Accents in Spain
Hello!
Me and my Spanish friend just looked at a map of Spain the other day and he showed me the places where, in his opinion, people speak Spanish with an accent or not.
According to him in most of Spain people don't speak with a heavy accent, the exceptions are:
Andalusia and Galicia.
What are your perceptions?
All I know that I can most of the time detect easily if someone comes from the southern half of Spain.
I've heard several times that around the Basque region and in the Valencian speaking regions people also have an accent, but so far I haven't really perceived it.
Galicia: strong and ugly, peasant-like accent
Andalusia: strong accent, similar to South American Spanish. Not very beautiful to me.
Murcia, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura: similar to the Andalusian accent but with some improvements. They usually distinguish c/z at least.
Madrid: True madrileans don't have accent at all, but there are many migrants from Andalusia and a slight southern accent has spreaded since the 60s.
Catalonia: in Barcelona and its metropolitan area they don't have an accent. In Gerona and non coastal zones it depends on if people have Spanish as their native tongue. Native Spanish speakers in Catalonia don't have an accent, but Catalan speakers may have an accent or not.
In the rest of the provinces people don't speak with any accents. Maybe they can show a typical intonation, like the Aragonese, but it is not really a different accent, since they pronounce all the phonemes like in Standard Castillian Spanish.
Galicia: strong and ugly, peasant-like accent
Probably this depends on your personal tastes? doesn't it?
You know, tastes differ....
You must have your taste really distorted to find that accent beautiful. Most of the people don't like it and appart from that if it is very strong, I would be even difficult to understand.
Thank you for your replies, Guests!
<< Murcia, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura: similar to the Andalusian accent but with some improvements. They usually distinguish c/z at least. >>
I saw a reportage from Aiora in València and I notice that they sound "southern" to me.
I looked up into the map and lo, Aiora is located within the southern half of Spain. =)
As for Galician, I find them talk pretty quick and "hard", yet I personally like their intonation. =)
A mne bol'she vsego nravitsja aktsent madridskogo regiona, potomu chto oni govorjat ochen' bystro, i mne nravitsja vysokoskorostnaja rech'.
Yes, souther accent in Valencia can be heard but it is quite uncommon. Most of the Valencians speak without a noticeable accent. It Southern Alicante there are many Murcians living there . I assume that in this zone of Valencia southern accent is more spread.
A mí me gusta más el acento de Madrid porque allí se habla muy rápido. Es como si fuera una especie de ametralladora de palabras.
Madrilean way of living is stressing, like in many big cities. Maybe that is the reason for their fast speed at speaking.
<< Yes, souther accent in Valencia can be heard but it is quite uncommon. Most of the Valencians speak without a noticeable accent. It Southern Alicante there are many Murcians living there . I assume that in this zone of Valencia southern accent is more spread. >>
I agree with you here, Guest.
Btw, I loove València.
The way they speak Valencian also sounds very nice to me.
Valencian Spanish is quite nice. It is my favourite one and that spoken in Burgos-Valladolid-Salamanca.
Actually, I like pretty much all accents of Spanish in Spain. =)
The accent of some people in Cadiz and Sevilla is really ugly too. They pronounce the "s" letter like " z ". This is known as ceceo (just the opposite to seseo, which is widespread in South America). They sound as if they were lisping all the time, something like this: zuzuzuzuzazoooz zuzearuzzuzuoozazu
Yes, I heard some people who ceceared, and I personally also like it. =)
Me gusta el acento portugués y a fin de cuentas Portugal es una región de España en la que se habla un dialecto del castellano.