Spanish

arielbsas   Fri Dec 02, 2005 1:56 am GMT
Hi all, first of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Ariel, I'm 28 years old and I live in Buenos Aires. If you're interested in learning/practicing Spanish in private on-line classes take a look at my website http://learnspanish.6te.net/
or send me an e-mail ls_oneonone@yahoo.com
cya all!
Edgar   Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:42 am GMT
>>The thing Hispanic immigrants speak in the U.S. is a poor-quality Spanish.<<

Actually, the Spanish becomes poor quality when Hispanic immigrants try to blend it with English... Mexican and Colombian Spanish, without any external influence, are the most pleasant to listen to... and especially in music. If you want, I can send you a song by Marisela (Mexican Spanish), a song by Angela Carrasco (Spain Spanish), and a song by Amanda Miguel (Argentine Spanish). They all sing romantic songs. Anyway, you can judge for yourself which Spanish sounds better in music. I like all three, but Marisela's music sounds better.
Melqui   Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:53 pm GMT
I´m not sure but i think that RAE (Real Academia de la lengua Española)also works in south america. In fact many writers from south america (Vargas Llosa or Ana María Matute for example) are members of this institution so i think that it´s the same spanish.
Luis Zalot   Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:04 pm GMT
Edgar;

"Actually, the Spanish becomes poor quality when Hispanic immigrants try to blend it with English... Mexican and Colombian Spanish, without any external influence, are the most pleasant to listen to... and especially in music. If you want, I can send you a song by Marisela (Mexican Spanish), a song by Angela Carrasco (Spain Spanish), and a song by Amanda Miguel (Argentine Spanish). They all sing romantic songs. Anyway, you can judge for yourself which Spanish sounds better in music. I like all three, but Marisela's music sounds better."
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I totally agree.
Dinis   Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:02 am GMT
First off I would iike to resolve Greg's doubts as to why Mexican workers refered to him as Goyo. Gregory is translated Gregorio in Spanish but its diminutive form is Goyo. So, basically, they were calling him Greg.
I do not believe Mexican and Peninsular Spanish are necessarily further apart than the Brit and Yank varieties of English. My first language is English but my Mother's relatives would often speak with her in Spanish. Spanish was always present in one way or another along the sidelines and by-ways of my path through childhood and adolescence.
When as a young adult I traveled to Europe, on three seperate trips, I had as much trouble (or even more so) understanding and making myself understood to the Britons as I did to the Spaniards.
In both cases, of course , I used the forms of these languages I had acquired here in So. California and I only remember once that a Spaniard was taken aback by a term I had used: INODORO for TOILET! Seeing iwas not understood and in desperation, I substituted what is for me a rather low-class word: EXCUSADO and he, the concierge at my hotel, suddenly understood though the word elicited a smile on his part! He used VATER (if I recall right) which, in turn,meant nothing to me!
Even though I spent much less time in London ( two weeks) major lexical differences kept popping up from the moment I got off the bus and asked for the BATHROOM and was asked if I wished to bathe. By the way that I was twisting about from bladder tension, the clerk at the counter finally suggested that I might want to pass to the LOO! From there I went across the street to a restaurant, where the waitress informed me that, optionally, either FEENAHS, MARROW or a BOILED SWEDES came with my meal. I was considering ribbing with her that only the big cats ate marrow and that I might be a colonial but I, certainly, wasnt cannibal enough to devour a Swede when an kindly old gentleman intervened offering to translate for me into what he called "American": Feenahs are string beans. Marrow is squash and a boiled Swede is a cooked turnip!" he stated.
Trying to make my way to my AAA-recommended hotel in Belgravia, I discovered no one knew what the SUBWAY was though someone finally suggested I try the TUBE. When I got there, a rude desk clerk claimed not to know what a leaking SINK was and in an undulating tone of condescendence exclaimed, "Oooh, you don't mean the BASSIN do you!
The next day , I got up and decided to start the day right with one of the famous street pies which they call pasties or patties or heaven knows what I can't recall! So I ask the vendor what his pies had under the crust and he answered "MINCED MEAT". I shook my head in disgust wondering why anyone would fill a meat pie with MINCEMEAT that awful mixture of suet, fruit and sugar we whip out at Christmas here. He, of course, meant to communicate GROUND BEEF.
Still hungry and running a bit late, I ducked into a candy shop and asked about the CANDY there and the perplexed clerk just stared at me and finally said he was sorry but he didn't know what CANDY was!(I surmised that I had either just entered the Twilight Zone or that the man was so daft he might be dangerous.)
Then I hailed a cab and while trying to ascertain the fee, I hear the cabbie ask " Well is i"awe or is i' naw?" "Pardon me", I say and he repeats more clearly now, " Is it AUGHT or is it NAUGHT" To which I snapped back with an air of superiority "AUGHT is NOUGHT a word!" "Oh yes it is" he insisted with a grin of absolute assurity.(Which, by the way, I later found out he was right!)
Indeed, all the Brits might be right for all I know or, at least, all those you can understand because some of them have totally undecipherable accents.
But there s one thing I am convinced of, "in the flesh and to the bone", our Mexican Spanish is closer to the one I heard in Barcelona and Madrid than is our English to that of the Britons!
JR   Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:35 am GMT
Lol, interesting story Dinis, I learned alot about British english today.

The only word which I have ever not understood from a Spaniard was "Ordenador", and the variant "Ordenata" (or something like that).

"No estoy seguro, creo que no funciona el ordenador"

It wasnt until later I found out it meant "computer", which I say as "computadora". :-)

By the way, how would you say "computer" in french?
Tiffany   Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:53 am GMT
Ordinateur is French for computer, I believe.
Candy   Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:13 am GMT
<<Is it AUGHT or is it NAUGHT">>
That sentence is meaningless.

<<FEENAHS>>
I'm British and I've never heard the word.

<<BASSIN>>
It's 'basin' but 'sink' is also perfectly acceptable.

<<Lol, interesting story Dinis, I learned alot about British english today.>>
I hope not. Most of it was wrong.
Dinis   Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:32 am GMT
Candy
You missed my point. Which was simply to say that some four decades ago when I was last in Britain I precisely did not understand some of the residents all of the time and all of the residents some of the time. You say AUGHT is meaningless to you (as it also was to me) but just open an unabridged dictionary and I assure you you will find the word there with the defnition of SOMETHNG. By the way, it is derived from the now archaic word WIGHT (creature).
If what you say is factual and all Britons have abandonned this classical Anglo-Saxonism. I think that fact is pretty sad because in the short time I was among the English I learned to truly love a few of the people I met -- even with their curious but charming speech. I pray they are still alive and that they have not changed an iota not even their pronunciation. You cannot imagine how much I would love to see them again!! How very much!
You claim not to beleive my experiences because BASIN is written with one S and I wrote it with two! Good grief, Candy, the letters did not form in mid air as my desk clerk spoke and just because you may find our word SINK perfectly acceptable today does not mean he did nearly a half century ago. In any case, he acted like a complete jerk. ON the other hand, I guess I could have done myself the favor and have learned how to spell the term correctly before posting it across the net.
As for the waitress and her FEENAHS, I make no apology. That was the best I could perceive what she was saying.
As for being wrong ,OF COURSE, I am wrong with my transliterations of what
I, nevrtheless, definitely heard BUT that is my whole point! As a bilingual Losangeleno, I often did not understand in England but I did understand in Spain.
I have never found anyone who could reproduce for me the exact term that waitress was using. Could she have been referring to fennel beans? Anyone out there in cyberland who knows?
But if I understand you correctly such that London denizens no longer use un-American words and no longer speak in a zillion contrasting regional pronuntiations then all I can say is that fair city has lost something precious and wonderful since I was there-- (diversity).
I met a couple from Shetland Islands back then and if only 40 years have constituted sufficient time to tame their incomrehensible brogues then it must be snowing in Hell and raining pink frogs in London!
Sincere Regards,
Dinis
Candy   Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:45 am GMT
<<You say AUGHT is meaningless to you (as it also was to me)>>

No, I didn't. I'm perfectly well aware of the word 'aught', pronounced 'owt' in my part of the world. Use it myself, sometimes. But I can't imagine that anyone would ever say <<Is it AUGHT or is it NAUGHT">> in that situation you describe.

<<You claim not to beleive my experiences because BASIN is written with one S and I wrote it with two!>>

I didn't say anything about 'not believing' your experience. I was correcting the spelling. I say both 'sink' (in the kitchen) and 'basin' (in the bathroom).

<<that fair city has lost something precious and wonderful since I was there-- (diversity).>>

I think we can safely say that London has not lost any diversity. More than 300 languages are spoken there. One of them is English, apparently. :)
dinis   Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:31 am GMT
Candy,
I hope you did not get the impression I was denying that what the English speak is BY DEFINITION English! I do not believe that my claim that the Brittish dialets of my era were very diverse and at times difficult for a Californian to understand implies ,in any way, that the English of England is somehow inferior to that of Hollywood or "Beautiful Downtown Burbank". (If the U.S. had a absolute monarch and I were he, I would demand that the country return to the spellings and even some of the usages one finds current throughout your island as well as among our Canadian cousins. It is simply a matter of tradition, isn't it?)
As for my story,to be frank, I accordeoned several of the language blunders which I could recall into one narrative. Perhaps the sequence in which they occured is missordered. I am afraid that recalling is not such an easy task at my age.So I am obliged to piece together what I can.
"Is it aught or is it nought", was actually spoken by a (then young) man named Billy Tams from Grimsby (near York) to confirm if I was game to go somewhere . He actually was not a cabbie but,rather,was at the time seeking work in a pub. We became good friends over time.
But the waitress, the concierge and the shop clerk ( whose names now escape me) were just that: a waitress, a concierge and a shop clerk and what transpired with them did transpire just as I described it.
And ,in ny case, I am still convinced that Mexican Spanish is closer to standard Peninsular Spanish than are the two forms of English spoken on either side of the pond because a lifetime of experiences has convinced me of that.
Yours sincerely,
Dinis
Luis Zalot   Tue Mar 28, 2006 12:51 am GMT
BRENNUS Wrote;

For example, Mexicans use colorado for "red" instead of "rojo" as in Spain; They call a waiter and waitress "mesero" and "mesera" (Literally "tabler," tablerette?" "), but in Spain they are called "camarero" and "camarero." Mexicans call a butler "mozo" but in Spain he is called "mayordomo." A peach is "durazno" in Mexico and Central America, but "melocotón" in Spain. This goes further than differences between American and British English terms. The lisp, a distinct phonetic feature in Castilian Spanish is absent in Mexican Spanish.

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I wrote;

I must disagree on some assumptions or valid ones.

In Jalisco where I'm from we use more of the proper or standard from (neutral spanish.)

Rojo: is the norm) (((morado in my state is to reference an injury or cut)) example; "tu cortada esta morada."
Everything else the word "rojo" is utilized.

Mesero/a: is used amongst the working class,
camarero: for business and social & standardized word (in other words, everybody will understand).

I never heard of the term "mozo". ((these words are perhaps from the north or an chicano word or from other states))

Mayordomo is used in Jalisco, although I've heard people from the north and u.s.a using it abundantly as well.

Durazno & Melocoton are EQUALLY used and professed in Jalisco and elsewhere. (Either in or around Jalisco).

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"The lisp, a distinct phonetic feature in Castilian Spanish is absent in Mexican Spanish. "
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Not entirely, in the high plateau of Jalisco (Los altos de Jalisco, and in some places of guadalajara...) have or used the lisp rather 'slighty' or as I would say...TONED done from the norm of castilian spanish (DUE to high spanish inmigration and influence..also from the French. I'd have to admit that the "central-south-mexican spanish" (in and around Jalisco, respectively) resembles much towards castilian spanish in vocabulary and intonation and it's a very pleasant and understandable tone/voice (especially from the women).
Gringo   Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:52 am GMT
“So far, this has actually not been true partly because literary rates have been higher in the English speaking countries than in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries and partly because the British were simply better colonizers than the Spanish or Portuguese.”

What a comment! Why do you have to blame the Portuguese for the mess rulers of ex-colonies made after they gained the independence? You know what independence means?

Better colonizers than the Spanish or Portuguese? In what?

Just to name a few,what about:
Somali?
Siri Lanka?
India?
Nigeria?
Zambia?

Explain the illiteracy rates! Please if we are going to throw rotten tomatoes at each other’s faces at least give the whole picture!

English speaking countries were just a small part of the British Empire!
It is very easy to blame Portugal and Spain based on partial information!
dinis   Tue Mar 28, 2006 9:24 am GMT
The two great divisions of peaches made by our Roman ancestors were malum persicum
the kind of peach which had the property of a soft pulp and whose stone did not cling to the "flesh" and durus acinus with a harder pulp and with a stone that was virtually inseperable from the flesh like our common U.S. clingstones. The word durazno comes from the later, durus acinus. It is used by Juan Corominas ,the great Spanish etymologist, as the classical Casillian term for peach because it is very old. Durazno is first attested in a Spanish text from 1335.
It remains the most commonly used term for peach in most of Latin America all the way down to Argentna and ,as such, is considered the standard term for the majority of speakers by Augustin Martinez, author of the Multicultural Spanish Dictionary (1967).
Melocoton has become the standard term for peach in Cuba, Dominican R., Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Spain. However, it is not attested in Spanish with the meaning of peach until rather "recently", 1513. It is in fact etymologically erroneous as its original sense was that of quince fruit-- Latin malum cotoneum. (One also enconters the variant malum cotonium)
This Latin etymon gave rise to many national refexes inter alia: ITAL. mela cotogna,FREN. coing, ENG. quince--- all of which preserve the historically correct meaning of quince fruit not peach!
So what happened to the term malum persicum? It became the standard term in ITAL. pesca, FREN. peche PORT. pessego and ENG. peach. It was particularly prolific in Spanish where it evolved into a number of regional forms: alberchigo, brisco (in the south of Spain as well as in Argentina ), and presega (in the northeast of Spain since it derives from Catalan pressega).
In Mexico a very old reflex of persicum survives, prisco, especially in rural areas of the south central region.For those Mexicans who preserve the word Prisco, it is not merely a phonological derivative of the Latin Persicum but actually maintains the semantic distinction between this kind of peach with the easily seperable stone and the durazno (< durus acinus) with the clinging stone.These Mexicans are ,of course, historicaly correct!
Jordi   Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:49 am GMT
Most of the words given by Brennus are widely used in European Spanish geographic regions. What's more, as a city dweller and although I'm a native Catalan speaker (and therefore fully bilingualised in Spanish at school) I know both words from European Spanish without having to go to the many South American soap operas which are now very successful in Spain.

Synonyms in 2006 European Spain and therefore used in different regions:

Melocotón and durazno

Rojo and Colorado

Camarero and Mozo ("mozo" means a young man in Spain, the same as fren "garçon" for "waiter")

"Mesero" would be easily understood through context since we all say "mesa" for table.

I will not comment on the alleged high literacy of the British European colonists to the USA (what a laugh!) and the worldwide known high cultural level on your side of the pond (ha! ha!). How many Americans can pinpoint Spain in a map or even the motherland Great Britain?

Nevertheless, dear Brennus, as I've told you oft' you cannot pretend to be a specialist in all languages. As far as Romance languages are concerned you are certainly an "amateur" and your knowledge of Spanish (in any of its varieties) should be good enough for you to get around.

And I trust I've been highly civilised and educated.

As you know I was brought up as a child in Australian English and I've lived in Spain (my parents are Spanish) since I was 15. Differences are certainly higher in English, even if we were to compare the Spanish and English speaking, highly educated upper crusts. Nevertheless, both languages present levels of variations based not only in dialectoly but also in sociolinguistic elements.

In the case of Spain our current highly educated college population is amongst the highest in the world and the South American Spanish middle classes have certainly nothing to envy to the rest.

It's a pity how nationalistic history is taught all over the world and how we all have the feeling the others are nationalist and we are not.

Thank you.