pablos, and here is his biography :
> http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaro_Gómez-Pablos
> 
> You can hear him in some YouTube videos like this :
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi3ZWdBQhQ0
> 
> No wonder chileans find his accent strange.


 

After listening to this guy I'd say he is not a Spaniard but someone imitating Castillian Spanish accent.
It doesn't sound natural.
In any case it's odd.
I cannot talk of every tv programme in Spain, but I'd say that now there are not Latin American accents in Spanish television, except the telenovelas and the Venezuelan showman Boris, but long, long time ago, in the sixties, american series like Bonanza were dubbed in Mexico and they spoke mexican in our television.
I was a child but I always remember The Flintstones (Los Picapiedra) with Mexican accent.
It would be strange to me listening to The Flinstones with Castillian Spanish accent .
Some former times showmen in Spain Television were Latin American.
I remember the Peruvian Kiko Ledgard and the Chilean?? Raúl Pecker.


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