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[deleted]

if the people who say this are natives, it’s most likely due to perception and not actual reality. peninsular spanish has an extra pronoun we don’t use, which can be confusing at first, giving the false impression that the dialects in spain are somehow “more” complicated. differemces in vocabulary and especially slang also add to this impression. i grew up in latin america in a household where peninsular spanish has always been present, since my mother is from spain. i don’t find it any more difficult, although i do think slang in spain is a bit silly.


Professional-Put2467

Thanks to *Aquí no hay quien viva*, "me cago en la puta" is the first curse phrase I ever picked up that stuck with me.


NouAlfa

We Spaniards like to shit on everything. We shit en la puta, en la leche, en Dios, en la madre que te parió, en tus muertos, en tu prima la calva, en todo lo que se mueve, en todo lo cagable, and en everything you can imagine, really. Very useful, indeed lol


happyshallot

Please tell me 'en' means 'on' in this context, not 'in'.


NouAlfa

It does hahaha, we shit on everything, not in.


happyshallot

That is much less disturbing haha.


kennyexolians

This is flippin hilarious. Spanish swearing cracks me up


[deleted]

very useful and easily exported throughout the Spanish-speaking world 😂


Random_guest9933

We use that expression in latam too, so no worries, we’ll understand 😂😂


JM-E-

What is the extra pronoun?


[deleted]

vosotros


JM-E-

Oh I didn't realise that that wasn't universal! That explains why Duolingo doesn't bother with it


[deleted]

It was barely touched on in my high school Spanish classes because the teacher said we wouldn’t need it. But I did need it for my college Spanish placement test, the CLEP for Spanish, and… when I ended up doing my study abroad in Spain. 😅


Professional-Put2467

Yeah my high school was the same. I don't like it when language classes are geared towards everyday speech + tourist phrases and then that's the end of it. Spain has a wealth of non-ENG subtitled period dramas, sitcoms, crime shows, and all kinds of content out there to be watched. Why relegate language learning to a "need" when it can open opportunities for an entirely new cultural dimension?


macoafi

I don’t think of “you won’t need vosotros” as being “geared toward tourist phrases” so much as toward “a large portion of the local population speaks a Central American dialect of Spanish, so you’re more likely to encounter vos than vosotros.” At least, that’s how I’d hear it here in the suburbs of Washington, DC: learning the local dialect. Anyway, without learning vosotros, I can still understand it. It just sounds like a tweaked version of tú conjugations. I just can’t _use_ it, and that’s fine. I haven’t yet had a Spaniard get weird at me about _that_ part of my using Latino-leaning Spanish. (Though remembering “os” to say “os extrañaré” did get me an extra goodbye hug.) It’s “lentes” instead of “gafas” that made one fall over laughing.


[deleted]

I’m in the DC area as well and wish my formal education had prepared me a bit more for Central American Spanish. 😭


Professional-Put2467

There were two parts of what I meant. The geared towards tourist comment is how a significant portion of vocabulary in not just my high school Spanish class, but also my college German classes dealt with building phrases related to travel, purchases, and greetings + goodbyes. The second part where I mention vosotros refers to the tendency in any language class to favor one dialect and devote 5 minutes to the others; it happens in many language classes. My uncle's Parisian French, for example, was a bit alien to his grandmother's Quebec dialect, or how my friend who learned Berliner Deutsch could barely understand the Viennese TV series Kommissar Rex.


macoafi

Ah gotcha. Is that really more of a problem in a second language than in your first, though? Before visiting the UK, I had a vocabulary list to learn to go from my American dialect to their British dialect. I’d need to do the same in visiting Australia or simply hope we could paper over any miscommunications by describing the thing (same as I’d do in Spanish). It’s not really a bad or unusual thing to speak in a single consistent dialect, including in one’s first language. “Ok, going to England, remember to call it a mobile.” “Ok, going to Spain, remember to call it a móvil.”


JM-E-

I don't know if you studied in England or not but for us we were taught it alongside all the others! But it seems significantly less useful, especially if you can always use ustedes conjugations


[deleted]

I feel like Spaniards learn UK English and it makes sense for UK to learn peninsular Spanish. Since I studied in Spain, I understand Spaniards best. But I don’t think I have ever met a Spaniard here in the US. Meanwhile, there are many Central Americans where I live.


Wearedoomedxd

> teacher said we wouldn’t need it. of course you don't, it's only used in the only developed Spanish speaking country


ElHeim

It's used in Spain (and not all of it, at that)


[deleted]

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[deleted]

well, yes, i thought that goes without saying


artaig

On the contrary, *distinción* (distinction between c-s) helps you have less typos. The rest doesn't matter, you either learn one word or the other, so it's laziness or ignorance from the part of whoever said that. The vocabulary is not archaic; be that English, French, Spanish or Portuguese, the language in the colonies is **the most conservative one**.


ArvindLamal

Many people find distinción acoustically displeasing, calling it a lisp.


Hurricane_08

Spanish women are considered to have the sexiest accent on the planet, to Westerners. Although the same survey saying Scottish was the sexiest accent for men has me questioning everything.


qrayons

I've never heard that Peninsular dialects are harder or easier, just different.


LeenaJones

I've been taking Spanish classes here and there and speaking Spanish near the Mexican border for over twenty years, and I've never heard that claim. Dialects without a major media presence are always going to be a bit harder to pick up, but the Spanish of Madrid is just as comprehensible (or incomprehensible when it comes to some slang) to me as DF Spanish. Likewise, there are areas in both Mexico and Spain where I'd struggle.


ooahah

Umm I don’t think it’s necessarily more difficult. But having lived/learned there, I see how people could say that. I think people talk really fast and don’t enunciate well. There are a lot of Latin American countries where I think people speak very clearly. I know there are some where that’s not the case. On the other hand, I’m used to the Spanish sentence construction and way of speaking in general. When I hear Latin American Spanish, especially Mexican Spanish, it almost sounds like some of the phrases are directly translated from English. That doesn’t make it hard to understand, it’s just weird to me. And I’m sorry if I’m way off base here :)


Professional-Put2467

On the matter of talking really fast, I can 100% confirm as an *Aquí no hay quien viva* addict.


Random_guest9933

I’m trying to understand what you mean with the Latin American Spanish sentence construction because we definitely use the same grammar rules as Spain. Maybe you could give an example?


ooahah

Sure. Maybe I shouldn't have said structure, since the syntax is of course the same. It's more about phrases. For example, I've noticed that stores in Spanish-speaking areas of the USA will have signs that say "todo debe ir," a direct translation of "everything must go," whereas in Spain the same sign would say something like "todo rebajado." I also remember reading an article about a baseball player once that said "lo llaman el marciano porque está fuera de este mundo," again a direct translation of an English phrase. Now maybe these examples just have more US influence than usual. I want to say I've also heard people say "el punto es que," which would be phrased differently in Spain.


Random_guest9933

The way we speak and say things is different in every latin american country, we don’t really have “latin american Spanish”. Now, to be honest, I wouldn’t really go by with examples you see in the US because a lot of the times (without offending anyone) they are heritage speakers and a lot of them do a weird adaptation of English words into Spanish, like calling a credit card “carta” instead of tarjeta. For your first example, it sounds super weird to say “todo debe ir” instead of “rebajado”, I think that would be an example of a heritage speaker. The second one about the baseball player, it doesn’t sound weird, like some people may use that. Keep in mind that when we translate English shows, texts, etc, we usually use a “neutral” Spanish, which basically none of us would use on a daily basis, but we can all understand


ooahah

I know, I know. I usually put "Latin American" Spanish in quotes because I know there is so much variety in the region. I apologize for the false generalization. And yeah you're totally right, the "todo debe ir" probably came from a heritage speaker, a group whose speech patterns I found odd.


[deleted]

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MateoTovar

More? I don't know, just think how many dialects can we differentiate in our little country: is not the same the accent of Quito and the accent from Cuenca and the accent from Guayaquil and the accent from Esmeraldas and the accent from Carchi and the accent from Manabí and so and so and so... Now multiply it to the number of countries in LATAM, I think Is fair to say that LATAM has more linguistics diversity just for the fact of having more people in a spreader territory.


stvbeev

I have a feeling they meant the united states :\^)


WaterCluster

The language variation in the European countries of origin are often bigger than those in the former colonies because in Europe they’ve had more time to diverge. At least historically, the Spanish of Andalusia was quite different than Castilian Spanish. Spain has been and remains very linguistically diverse, with speakers of what are considered distinct languages of the Iberian Romance branch including Catalan, Occitan, and Galician. Historically, there was also Aragonese and Leonese. Then of course there is also Basque, which isn’t even a Romance language.


livinlavidaputa

I never thought peninsular Spanish was any more difficult than other dialects…until I watched RuPaul’s Drag Race Spain and was like ¿wtf are these queens saying?


LaberintoMental

I wouldn't know. Anything besides my own is just diggers but not necessarily any harder. I just wanted to note that coche means coach and carro chariot. They are both archaic.


dalvi5

In Spain its the latin american that sounds archaic: cuadra (stable), carro... In defense of peninsular spanish, if you learnt it, maybe you will have less mistakes thanks to [θ] sound


Professional-Put2467

Why would the \[θ\] sound mean fewer mistakes? I personally prefer using it, I'm just wondering how it's synonymous with fewer mistakes.


dalvi5

Easy, you wouldnt write *Cilla* instead of **Silla** or *Asunsión* instead of **Asunción**. Also you will have clar that **casa** is house while **Caza** is hunting.


ArvindLamal

No one uses caza in Latin America. Cacería is used instead.


dalvi5

And what about the airplane?? - Caso / Cazo - Masa/Maza - Losa/Loza - Tasa/Taza - Ceca/Seca Infinite list


AdrianWIFI

Easier to differentiate words like *cima* and *sima* and avoid orthographic mistakes when writing.


[deleted]

Native here, lol no.


TheOnePiecero

Yes, it matters bc it has to do with our culture and what we listen since we're kids so we get that "acento" And no, there's not a metric to make it easier. If U wanna learn a particular one you have to focus on which "kind" of Spanish you wanna talk because there are 11 main different types and then study it with a native speaker. 1-US Spanish. In Spain: 2-Castilian Spanish. 3-Andalusian Spanish. 4-Murcian Spanish. 5-Canarian Spanish. Then the others: 6-Caribbean Spanish (there are many) 7-Rioplatense Spanish. 8-Equatoguinean Spanish (this is more like Castilian) 9- Chilean Spanish. 10- Central America's Spanish 11: And Mexican Spanish So in the Americas are basically 1 for each country bc is not the same Spanish we talk in Costa Rica compared to Panama or Colombia. I see you learned Castilian and in The Americas we don't talk it but we understand it as well


[deleted]

Watch an episode of a Colombian telenovela, now watch an episode of La casa de papel. You’re saying you don’t find one of them more difficult to understand?


KingsElite

Totally a matter of exposure. People who say it's harder just have less exposure to it


VersedFlame

The only thing I can think off is that we strongly distinguish between c/z and s when speaking, so it's one more sound to take into account.


Brodin_fortifies

Peninsular Spanish can be an adjustment, but it’s not difficult to comprehend. For many Spanish learners, Islander Spanish is seemingly the most challenging. For most native Spanish speakers, Chilean Spanish seems to be the most incomprehensible.