2. Castilian Spanish is NOT very different from American Spanish. I can understand them; they can understand me. I am always careful not to " coger the bus".
3. Noth everyone in Ethpa?a has a "lisp". Andalusia and Canaries especially).
4. I make a point of not swearing in Spanish. ( this makes up for my foul language in English - of which I am deeply ashamed). Anyway I could not keep a straight face when saying " I spit in your mother's milk"! - Or "son of a beach!" As in the UK, swearing in Spain is very regional. Funny buggers, the Spanish - See what I mean.
In conclusion, I think Spaniards dwell too much on the different accents and local words or grammatical constructions rather than praise the fact that they all speak the world's second most important international language, Spanish. The Día de la Hispanidath should be celebrated more! There is much to celebrate.
PS: There is a thing called the Spanish "lisp". Otherwise "caza" and "caza" would sound the same in 'educated' Spanish.
Castellano is just another name for Spanish. Spanish was originally the language from the kingdom of Castile and then it spread to the whole country. In Spain, we prefer to say we speak "Castellano" because there are other languages which are also Spanish (as they are spoken in Spain), like Catalan, Basque or Galician.
Any Spanish speaker understands Spanish/Castillan. The differences are small, mostly vocabulary and a different pronunciation of C/Z, caused by the fact that most of the Spaniards that settled in America came from the South of Spain, where they usually make no differences between C/Z/S. About the vocabulary, we understand each other to the same extent that an Englishman would understand an Australian.
I don't agree with guiri. I think all Spanish-speakers are aware that we speak the same language. I never noticed any doubts about that until I began to see in American websites stupid questions like "How do you say XXX in Mexican Spanish?" Nosense. There is no more Mexican Spanish than it is a Wisconsin English. Certainly, there is a Mexican accent, but nothing else.
When we read a web page, for instance, we can usually tell if it has been written by a Spaniard or an American Spanish speaker, but that's all.
Castellano = SPANISH.
PENINSULAR SPANISH is Spanish from Spain.
People who speak Spanish can understand Spanish.
Just like people who speak English can understand English. People from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and every other place where English is the main language all understand British English. Likewise, people from Mexico, and the rest of Latin America, where Spanish IS the official language (not including Brazil, etc., where Spanish is NOT the official language) can understand PENINSULAR SPANISH. ALSO, people from SPAIN can understand people from any of those countries.
Most people who STUDY Spanish, get enough mixture of all the dialects, that they understand people and become accustomed to whatever specifics are used wherever they happen to travel or live.
No one in Spain goes into shock when they hear Joder, though I have had to become accustomed to the fact that "coger" (Which, in Spain = to catch, pick up, take a bus/train, etc.) has an ENTIRELY different (and nasty) connotation in Latin America.
There is NO LISP in Spain...they simply pronounce two letters in a different manner than in Latin America...by the same token, there are letters that are pronounced differently in the US than they are in the UK. R and T, for instance, are different in the two regions. Calling the 'theta' a lisp is like calling the English 'th' a lisp. Do you think, when you hear an American or a British person say "the", "then", "think", : "through", that they are lisping? Why, then, do you believe it's a lisp when a Spaniard pronounces a Z or a soft C as th?
"Plus. words like Conducir". What does that mean?
What you are asking for is NOT an opinion...it's fact.
My Spanish is not good enough to really get into this but...
I agree giuri. Thelebrate the good points and don't worry about the differences.
Sorry Charles but I disagree a little - when you compare the castellan lisp with the American non lisp, lisp IS a fair description. Yes it's a fact but in English, the, then, thigh don't have non lisping versions to compare to.
But the bottom line is that it is a dialectic difference which has been taken further. In England the things on the side of your head are 'eers'. In Wales they are 'yers'. It's just pronunciation.
I was told that the reason the Americas don't have the lisp is because columbus left from Seville, where they don't have the lisp. (unlike the rest of Andalusia). But maybe that's just bollocth.
Sorry. Not much fact here. Just dithcuthion.
So I was thinking about this lately. Castellano, or Iberian Spanish aka the Spanish language of Spain, is actually very different from central/south/north American Spanish. First of, we have the lisp. Second, we don't really have cuss words, we have words that can be translated to cuss words in other languages, but they aren't really cuss words to us. For example, Joder- to someone away from Spain who speaks Spanish it's a bad word, but for us it's like "oh darn" or "oh crap". I was wondering if people who learn Spanish as a second language but have no experience with Spain or even any knowledge about how Spaniards speak, would they be able to understand us without going into like shock? Because first of, the lisp would be hard for them to adjust to I think, and also hearing the cuss words and how we use different phrases for different things. Like, to miss, we tend to say echar de menos while others say extranar. Plus, words like Conducir. I'm not looking for a right or wrong answer I just want opinons, like a discussion. Thank you!
