I had a conversation with my mother about a year ago about the different word uses for words in different lLatin American countries. She was telling me talking to different people from different countries in Spanish countries throughout Latin American countries is getting more difficult because different words mean completely different things. My mother speaks the Panamanian variety of Spanish. There are words such as pelao ( meaning child ) and fulo ( meaning blond ) that I have never heard in any other Spanish toungue. In Panama they use the word cojer ( to take or get in Panamanian Spanish ) that is really offensive in other Latin Spanish varieties. I'm hoping someone in this new forum has some knowledge or could give me some input on why this is happening in Latin American Spanish or has a web site that shows the variety of different words and idioms that are used throughout Latin America. I'm fascinating by this phenomenon and wonder if there has been studies about this specific topic
- LET THE DISCUSSION BEGIN-
This is a huge topic. I have read that the most conservative forms of Latin American Spanish are spoken in the Andean countries: Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia which have been relatively isolated. English influences are strongest in Mexico and the Caribbean and then in the southernmost countries: Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.
Some interesting vocabulary differences exist from north to south. "Avocados" and "chilie peppers" are called aguacates and chiles in Mexico but paldas and ajies in South America. A "kite" is called papalote in Mexico but barrilete in Argentina. Almost every country seems to have their own words for things like "lawn mower" and "rain coat" .
The pronunciation of ll varies. In Argentina, it sounds like zh as in Llama me (zhama may) "Call me" and La lluvia (la zhoo-vee-uh) "The rain", Las estrellas (las es-tray-zhus) "The stars" etc. Elsewhere it is pronounced like y in English although there is a tendency by the upper classes to pronounce it as dj i.e. No llora (No djora) "Don't cry" ; Yo pienso que... ( Djo pyen-so kay...) "I think that...).
Are there some Italian influences in Argentinian Spanish : loanwords, turns of phrases etc ?
Dialectal variation amongst different Latin American dialects (I don't say "countries" because some countries have several distinct dialects and some dialects span more than one country) is indeed fascinating. I initially learned textbook Latin American Spanish (with a heavy Mexican influence, with the obvious proximity to Mexico and my contact with native Spanish speakers who I practiced with) but my Spanish is now highly Argentinized as a result of the semester I spent abroad in Buenos Aires last year.
In Buenos Aires, at least (BA Spanish is part of the larger Rioplatense Spanish dialect spoken in Montevideo, Uruguay and a few other major Argentine cities such as Rosario and Bariloche...but I spent most of my time in Buenos Aires), the pronunciation of "ll" and "y" has now mostly shifted to the unvoiced equivalent of "zh", which is "sh" (the XSAMPA equivalents being [Z] and [S], respectively). Frequent use of [S] is mostly used by the middle -aged and younger and middle class and down (if it's particularly harsh it's associated with the lower class), while exclusive use of [Z] is mostly seen as an uppity variant for old rich people. Accordingly, in very informal writing such as online chatting many Argentines now playfully write "sh" for those sounds (do a google search for "sho pienso que" or "ashuda" and most examples will be from Argentines). Thus, Brennus' examples are as follows in standard Buenos Aires speech:
"llamame" [Sa"mame]
"la lluvia [la "SuBja]
"las estrellas" [las eh"treSas]
Another major feature of Argentine Spanish is that /s/ + consonant ---> [ht], so words like "hasta" become [ahta]. It took some getting used to at first but now it seems forced to say [s] in that context and I pretty naturally do [ht] now. This is considered completely mainstream, and is done by all classes, altho it is considered lower class to drop the [h] or use [h] for [s] intervocalically or at the end of a word. Thus, a standard middle-class Buenos Aires accent will do as follows:
"más o menos " [mas o "menos]
"espero que haya más de diez castores" [eh"pero ke "aSa mah de Djeh kah"tores]
A considerable amount of words have come into Argentine Spanish as a result of contact with Italian (about half of the country is of Italian descent), but besides a few salient examples, I think emphasizing Italian's lexical influence on Spanish is a little misleading because even as a newcomer to the country I understood most of the words, as the language spoken there is undeniably Spanish. Also, some of the highly mentioned Italian-derived words like "birra" are not nearly as common as standard "cerveza."
In terms of Italian's influence on Arg. Spanish, I would say even more salient than vocabulary is the Italian intonation of Arg. Spanish. Being surrounded by people who looked Italian and hearing them intonate and gesture at each other as Italians are known to do I had to remember what country I was in sometimes.
The final thing distinctive about Arg. speech is the universal use of "vos" instead of "tú" for singular 2nd person. In the present indicative, verb conjugations change slightly, so that accent goes on the last syllable. This also affects "stem-changing" verbs, which do not change with "vos." Thus:
In most of Mexico:
--(tú) amas [tu "amas]
--llámame ["jamame]
--(tú) quieres [tu "kjeres]
--(tú) puedes [tu "pweDes]
but, in Buenos Aires:
--(vos) amás [bos am"as]
--llamame [Sa"mame]
--(vos) querés [boh ker"es]
--(vos) podés [boh poD"es]
"Vos" is used in some other dialects of Spanish in Latin America, but only in Rioplatense is it afforded official status, used universally in speech and seen in written form such as magazines and ads. In Buenos Aires it's almost exclusively used, often to the expense of even polite "usted" (I was instructed by my host mom, who was in her late 60s, to use "vos" with everyone because even old people would get offended if I tried using more formal and polite "usted" with them). There is one irregular, "sos" (2nd p. singular of "ser"). In the past tense some speakers use "-stes" for "-ste"
--(vos) me hablastes [boh me aBlahtes]
instead of standard
--(vos) me hablaste [boh me aBlahte]
conversationally and this is relatively common, but stigmatized by some and considered nonstandard in writing. Argentines also almost never use the future tense based off the infinitive, using "ir + infinitive" almost always in conversation as compared to "infinitive root + future ending".
Anyway, those are just my comments on some of the distinctive aspects of Argentine (or at least Buenos Aires) Spanish. Altho varying Spanish dialects use almost identical standard orthography, it's clear that even a cursory look at a dialect's phonology and some lexical characteristics shows that as time goes on, Spanish dialects are not surprisingly diverging, altho still usually mutually intelligible.
Oops, I forgot a couple things..."vos" also sees a change in the 2nd person singular imperative. It's the infinitive minus the -r. Thus:
Mexican Spanish with "tú"
"ven"
"permite"
Arg. Spanish with "vos"
"vení"
"permití"
Also, I forgot to mention a really common word in Arg. Spanish--"re" for "muy" (very), as in "es re simpatico" (he/she is very nice).
Also, a correction. On the second-to-last paragraph it should read "ir + a" plus the infinitive on the second line.