Castilian Spanish vs Hispanic American Spanish

Castilian Spanish vs Hispanic America Spanish is further apart than Afrikaans vs Dutch... Wikipedia


But then Afrikaans and Dutch people can understand each other with little difficulty. And Afrikaans uses about 90% of Dutch vocabulary..


Castilian Spanish vs Hispanic American Spanish is more like Swiss German vs German German.

Not very close at all.

Wow!

Thanks Pete for very good info.

To add....

I've noticed the phenomenon common both to Spanish and Portuguese where dialects and accents separated by great geography are closer to each other than neighboring countries. An example of this in Portuguese is the closeness of Carioca to standard mainland Portuguese accents. From my experience in Spanish, Panama and Costa Rica (next door neighbors) dialects are "Completely" different while Costa Rican (Tico) is closer to DF Spanish (Mexico City dialect) while Panama shares much more in common in dialect with Coastal Colombian and Venezuelan, Cuban, Dominican, and even Canary Island varieties. It was fascinating to hear Panamanians say that in many instances, they could not understand a word of Tico Spanish and this could occur minutes over the border. Now that I have visited both countries I can tell you they have completely different music, food cultures, and traditions. It amazes me that this occurred in such a small geographic area.

Pete,

Thank you for being a beacon of light in an otherwise gloomy and dull thread. I too pine for registration, but am not confident it would stop the flood of stupidity.

JGreco,
The only thing I disagree with you is that the Carioca accent is not close to standard mainland Portuguese at all.

Carioca accent is not that close, but it is the closest accent in Brazil to Portugal's accent due to the influence of Portugal's royal family that lived in Rio in the 1800s.

Thanks to both of you, JGreco and Penetra and to anyone who find my posts useful.

I agree with you to some extent. In the old days, geographic proximity or remoteness was among the main factors for preservation or change in accents and languages.

But I do believe that proximity is the most determining to make dialects similar. For example, we all know Argentina is a vast country. However, many people believe that everybody in Argentina speaks like Maradona.

That accent, considered to be "the Argentine accent" is actually only spoken in the "Rio de la plata" area, both in Argentina and Uruguay.

In the North, people speak with accents that sound sometimes Chilean, sometimes Bolivian to me (Of course this is a subjective rough way of describing it).

Now regarding this particular example of Panama and Costa Rica. I think the reason why they may speak in preceptibly different accents is still geographical. Someone told me Costa Rica is a mountainous country, and there's a small mountain range practically separating Panama and Costa Rica. So throughout decades it was easier for people from Panama to get to Colombia than to go over the mountais and reach the place where Costa Ricans live :)

Give it time, and under such situations, dialects and languages start to diverge.


And a little comment about them not understanding one another; I think that's an exaggeration.

I myself sometimes say I just can't understand broad Puerto Rican or Cuban accents. But it only requires some patience and some time to tune your ear to the differences such as:

-S's aspirated in almost all instances, even intervocalic, which never happens in most Peruvian accents.

-Lack of distinction between "mal" and "mar"; both sound like "mal"

-Different intonation patterns.

-Some influence from American Spanish (only in Puerto Rican Spanish).

When I get tired of all that initial effort (when the other person has a very strong regional accent), I then think "Damn, I can't understand Puerto Rican Spanish." But I guess it's actually more like: "F*ck you! You speak so different from me I have to really concentrate to follow what you say!".

Hahahaha.

And it's the same with broad Spanish accents from anywhere across the globe, even if they come from Spain, Mexico or the neighbouring town.

Hope that helped

Regards

Hello there.

I am from sevilla and i wanna say that i cant understand Latin American Spanish.

Only some words here and there,nothing more than 30%.And i am a smart Spanish.

And yes, Latin American Spanish and castilian spanish are like 2 differents languages(Polish and czezh). The castilian speaks very slow so hispanic americans can understand us very easily, but sometimes i think they are speaking korean or hindi.

one day,i went to united states to chill with my friend.
so,when i was walking in the bus,i heard two people having an conversation,i thought they were polish.
then,after very effort and concentration i got some words here and there and more some weird words.
then i realized that they were talking in a weird dialect of spanish.
i asked them and they said that they were hispanics,from latin america.

so,yes, latin american spanish and castilian are two different languages.:)

Which are the expectations of one day the whole spain speak french?
Someone told me that spain is the country that has the highest percentage (and the best quality) of students of french.

Whats the next step?

France should annex castilia,leon,asturia and aragon.
Meanwhile,the united states should annex mexico, cuba, dominican republic and central america.

Spanish is 6th world: Peru, Ecuador, paraguay, ...

Why do all these Spanish people attack French? We are not even discussing French in this thread. We are discussing Latin American Spanish vs Casillas, I mean Castilian Spanish. Let's keep it that way.

All threads are good for much Spanish bashing.

We are not bashing Spanish.
We are being serious.

The differences between Latin American and standard castilian spanish are analagous to the differences between Dutch and Afrikaans or the German of Germany and Swiss German. They are totally mutually unintelligible and there are huge differences.

We are not idiots, the americans do not have difficulties hearing european english or vice-versa.They hear ANY version of english with naturalness (maybe except irish and scotish),like hear ur own accent.
Any written variety of one language is always perfectly mutually intelligible with another , dont be idiot.

English varieties , spanish varieties = small differences
Portuguese varieties = medium difference
Spanish varieties = big difference

Differences between Latin American Spanish and Castilian Spanish are nowhere near as big as the distance between French varieties (like 'vous' vs. 'vous-autres').

Vous-autres is not the equivalent of vous in Quebec French.

Vous-autres = vous(singular, formal)

Vous = Vous


LOL, we're talking about Frenchh again!. Sorry but Spanish is so irrelevant that it's inevitable to start talking about French.