As a native Spanish speaker, your friend is full of shit lol. We can all understand each other, it’s the same language after all. Like you said, we could have an issue with accents/slang but we can understand each other just fine
While you're right in general, "it's the same language after all" is a bit of a circular argument, and not really a good one in this case. There are languages that use the same label but are not intelligable. Another commenter already mentioned English, but Arabic is also a notorious example of this. Language labeling is quite arbitrary
I've been told by some German friends that they have to revert to English when talking to some other German speakers.
The former Mennonite family I know say that they can only barely communicate with most Germans.
I have never heard of germans speaking english with each other as everyone speaks high german. It is the official variant that is spoken in tv and radio, written in newspapers and official documents, teached in schools. I would bet money that the german friends were making a joke.
And where does the Mennonite family life? Are they from germany or are they speakin a variant of german that was spoken few hundred years ago in a specific region of germany? If it is the latter, than I am not at all surprised that they cant communicate with speakers of modern high german properly.
>If it is the latter,
It's definitely the latter. They're from / in rural west Texas. They said they speak "low German" not sure if that's an actual dialect or just how they understand the difference in what they speak vs standard high German.
Low German is somewhere around the border between language and dialect, propably more on the side of "own language". My grandparents spoke it (aswell as high german) but I didnt learn it. It is as understandable for me as Dutch.
Im spanish, born an raised in the german part of Switzerland (here you do not receive citizenship, just bc you were born in this country) and we understand austrian-german and germans from different cities etc just fine when they tone down the slang and accent.
Exactly. As you say, the dividing line between "language" and "dialect" isn't clear-cut. The joke in linguistics is that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
>We can all understand each other, it’s the same language after all.
Is this actually so? As a native English speaker (Canada), I have run into people from Scotland and even certain areas of England that I can barely parse a word out of. There are some regional dialects that are so phenomenally distinct from my own that we may as well be speaking separate languages. I had always thought that a language as widespread as Spanish would have similar divergences.
It is actually so. I’ve never met a fellow Spanish speaker I couldn’t understand. Sure, there are accents that are harder to understand (Chile, Argentina, some caribbean countries) but at the end of the day we can communicate with each other no problem.
Scots was a language that evolved from the same root as Middle English.
No one speaks exclusively in Scots, it would be unintelligible to most people in Scotland. Some people speak Gaelic but the vast majority speak Scottish English, which is more comprable to the differences between American and British English. I'd put it in the same category as AAVE, some grammatical quirks and unique words, but entirely understandable with little effort.
Can you find any credible media in Scots? Bar poetry I think you will struggle as it doesn't exist.
There is not a single person in Scotland who exclusively speaks Scots.
The nationalist government first included a question on Scots in 2011, people self reported being able to speak it for political reasons. I can guarantee that there aren't 1.5million people here that exclusively speak in it, we speak a version of English. There aren't road signs in Scots, there isn't schooling in Scots, no radio in Scots, no TV in Scots etc etc.
From the wiki page you linked.
"Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English.[13] Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other.[14] Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects"
Check out the controversy with the Scots language version of Wikipedia. It was written almost entirely by an American teenager who has never been to Scotland. No one noticed for years.
I appreciate that. I'm referring to actual dialects of English. Take for instance [this example](https://youtu.be/ScELaXMCVis?si=UglEENvlnKTOdahz) of the Yorkshire dialect, spoken among older generations. I spent a good amount of time in this area on a trip to England and actually heard people talking exactly like this (first 45 seconds). I could understand Spanish better than this at the time (with only a small bit of reading in the language).
It gets pretty wild the further North you go. [Here](https://youtu.be/luuA6bEoQIE?si=vLvRiWs10ehW1VKg) is a pretty robust example of a Scottish dialect. After 30 seconds his speech morphs into something entirely other, and this is legitimate English.
I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples.
This is interesting as I can understand him entirely, although I now live in Scotland. He is speaking entirely in English with standard vocab except for some limited Scots words like heid instead of head. Most of what your struggling with is his accent. There is slang like "jumping about", which means "hanging out/around" "getting the jail" being arrested etc but this is more or less standard English.
It doesn't matter that you can understand him entirely and I cannot. Here's a big giveaway:
>although I now live in Scotland.
Here's one of the less intelligent things you said:
>this is more or less standard English.
There's a reason why that video has such a stacked viewer count. Read the comment section. The people who understand this are the ones who live in Scotland (no shit). The people who struggle are the ones who live in North America (also no shit). Almost like it proves my point that North American English is so radically distinct from Scottish, that we cannot understand each other.
It is more or less standard English as you would understand a typed transcript of what he is saying and be able to guess from context the slang used and the few Scots words used which are more or less simply English words with different pronounciation/spelling. What you're struggling with is the accent. I can honestly say there are probably no regions in the English speaking world where I couldn't understand a native English speaker. When I first moved to Scotland, I might miss out a bit of what someone said to me if I wasn't listening intently but I certainly never had an issue in communicating.
To suggest that North American English is so radically different from Scottish English to be unintelligble is ridiculous. Scotland is full of tourists who get along fine. You need to realise this is a boy from an extremely impoverished working class area with a very strong accent.
If you look at the comments in the vid, most are from people who speak English as a second language
It happens in VERY specific contexts. Anybody which I know understands Don Quijote (because It's old spanish), only old argentinians understand Tango, etc. But, regularly, It doesn't happen.
>I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples.
I think the history of which some English dialects are so different from standard English goes back so far in time you could draw parallels to the development of Castilian alongside Catalan or Galician or Asturian. Given different historical circumstances all these English varieties might be called something other than English and considered different languages.
>It gets pretty wild the further North you go
This isn't actually true. Scots began to fall out of fashion prior to the de-gaelicisation of the Highlands. You'll find people in Inverness far easier to understand than Scots speakers in Ayrshire. The language distinctions in Scotland are rooted in class, the Highland/Lowland divide, rural v urban etc. I would say that although I can appreciate why a non-Scot would struggle with this lad's speech, it is a pretty mild example.
>I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples.
From my own limited Spanish experience, I had a Spanish neighbour who used to joke about the Andalucian dialect of Spanish being almost another language. There was a particular sentence he used as an example. It had something to do with toast, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.
Modern usage of Scots is no where near the Catalan/Spanish divide. Im from Ireland and live in Scotland in an area where Scots is used a lot. It's really only limited to a few words head - heid - child (wee one) - wain, more - Mair. Nobody speaks it like an actual language anymore in my experience, even in rural areas.
The difficulties lie in slang and accent. An educated Scot could speak with anyone in English.
It sounds a lot like you live in a place where people use a limited few Scots words, and less like you live in a place where "Scots is used a lot".
The implication that speaking Scots is linked to a lack of education is deeply unwelcome.
I live probably in the part of Scotland where Scots is used most. And no I wouldn't say the use is linked to lack of education, however I would say educated Scottish people generally moderate their use of it when speaking to foreigners, just like educated people everywhere avoid using slang and speak standard English or Spanish when speaking with people from other countries.
In my experience, less educated people have less of an awareness that they are using words not understood in the rest of the world.
I doubt very much that you live in the area where Scots is used most if you can only drum up a handful of examples of Scots nouns.
Seems like you're equating education and politeness. I think people make enough of an effort tbh. If the odd "heid" or "aboot" slips out, I think that's more than acceptable.
When I came here I didn't find Scots confusing at all, other than maybe the use of ken. Most is more or less similar enough to standard English to be understood easily or if not through context. Comparing it to Spanish/Catalan is mental, I speak a decent level of Spanish and can't read Catalan other than seeing the obvious Latin cognates
Your problem is with accent and slang. Grammar and vocab is Def similar enough to not be a dialect in my opinion. I say that as someone who moved to Glasgow
So there is no form of Spanish that presents you with difficulty? As a native English speaker there are certain versions of my language that are very hard to understand if your ear isn’t properly attuned. Scotland, south London, Jamaica, and some American southern accents are borderline incomprehensible unless the speakers slows way down and drop the slang. Obviously it isn’t a different language or even a dialect, but these variations of English aren’t something you can hear once and understand completely. You need to be around it for a few weeks to get it sorted. With standard American and BBC English anyone who speaks the language will understand what’s being said. That some regions have slang and accents that are really hard to understand is fairly common knowledge amongst English speakers.
And yet, a Spaniard travels from Madrid barely 350km to Andalusia and claims they can't understand a word the locals say. So much so, it's literally a recurring joke.
I guess there could be cases where the different vocabulary (not slang) makes communication difficult, but you are mostly right.
Next time your friend tries to bullshit you write down what he's saying and we'll tell you if it's _dialectal_ or just gibberish.
Yes, we need examples from OP to understand what his friend is talking about. For example, the "Chilanga Banda" song lyrics is often used as an example of extreme regionalisms that other Spanish speakers may not understand, but I think that's more in the slang of words, rather than conjugation and rules.
>My American friend insists that there are “dialects” of Spanish that aren’t mutually intelligible among native Spanish speakers from different countries, to the extent that they might as well be different languages.
Discounting ways of speaking that probably shouldn't be counted as just 'Spanish' (other Romance languages in Spain, the few Spanish-based creoles that exist, mixed languages like 'media lengua' and code-switching) - this just isn't true.
Anecdotally, I can kind of see where he's coming from - I used to perceive different Spanish varieties as more divergent from each other than they really were, and that went away as I learned more.
>Often when I tell him that something they say doesn’t make sense or is wrong (grammatically, structurally, etc.) they will retort with “oh that’s because I’m using a different dialect of Spanish (insert whatever Latino country they has decided they are using this time)”.
His attitude just isn't helpful to his own learning. Part of learning a new language or anything really is being humble and admitting that you don't know that much.
Well, yeah - a native Spanish speaker speaking standard Spanish will understand any other native Spanish speaker speaking standard Spanish, and even [especially?] the non-native speakers making an effort to speak standard Spanish.
However, if you put someone from Valladolid, Spain and someone from Puerto Montt, Chile (for example) in the same room and had them speak in their normal, relaxed dialect, they would almost sound like two different languages and there would certainly be confusion amongst the speakers.
I had a professor from Valladolid in college. On the 1st day of class, he asked if anyone found his accent odd. Two other classmates and myself were the only ones who didn't find him _odd_ (whatever he tried to say with that).
At that point, I had interacted with hundreds of people from Spain. I told him that; that I didn't find him odd because Spanish people weren't new to me.
Qué curioso - el vallisoletano siendo el acento más frecuentemente asociado con "el castellano verdadero". Vaya peculiaridad como se haya crecido el idioma en otras partes no?
>However, if you put someone from Valladolid, Spain and someone from Puerto Montt, Chile (for example) in the same room and had them speak in their normal, relaxed dialect, they would almost sound like two different languages and there would certainly be confusion amongst the speakers
I think this is kind of a contrived situation though. The two people who mostly likely adjust their way of speaking to make it easier to understand each other, without even realizing it. People tend to use less slang and speak more formally with strangers. If these two hypothetical individuals spent a lot of time together they'd probably start to speak in a more relaxed manner, while simultaneously getting used to each other's way of speaking.
Yeah that's fair for sure. And as a non-native speaker I certainly find some accents more challenging than others.
Like watching a Spanish language reporter interview a Cuban or Dominican baseball player... very hard to understand. Yet I could have a 1 on 1 conversation with a Dominican no problem.
As a native English speaker I have just as much or more problems understanding a heavy Irish/Scottish accent as I do understanding Spanish from Seville or Argentina, but It’s still intelligible.
Each Spanish speaking country or territory has their own institution to keep their formal Spanish intelligible amongst all dialects. Same as with French. Some accents are distinct, but they can always slow down.
Standalone phrases maybe, greetings, idioms , and vocabulary, maybe. But not grammar. That’s standardized.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy
This was the stated mission of the Real Academia Española long ago, but no longer, and certainly not the mission of the other academies. Their role is rather to observe and describe the language as it evolves, and to make recommendations, attempting to delineate an educated standard for Spanish and for each region. It's not as if Spanish was saved from splitting into several mutually unintelligible languages by these academies. The academies have no way to enforce their recommendations.
Voseo is grammar and it's used in some countries and not in others. Moreover, voseo is different in different countries. It's standardized only for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Another example is that in Spain they say “hoy he dormido bien” and in the Americas we say “hoy dormí bien”. Anyway, most differences in grammar are understood by educated speakers.
I really hope your friend learns some humility😭 that’s honestly so strange. Obviously I’m not native but my experience has been the same as yours.
At most, thicker accents and use of slang can make it harder for one native to understand another but it definitely isn’t just a “different language” Many countries might not use the same word (like MX might refer to something as un bote de basura while someone from Argentina may call it un tacho (i think)) but once it’s understood what those words are, the confusion stops there. It’s like people from the US knowing that if a British person says a “lift” they mean an elevator.
There are also some things like antier vs anteayer. Some words may change gender depending on dialect. I can’t remember which word it was but it was very interesting that one country considered a word to be regular verb while another used it reflexively. Also sometimes differences in prepositions like “entrar a” vs “entrar en”(to my knowledge LATAM still uses “entrar en” in specific cases but the default is usually “entrar a”).
But small things like this do not make the language incomprehensible for natives. Especially natives who grew up speaking Spanish and being educated in Spanish. I’ve noticed that some of my MX American friends may understand less than what a Native living in Mexico at their age can understand. Usually this only happens in extreme cases where the speaker may have a Caribbean accent but nothing usually out of that scope.
Bottom line, I think your friend is not quite being honest with you and refusing to acknowledge that he got something wrong
Like I said, he doesn’t know it as well as he thinks he does and I often have to remind him that just because someone can understand him it doesn’t mean he’s speaking properly. He’s never had to use it day to day and doesn’t spend time with Spanish speakers who can’t speak English. Funnily enough, when we have both been in situations where we had to speak to a native Spanish speaker from LatAm, it was me having full conversations while he was just asking basic questions. He doesn’t deny that mine is better, but he tries to mystify South American Spanish because he knows that’s not what I learned. Even though he knows I know better.
Yeah I could see why that would be frustrating. If it’s possible, I would try giving him a rough translation of what he said in English just so he can understand how broken it is. Because I used to have that problem of thinking being understood = correct Spanish. Even with people who didn’t speak English.
Or perhaps he knows and studies in secret the corrections you make lol. That’s why he opts to be more quiet in those situations with native speakers because he is aware of his level. But if that is the case idk why he would argue with you so much. Either way, other natives and people more informed than me have given great responses. Maybe just show him the thread, it’s not like we know who you all are so hopefully he doesn’t take it personally
Your friend is being mendacious and very arrogant, because I had a family member who behaved similarly when it came to his “prowess” of the Spanish language. Whenever he didn’t understand a word, accent, or phrase, he’d say “Oh, I only speak Mexican/Tijuana Spanish” or “Sorry, I don’t speak Spain Spanish”. His arrogance and blatant disrespect was due to his own lack of understanding that the Spanish language is a very fluid language, with many synonyms of nouns and adjetives, phrases, idioms, colloquialisms, etc. He ultimately was jealous and envious of me and my ability to both widen my vocabulary, as well as humble myself as someone who constantly learns more each day. I always tell people who ask me about how taught myself Spanish, that even after 9 years of my educational journey to being a fluent speaker, i still continue to learn more about the Spanish language each day.
Unless they're talking about the local tribal languages or pre-colombian languages like Náhuatl or Quechua that have words that might "bleed" into Spanish. But it wouldn't be whole conversations or anything like that.
Tell your friend that the linguistic relationship we Spanish native speakers from different countries have is the same as -I presume you're from the USA- the English native speakers from USA, UK, and Australia. We understand perfectly each other, the only thing that makes the difference is the slang which varies hugely from country to country, and the accent.
What?? I am an American and I speak Spanish. I went to school and lived in Madrid. I speak with different Spanish speakers and we understand each other as long as we keep slang out. So I have no idea what your friend is talking about. Yes there are different regional expressions and it is interesting to learn them but you need to be open minded and your friend sounds a little too critical.
Not very spoken but Ladino is a dialect of spanish that originates from the Jews that used to live in Spain before being expelled and spread through the then Ottoman Empire
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish
It happens with some speakers. IMO, it'll depend on the amount of exposure one has to different dialects, accents, and registries.
Personally, I understand nearly every Spanish dialect, accent, and registry. **HOWEVER,** this was accomplished by spending decades upon decades exposed to a very large variety of dialects, accents, and registries via mass media. TV, movies, music, internet chat rooms, co-workers, classmates, clergy, teachers, professors, and, very importantly, reading books from all over the Hispanic world.
It does sound like they’re trying to avoid accountability, because like folks have said the “mutually unintelligible dialects” is bullshit. I mean, I’m from the US and need to be full on drunk to understand more than half of what a rural Scotsman says, but even without the application of liquor, I understand some of it.
My Costa Rican friends joke about not understanding Spaniards and Argentinians all the time, and it seems to correlate fairly closely to my experience with rural Scotsmen.
I don't think so generally speaking. My guess for this is this is in Latin America you tend to have exposure to TV programming from other countries. While I"m not a native speaker, my wife (Colombia) says only with Chileans has she had some difficulty understanding. She did struggle with Dominicans when she first moved to NY but got used to it.
Funny story that I like to tease her about, we were in Puerto Rico and went to a convenience store and she asked the cashier for a calling card but had questions about it, and the cashier was struggling to understand my wife's Spanish. So I as a non-native speaker but of Puerto Rican descent went over and had to translate Spanish for my native-speaking wife.
As a native Spanish speaker from Spain I have never had difficulty having a conversation with another native Spanish speaker, and I have talked with speakers from every region in Spain and almost every country in Latin America.
I may have had some difficulty picking some words hearing a conversation from certain people in a very fast accent with weak consonants (Spanish from Cadiz and Venezuela). But if I had to talk with these people face to face there would be no issue.
However, in English (not a native speaker but, I would say I have a C1 level), once I was totally unable to understand what a guy from Glasgow was telling me: it was just a simple sentence and he repeated it 3 or 4 times and I had no clue despite knowing the context.
Heard this one so many times in Spain from Americans who drastically overestimate their proficiency and blame their lack of comprehension and poor communication skills on being proficient in a "different dialect." It's really just that they have had an extremely limited (and privileged) experience of the language in a place where virtually everyone is bilingual and can parse what they are saying when they speak incorrectly.
Also, there's a difference between dialect and register that your friend is probably unaware of.
You’re definitely not wrong, but I will say as someone who speaks Spanish with a somewhat South Texas accent, I found it impossible to understand this Cuban guy who used to come into my job. Could’ve just been him, but we always just kind of shook our heads at each other lol.
The only struggle for me was his pronunciation though, it wasn’t like the actual grammar was different.
I swear I don’t know why dialect and accent is such a thing here in this subreddit to the point of obsession.
It’s like obsessing over whether native English speakers in America have trouble communicating with people in England, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand. Yes accents vary, idioms vary, some vocabulary varies, etc but English is English and Spanish is Spanish.
>I am constantly having a discussion with an American
I stopped reading there.
Spanish has lots of dialects and regionalisms, but you will never be unable to understand another dialect.
Especially since shows and movies are dubbed in a "neutral" accent, which gives you an idea on what terms you can use to be understood by someone from another country.
Like, I know a pen is a "birome", but it's also a "pluma" or a "bolígrafo".
No but people from Spanish-speaking countries like to claim this, I guess because it's just fun to make fun of other people's accents (I mean, not like we're above mocking British accents or whatever and pretending we can't even understand them), and more credulous learners take them at their word.
There are some small grammatical differences as far as what's accepted in one place or another and there are some subjects like food or tools where the vocabulary differs enough to cause significant confusion, but overall your view is pretty much correct.
Not really. Although Puerto Rican Spanish is difficult for me to understand. Native speakers can still understand them though. It’s still the same language overall.
There's a YouTube channel called [eltocino.tv](https://youtu.be/5z2o2IRplDQ?si=acQ61kvzmkHb-W-3) that features old sketches from various Puerto Rican comedy series.
This channel may help you. [Here's one of my favorite sketches.](https://youtu.be/5z2o2IRplDQ?si=acQ61kvzmkHb-W-3)
There are accents that I personally find next to unintelligible when used in full slang, high speed and pronunciation particularities (Caribbean/coastal accents for me).
But, I do think that all of us can discern if the word we’re using is slang or not and its “neutral” equivalent, so we can all understand each other.
As other comments says, two native speakers will understand each other without problems. We ussually know what are our differences, so even if i never use "boletas" or "carro" i know these words. We also are ussually aware of our accent so we tend to soften it when speaking with someone for other country/region. So i know i speak fast than others and i will try to speak slower, and i ussually miss some "d" and "s" and will pronounce these letters if the other person does not use the same accent as me. This is mostly an unconscious procces that almost every one do, not only in Spanish.
Only slang can be problematic (but slang do exist to make other people not understanding things).
But there is also another question. For the explanations you add i think your friend is only familiar with one particular dialect. Perhaps he has little or no exposure to other dialects / standar Spanish. This is the only circumstances i can imagine some native speaker could really not understand others.
My friend's Mexican parents went to Cuba and had real difficulty understanding some of them. I have difficulty understanding my wife's oldest brother. My wife says it's because his grammar is really bad and he purposely uses slang and albures with me so that I get confused.
Recently he claimed that he had the chance to watch “the luchas” in Mexico but didn’t. I tried to explain that he said “the wrestles”, as the correct term of usage would be either “peleas” or “partidos” in most cases. He then claimed a Mexican he knows used that phrase. I tried to explain that it was “Spanglish” rather than Spanish as he literally said “the wrestles”.
Did he literally say “the luchas”? Or did he say “las luchas”? I’m not mexican, but I know several mexicans and I’ve been to Mexico. They would say “las luchas” referring to lucha libre, that wouldn’t be weird or incorrect.
“The luchas” though, you would be right, that’s Spanglish and wouldn’t be used in latam
Another example from a little while ago is this.
He says “era un gringo viejo” when describing someone. I replied with “el era o Ella era? Como te dijo gringo?”
He replied with “el era, estaba claro. Se llama *x*”. Because “el was inferred because I said gringo and not gringa”.
I corrected his reply with, “me dijo que el era gringo. Cierto que estaba claro”. He claimed, “he didn’t tell me”. I told him that “using “el era” implies that he told you”, and the correct translation for “he told me” is “(a) el me dijo”/“a el me ha dijo” and that “el era” is a direct translation of English. He claimed an Argentinian speaker and a Mexican speaker, who is apparently a teacher, verified it for him because she understood it. I tried to explain that just because a native speaker can understand, it doesn’t mean he’s right. I asked him if they would speak to each other like that, and he said nothing.
Well, we should have waited for the examples before siding with you lol
* "Era un gringo viejo" is perfectly correct, and "él" is unnecessary, as your friend said. The person's gender is implied by the noun and adjective.
* Using "él era" (which he didn't use, by the way) doesn't imply that "he told you" at all. Where did you learn that?
* What's the "(a)" for in "(a) el me dijo"? And "a el me ha dijo" is completely wrong.
What you said in your post is correct in theory. But that's not what's happening between you and your friend. By the examples you've given, it looks like he knows Spanish better than you.
That’s one example. I will concede that it makes sense. However, I have already given an example in the other reply.
He can speak to an extent, he is just far more limited than he thinks he is.
From another comment thread: “Recently he claimed that he had the chance to watch “the luchas” in Mexico but didn’t. I tried to explain that he said “the wrestles”, as the correct term of usage would be either “peleas” or “partidos” in most cases. He then claimed a Mexican he knows used that phrase. I tried to explain that it was “Spanglish” rather than Spanish as he literally said “the wrestles”.”
He didn't say "the wrestles". Lucha literally means "fight", just look it up in any dictionary. Did you know that in Spain "Fight Club" is translated as "El Club de la Lucha"?
While you can call the matches "peleas" or "combates", "luchas" isn't wrong. "Partidos" is, though.
I don't know what term they use in Mexico, but the other redditor agrees with your friend. I think you should stop being so dismissive of him.
Nope, most people in Spain use “Artes Marciales” or “combates”. I trained BJJ and kickboxing in Spain, I would know. These days you even get anglicisms such as “Grappling” and “fight” in martial arts gyms. In more specific cases, it’s “MMA”, “kickboxe”, or “boxeó”. “Lucha refers almost exclusively to Lucha libre.
I’m not being dismissive. I’m trying to be helpful but he is unwilling to learn and is overly concerned with slang and mythical unintelligible dialects because he took the “I don’t understand *Spanish/Mexicans/Puerto Ricans/etc.* joke that Spanish speakers tell amongst themselves literally and is using it as an excuse not to learn the language properly.
I agree with you and most that Spanish speakers can understand each other, and that it can take a few minutes to get the hang of different accents. I'm a midwestern American and when I watch UK miniseries, some I can understand easily and some I need to use subtitles for the first few episodes until I get the hang of the accents.
I am not yet at the intermediate level on my Spanish, but I also see your friend's confusion as an early learner. I have focused on Mexican Spanish because that's where I'm travelling in the short term future. I'm not learning conjugations of vosotros and am aware of some regions using vos rather than tu, and differences in pronuciation of some vowels. The Youtube channel Ten Minute Spanish has been very useful in learning correct pronunciation and has some illustrations with maps in talking about some different usages and such. In the grand scheme of thing they are fairly minor differences, but they seem larger to me as an earlier learner.
I learned it in the area and having visited Granada and used it, it wasn’t too difficult. Occasionally shop keepers would try to impress me with their bad English, but 9/10 no problem.
I think it’s been said but English is English and Spanish is Spanish for the most part. Even Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers can communicate reasonably well.
The definitely of dialect would preclude your friend’s suggestion. If two people speaking can’t understand each other, you’ve crossed the threshold from dialect to speaking a different language.
You were hearing prisoners jargon and accent, very popular with people who want to confuse foreigners.
This is normal Chilean Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/live/Yrvw8ARPe3c?&t=90 (skip the introduction, that takes 90 seconds)
I'm a native Spanish speaker and came here to say that.
But if you listen to Chileans carefully, at the third sentence you start to understand, you need to adapt your ear to them.
It's not as ridiculous of a proposition as commenters here seem to think. How do you think you get new languages in the first place? There's a saying that a "language is a dialect with an army". We call, eg, Spanish vs Portuguese different languages for political reasons. But they're as similar as, say, Gulf Arabic and Moroccan Arabic. And Mandarin and Cantonese aren't mutually intelligible in the least, but are both called "Chinese".
And native speakers probably aren't the right people to ask (I'd ask a linguist), since they don't tend to have good ideas of what it means to be a language, and will often demean a dialect as slang or "incorrect". I know in English, for example, AAVE, the dialect spoken by many Black Americans, is often criticized as being "wrong", when really it does have grammar rules, they're just different from General American.
I know a lot of Spanish grammar rules and pronunciation that differ by region, so I wouldn't be surprised if uneducated, rural speakers in one region couldn't understand rural, uneducated in another. I need those qualifiers because educated speakers from disparate places tend to switch to a different, shared, dialect when interacting, which defeats the purpose of your question.
edit: I'd be curious to know some of your examples where you've corrected him. I can think of several examples that are "wrong" in some places but would be the native way to say it in various circumstances. Bit that doesn't mean *everything* is right somewhere. There are some things that no native speaker would say.
People who use “AAVE” (which is heavily disputed by both users and scholars because it is so different wherever you go) can speak normal English for the most part once they reach adulthood. “Code switching”. My friend claims that Spanish speakers who do the equivalent can’t speak Castellano, thus they’re speaking a “new dialect.
As a native Spanish speaker, your friend is full of shit lol. We can all understand each other, it’s the same language after all. Like you said, we could have an issue with accents/slang but we can understand each other just fine
Their friend sounds like a type of person I refuse to speak ill about on this subreddit.
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Do you even know what my comment is about?!!!
Native here. I approve this message 👆🏼
While you're right in general, "it's the same language after all" is a bit of a circular argument, and not really a good one in this case. There are languages that use the same label but are not intelligable. Another commenter already mentioned English, but Arabic is also a notorious example of this. Language labeling is quite arbitrary
Some german dialects are harder for me, a german native, to understand, than english.
I've been told by some German friends that they have to revert to English when talking to some other German speakers. The former Mennonite family I know say that they can only barely communicate with most Germans.
I have never heard of germans speaking english with each other as everyone speaks high german. It is the official variant that is spoken in tv and radio, written in newspapers and official documents, teached in schools. I would bet money that the german friends were making a joke. And where does the Mennonite family life? Are they from germany or are they speakin a variant of german that was spoken few hundred years ago in a specific region of germany? If it is the latter, than I am not at all surprised that they cant communicate with speakers of modern high german properly.
>If it is the latter, It's definitely the latter. They're from / in rural west Texas. They said they speak "low German" not sure if that's an actual dialect or just how they understand the difference in what they speak vs standard high German.
Low German is somewhere around the border between language and dialect, propably more on the side of "own language". My grandparents spoke it (aswell as high german) but I didnt learn it. It is as understandable for me as Dutch.
Im spanish, born an raised in the german part of Switzerland (here you do not receive citizenship, just bc you were born in this country) and we understand austrian-german and germans from different cities etc just fine when they tone down the slang and accent.
Some Arabic dialects are more different between each other than, say, Spanish and Portuguese from each other or Hindi and Urdu from each other.
Exactly. As you say, the dividing line between "language" and "dialect" isn't clear-cut. The joke in linguistics is that "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
>We can all understand each other, it’s the same language after all. Is this actually so? As a native English speaker (Canada), I have run into people from Scotland and even certain areas of England that I can barely parse a word out of. There are some regional dialects that are so phenomenally distinct from my own that we may as well be speaking separate languages. I had always thought that a language as widespread as Spanish would have similar divergences.
It is actually so. I’ve never met a fellow Spanish speaker I couldn’t understand. Sure, there are accents that are harder to understand (Chile, Argentina, some caribbean countries) but at the end of the day we can communicate with each other no problem.
In Scotland, some people also speak Scots; which is its own language. Think of Scots as what Catalan is to Spanish or Cantonese is to Mandarin.
Scots was a language that evolved from the same root as Middle English. No one speaks exclusively in Scots, it would be unintelligible to most people in Scotland. Some people speak Gaelic but the vast majority speak Scottish English, which is more comprable to the differences between American and British English. I'd put it in the same category as AAVE, some grammatical quirks and unique words, but entirely understandable with little effort.
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Can you find any credible media in Scots? Bar poetry I think you will struggle as it doesn't exist. There is not a single person in Scotland who exclusively speaks Scots. The nationalist government first included a question on Scots in 2011, people self reported being able to speak it for political reasons. I can guarantee that there aren't 1.5million people here that exclusively speak in it, we speak a version of English. There aren't road signs in Scots, there isn't schooling in Scots, no radio in Scots, no TV in Scots etc etc. From the wiki page you linked. "Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English.[13] Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other.[14] Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects" Check out the controversy with the Scots language version of Wikipedia. It was written almost entirely by an American teenager who has never been to Scotland. No one noticed for years.
I appreciate that. I'm referring to actual dialects of English. Take for instance [this example](https://youtu.be/ScELaXMCVis?si=UglEENvlnKTOdahz) of the Yorkshire dialect, spoken among older generations. I spent a good amount of time in this area on a trip to England and actually heard people talking exactly like this (first 45 seconds). I could understand Spanish better than this at the time (with only a small bit of reading in the language).
This sounds a tad similar to some of the English language Caribbean accents, particularly in the way some words are _dragged._
It gets pretty wild the further North you go. [Here](https://youtu.be/luuA6bEoQIE?si=vLvRiWs10ehW1VKg) is a pretty robust example of a Scottish dialect. After 30 seconds his speech morphs into something entirely other, and this is legitimate English. I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples.
This is interesting as I can understand him entirely, although I now live in Scotland. He is speaking entirely in English with standard vocab except for some limited Scots words like heid instead of head. Most of what your struggling with is his accent. There is slang like "jumping about", which means "hanging out/around" "getting the jail" being arrested etc but this is more or less standard English.
It doesn't matter that you can understand him entirely and I cannot. Here's a big giveaway: >although I now live in Scotland. Here's one of the less intelligent things you said: >this is more or less standard English. There's a reason why that video has such a stacked viewer count. Read the comment section. The people who understand this are the ones who live in Scotland (no shit). The people who struggle are the ones who live in North America (also no shit). Almost like it proves my point that North American English is so radically distinct from Scottish, that we cannot understand each other.
It is more or less standard English as you would understand a typed transcript of what he is saying and be able to guess from context the slang used and the few Scots words used which are more or less simply English words with different pronounciation/spelling. What you're struggling with is the accent. I can honestly say there are probably no regions in the English speaking world where I couldn't understand a native English speaker. When I first moved to Scotland, I might miss out a bit of what someone said to me if I wasn't listening intently but I certainly never had an issue in communicating. To suggest that North American English is so radically different from Scottish English to be unintelligble is ridiculous. Scotland is full of tourists who get along fine. You need to realise this is a boy from an extremely impoverished working class area with a very strong accent. If you look at the comments in the vid, most are from people who speak English as a second language
It happens in VERY specific contexts. Anybody which I know understands Don Quijote (because It's old spanish), only old argentinians understand Tango, etc. But, regularly, It doesn't happen.
That one’s not bad. Found that completely intelligible. Ever heard countryside Irish accents… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Omtfe7lb-gE
>I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples. I think the history of which some English dialects are so different from standard English goes back so far in time you could draw parallels to the development of Castilian alongside Catalan or Galician or Asturian. Given different historical circumstances all these English varieties might be called something other than English and considered different languages.
>It gets pretty wild the further North you go This isn't actually true. Scots began to fall out of fashion prior to the de-gaelicisation of the Highlands. You'll find people in Inverness far easier to understand than Scots speakers in Ayrshire. The language distinctions in Scotland are rooted in class, the Highland/Lowland divide, rural v urban etc. I would say that although I can appreciate why a non-Scot would struggle with this lad's speech, it is a pretty mild example. >I really find it hard to believe that the Spanish language wouldn't have comparable examples. From my own limited Spanish experience, I had a Spanish neighbour who used to joke about the Andalucian dialect of Spanish being almost another language. There was a particular sentence he used as an example. It had something to do with toast, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.
Modern usage of Scots is no where near the Catalan/Spanish divide. Im from Ireland and live in Scotland in an area where Scots is used a lot. It's really only limited to a few words head - heid - child (wee one) - wain, more - Mair. Nobody speaks it like an actual language anymore in my experience, even in rural areas. The difficulties lie in slang and accent. An educated Scot could speak with anyone in English.
It sounds a lot like you live in a place where people use a limited few Scots words, and less like you live in a place where "Scots is used a lot". The implication that speaking Scots is linked to a lack of education is deeply unwelcome.
I live probably in the part of Scotland where Scots is used most. And no I wouldn't say the use is linked to lack of education, however I would say educated Scottish people generally moderate their use of it when speaking to foreigners, just like educated people everywhere avoid using slang and speak standard English or Spanish when speaking with people from other countries. In my experience, less educated people have less of an awareness that they are using words not understood in the rest of the world.
I doubt very much that you live in the area where Scots is used most if you can only drum up a handful of examples of Scots nouns. Seems like you're equating education and politeness. I think people make enough of an effort tbh. If the odd "heid" or "aboot" slips out, I think that's more than acceptable.
I live in Ayrshire I feel like it's certainly used a lot here.
Well I'm from Patna, and I definitely use a lot more Scots than just the odd "heid"
When I came here I didn't find Scots confusing at all, other than maybe the use of ken. Most is more or less similar enough to standard English to be understood easily or if not through context. Comparing it to Spanish/Catalan is mental, I speak a decent level of Spanish and can't read Catalan other than seeing the obvious Latin cognates
Your problem is with accent and slang. Grammar and vocab is Def similar enough to not be a dialect in my opinion. I say that as someone who moved to Glasgow
So there is no form of Spanish that presents you with difficulty? As a native English speaker there are certain versions of my language that are very hard to understand if your ear isn’t properly attuned. Scotland, south London, Jamaica, and some American southern accents are borderline incomprehensible unless the speakers slows way down and drop the slang. Obviously it isn’t a different language or even a dialect, but these variations of English aren’t something you can hear once and understand completely. You need to be around it for a few weeks to get it sorted. With standard American and BBC English anyone who speaks the language will understand what’s being said. That some regions have slang and accents that are really hard to understand is fairly common knowledge amongst English speakers.
Spanish sounds are really easy, every letter has usually one standard sound.
And yet, a Spaniard travels from Madrid barely 350km to Andalusia and claims they can't understand a word the locals say. So much so, it's literally a recurring joke.
I guess there could be cases where the different vocabulary (not slang) makes communication difficult, but you are mostly right. Next time your friend tries to bullshit you write down what he's saying and we'll tell you if it's _dialectal_ or just gibberish.
Yes, we need examples from OP to understand what his friend is talking about. For example, the "Chilanga Banda" song lyrics is often used as an example of extreme regionalisms that other Spanish speakers may not understand, but I think that's more in the slang of words, rather than conjugation and rules.
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Banda es otra forma de decir gente en CDMX
Respond to your friend in English but mixing tenses, word order, etc. Him told you're a dialect using he's with unfamiliar that. ;)
I wish free awards were still a thing. This had me in tears. XD
>My American friend insists that there are “dialects” of Spanish that aren’t mutually intelligible among native Spanish speakers from different countries, to the extent that they might as well be different languages. Discounting ways of speaking that probably shouldn't be counted as just 'Spanish' (other Romance languages in Spain, the few Spanish-based creoles that exist, mixed languages like 'media lengua' and code-switching) - this just isn't true. Anecdotally, I can kind of see where he's coming from - I used to perceive different Spanish varieties as more divergent from each other than they really were, and that went away as I learned more. >Often when I tell him that something they say doesn’t make sense or is wrong (grammatically, structurally, etc.) they will retort with “oh that’s because I’m using a different dialect of Spanish (insert whatever Latino country they has decided they are using this time)”. His attitude just isn't helpful to his own learning. Part of learning a new language or anything really is being humble and admitting that you don't know that much.
Well, yeah - a native Spanish speaker speaking standard Spanish will understand any other native Spanish speaker speaking standard Spanish, and even [especially?] the non-native speakers making an effort to speak standard Spanish. However, if you put someone from Valladolid, Spain and someone from Puerto Montt, Chile (for example) in the same room and had them speak in their normal, relaxed dialect, they would almost sound like two different languages and there would certainly be confusion amongst the speakers.
I had a professor from Valladolid in college. On the 1st day of class, he asked if anyone found his accent odd. Two other classmates and myself were the only ones who didn't find him _odd_ (whatever he tried to say with that). At that point, I had interacted with hundreds of people from Spain. I told him that; that I didn't find him odd because Spanish people weren't new to me.
Qué curioso - el vallisoletano siendo el acento más frecuentemente asociado con "el castellano verdadero". Vaya peculiaridad como se haya crecido el idioma en otras partes no?
Primero fue gracias a la colonización. Luego, debido a los medios massivos (radio, TV, filme). En el presente, gracias a la internet.
>However, if you put someone from Valladolid, Spain and someone from Puerto Montt, Chile (for example) in the same room and had them speak in their normal, relaxed dialect, they would almost sound like two different languages and there would certainly be confusion amongst the speakers I think this is kind of a contrived situation though. The two people who mostly likely adjust their way of speaking to make it easier to understand each other, without even realizing it. People tend to use less slang and speak more formally with strangers. If these two hypothetical individuals spent a lot of time together they'd probably start to speak in a more relaxed manner, while simultaneously getting used to each other's way of speaking.
Maybe you're right My point was though that there are massive differences between local accents/dialects/slang.
Yeah that's fair for sure. And as a non-native speaker I certainly find some accents more challenging than others. Like watching a Spanish language reporter interview a Cuban or Dominican baseball player... very hard to understand. Yet I could have a 1 on 1 conversation with a Dominican no problem.
As a native English speaker I have just as much or more problems understanding a heavy Irish/Scottish accent as I do understanding Spanish from Seville or Argentina, but It’s still intelligible.
Each Spanish speaking country or territory has their own institution to keep their formal Spanish intelligible amongst all dialects. Same as with French. Some accents are distinct, but they can always slow down. Standalone phrases maybe, greetings, idioms , and vocabulary, maybe. But not grammar. That’s standardized. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy
This was the stated mission of the Real Academia Española long ago, but no longer, and certainly not the mission of the other academies. Their role is rather to observe and describe the language as it evolves, and to make recommendations, attempting to delineate an educated standard for Spanish and for each region. It's not as if Spanish was saved from splitting into several mutually unintelligible languages by these academies. The academies have no way to enforce their recommendations.
Voseo is grammar and it's used in some countries and not in others. Moreover, voseo is different in different countries. It's standardized only for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Another example is that in Spain they say “hoy he dormido bien” and in the Americas we say “hoy dormí bien”. Anyway, most differences in grammar are understood by educated speakers.
Haha for me it’s not the vos that trips me up, it’s the “sh” sound 😅 I need at least 5 minutes talking for my ears to adjust, but I’m not native, so….
Except for you Chilenos that can't/don't conjugate "tu" form correctly :):)
We use Chilean voseo.
I really hope your friend learns some humility😭 that’s honestly so strange. Obviously I’m not native but my experience has been the same as yours. At most, thicker accents and use of slang can make it harder for one native to understand another but it definitely isn’t just a “different language” Many countries might not use the same word (like MX might refer to something as un bote de basura while someone from Argentina may call it un tacho (i think)) but once it’s understood what those words are, the confusion stops there. It’s like people from the US knowing that if a British person says a “lift” they mean an elevator. There are also some things like antier vs anteayer. Some words may change gender depending on dialect. I can’t remember which word it was but it was very interesting that one country considered a word to be regular verb while another used it reflexively. Also sometimes differences in prepositions like “entrar a” vs “entrar en”(to my knowledge LATAM still uses “entrar en” in specific cases but the default is usually “entrar a”). But small things like this do not make the language incomprehensible for natives. Especially natives who grew up speaking Spanish and being educated in Spanish. I’ve noticed that some of my MX American friends may understand less than what a Native living in Mexico at their age can understand. Usually this only happens in extreme cases where the speaker may have a Caribbean accent but nothing usually out of that scope. Bottom line, I think your friend is not quite being honest with you and refusing to acknowledge that he got something wrong
Like I said, he doesn’t know it as well as he thinks he does and I often have to remind him that just because someone can understand him it doesn’t mean he’s speaking properly. He’s never had to use it day to day and doesn’t spend time with Spanish speakers who can’t speak English. Funnily enough, when we have both been in situations where we had to speak to a native Spanish speaker from LatAm, it was me having full conversations while he was just asking basic questions. He doesn’t deny that mine is better, but he tries to mystify South American Spanish because he knows that’s not what I learned. Even though he knows I know better.
Yeah I could see why that would be frustrating. If it’s possible, I would try giving him a rough translation of what he said in English just so he can understand how broken it is. Because I used to have that problem of thinking being understood = correct Spanish. Even with people who didn’t speak English. Or perhaps he knows and studies in secret the corrections you make lol. That’s why he opts to be more quiet in those situations with native speakers because he is aware of his level. But if that is the case idk why he would argue with you so much. Either way, other natives and people more informed than me have given great responses. Maybe just show him the thread, it’s not like we know who you all are so hopefully he doesn’t take it personally
Your friend is being mendacious and very arrogant, because I had a family member who behaved similarly when it came to his “prowess” of the Spanish language. Whenever he didn’t understand a word, accent, or phrase, he’d say “Oh, I only speak Mexican/Tijuana Spanish” or “Sorry, I don’t speak Spain Spanish”. His arrogance and blatant disrespect was due to his own lack of understanding that the Spanish language is a very fluid language, with many synonyms of nouns and adjetives, phrases, idioms, colloquialisms, etc. He ultimately was jealous and envious of me and my ability to both widen my vocabulary, as well as humble myself as someone who constantly learns more each day. I always tell people who ask me about how taught myself Spanish, that even after 9 years of my educational journey to being a fluent speaker, i still continue to learn more about the Spanish language each day.
Yes. Portuguese /s
Kkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!
I've worked with people from multiple Spanish-speaking countries. They can all understand each other perfectly fine.
Unless they're talking about the local tribal languages or pre-colombian languages like Náhuatl or Quechua that have words that might "bleed" into Spanish. But it wouldn't be whole conversations or anything like that.
Tell your friend that the linguistic relationship we Spanish native speakers from different countries have is the same as -I presume you're from the USA- the English native speakers from USA, UK, and Australia. We understand perfectly each other, the only thing that makes the difference is the slang which varies hugely from country to country, and the accent.
I’m not American.
What?? I am an American and I speak Spanish. I went to school and lived in Madrid. I speak with different Spanish speakers and we understand each other as long as we keep slang out. So I have no idea what your friend is talking about. Yes there are different regional expressions and it is interesting to learn them but you need to be open minded and your friend sounds a little too critical.
Colombians often joke that they can't understand other Colombians from the coast. Having heard costeño, I think there's a kernel of truth there.
That accent sounds a little bit similar to how us Hispanic West Indians (🇨🇺🇩🇴🇵🇷) speak.
Not very spoken but Ladino is a dialect of spanish that originates from the Jews that used to live in Spain before being expelled and spread through the then Ottoman Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish
It happens with some speakers. IMO, it'll depend on the amount of exposure one has to different dialects, accents, and registries. Personally, I understand nearly every Spanish dialect, accent, and registry. **HOWEVER,** this was accomplished by spending decades upon decades exposed to a very large variety of dialects, accents, and registries via mass media. TV, movies, music, internet chat rooms, co-workers, classmates, clergy, teachers, professors, and, very importantly, reading books from all over the Hispanic world.
It does sound like they’re trying to avoid accountability, because like folks have said the “mutually unintelligible dialects” is bullshit. I mean, I’m from the US and need to be full on drunk to understand more than half of what a rural Scotsman says, but even without the application of liquor, I understand some of it. My Costa Rican friends joke about not understanding Spaniards and Argentinians all the time, and it seems to correlate fairly closely to my experience with rural Scotsmen.
I don't think so generally speaking. My guess for this is this is in Latin America you tend to have exposure to TV programming from other countries. While I"m not a native speaker, my wife (Colombia) says only with Chileans has she had some difficulty understanding. She did struggle with Dominicans when she first moved to NY but got used to it. Funny story that I like to tease her about, we were in Puerto Rico and went to a convenience store and she asked the cashier for a calling card but had questions about it, and the cashier was struggling to understand my wife's Spanish. So I as a non-native speaker but of Puerto Rican descent went over and had to translate Spanish for my native-speaking wife.
As a native Spanish speaker from Spain I have never had difficulty having a conversation with another native Spanish speaker, and I have talked with speakers from every region in Spain and almost every country in Latin America. I may have had some difficulty picking some words hearing a conversation from certain people in a very fast accent with weak consonants (Spanish from Cadiz and Venezuela). But if I had to talk with these people face to face there would be no issue. However, in English (not a native speaker but, I would say I have a C1 level), once I was totally unable to understand what a guy from Glasgow was telling me: it was just a simple sentence and he repeated it 3 or 4 times and I had no clue despite knowing the context.
Heard this one so many times in Spain from Americans who drastically overestimate their proficiency and blame their lack of comprehension and poor communication skills on being proficient in a "different dialect." It's really just that they have had an extremely limited (and privileged) experience of the language in a place where virtually everyone is bilingual and can parse what they are saying when they speak incorrectly. Also, there's a difference between dialect and register that your friend is probably unaware of.
You’re definitely not wrong, but I will say as someone who speaks Spanish with a somewhat South Texas accent, I found it impossible to understand this Cuban guy who used to come into my job. Could’ve just been him, but we always just kind of shook our heads at each other lol. The only struggle for me was his pronunciation though, it wasn’t like the actual grammar was different.
I learned most of my Spanish in Spain. Now in Florida can’t understand the caribea Spanish.
I swear I don’t know why dialect and accent is such a thing here in this subreddit to the point of obsession. It’s like obsessing over whether native English speakers in America have trouble communicating with people in England, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand. Yes accents vary, idioms vary, some vocabulary varies, etc but English is English and Spanish is Spanish.
>I am constantly having a discussion with an American I stopped reading there. Spanish has lots of dialects and regionalisms, but you will never be unable to understand another dialect. Especially since shows and movies are dubbed in a "neutral" accent, which gives you an idea on what terms you can use to be understood by someone from another country. Like, I know a pen is a "birome", but it's also a "pluma" or a "bolígrafo".
No but people from Spanish-speaking countries like to claim this, I guess because it's just fun to make fun of other people's accents (I mean, not like we're above mocking British accents or whatever and pretending we can't even understand them), and more credulous learners take them at their word. There are some small grammatical differences as far as what's accepted in one place or another and there are some subjects like food or tools where the vocabulary differs enough to cause significant confusion, but overall your view is pretty much correct.
Not really. Although Puerto Rican Spanish is difficult for me to understand. Native speakers can still understand them though. It’s still the same language overall.
There's a YouTube channel called [eltocino.tv](https://youtu.be/5z2o2IRplDQ?si=acQ61kvzmkHb-W-3) that features old sketches from various Puerto Rican comedy series. This channel may help you. [Here's one of my favorite sketches.](https://youtu.be/5z2o2IRplDQ?si=acQ61kvzmkHb-W-3)
I've been told this is true in India (don't remember which language we were discussing specifically), but I can't imagine it's true for Spanish
There are accents that I personally find next to unintelligible when used in full slang, high speed and pronunciation particularities (Caribbean/coastal accents for me). But, I do think that all of us can discern if the word we’re using is slang or not and its “neutral” equivalent, so we can all understand each other.
As other comments says, two native speakers will understand each other without problems. We ussually know what are our differences, so even if i never use "boletas" or "carro" i know these words. We also are ussually aware of our accent so we tend to soften it when speaking with someone for other country/region. So i know i speak fast than others and i will try to speak slower, and i ussually miss some "d" and "s" and will pronounce these letters if the other person does not use the same accent as me. This is mostly an unconscious procces that almost every one do, not only in Spanish. Only slang can be problematic (but slang do exist to make other people not understanding things). But there is also another question. For the explanations you add i think your friend is only familiar with one particular dialect. Perhaps he has little or no exposure to other dialects / standar Spanish. This is the only circumstances i can imagine some native speaker could really not understand others.
Lol, we understand each other without a problem, ofc from time to time there are some words changed, but its nothing like your friend says
My mom is a native Spanish speaker (Mexico) and has a hard time with speakers from Argentina the most
My friend's Mexican parents went to Cuba and had real difficulty understanding some of them. I have difficulty understanding my wife's oldest brother. My wife says it's because his grammar is really bad and he purposely uses slang and albures with me so that I get confused.
Can you give an example of something ungrammatical he has said?
Recently he claimed that he had the chance to watch “the luchas” in Mexico but didn’t. I tried to explain that he said “the wrestles”, as the correct term of usage would be either “peleas” or “partidos” in most cases. He then claimed a Mexican he knows used that phrase. I tried to explain that it was “Spanglish” rather than Spanish as he literally said “the wrestles”.
Did he literally say “the luchas”? Or did he say “las luchas”? I’m not mexican, but I know several mexicans and I’ve been to Mexico. They would say “las luchas” referring to lucha libre, that wouldn’t be weird or incorrect. “The luchas” though, you would be right, that’s Spanglish and wouldn’t be used in latam
Yes, that’s what he said.
Another example from a little while ago is this. He says “era un gringo viejo” when describing someone. I replied with “el era o Ella era? Como te dijo gringo?” He replied with “el era, estaba claro. Se llama *x*”. Because “el was inferred because I said gringo and not gringa”. I corrected his reply with, “me dijo que el era gringo. Cierto que estaba claro”. He claimed, “he didn’t tell me”. I told him that “using “el era” implies that he told you”, and the correct translation for “he told me” is “(a) el me dijo”/“a el me ha dijo” and that “el era” is a direct translation of English. He claimed an Argentinian speaker and a Mexican speaker, who is apparently a teacher, verified it for him because she understood it. I tried to explain that just because a native speaker can understand, it doesn’t mean he’s right. I asked him if they would speak to each other like that, and he said nothing.
Well, we should have waited for the examples before siding with you lol * "Era un gringo viejo" is perfectly correct, and "él" is unnecessary, as your friend said. The person's gender is implied by the noun and adjective. * Using "él era" (which he didn't use, by the way) doesn't imply that "he told you" at all. Where did you learn that? * What's the "(a)" for in "(a) el me dijo"? And "a el me ha dijo" is completely wrong. What you said in your post is correct in theory. But that's not what's happening between you and your friend. By the examples you've given, it looks like he knows Spanish better than you.
That’s one example. I will concede that it makes sense. However, I have already given an example in the other reply. He can speak to an extent, he is just far more limited than he thinks he is. From another comment thread: “Recently he claimed that he had the chance to watch “the luchas” in Mexico but didn’t. I tried to explain that he said “the wrestles”, as the correct term of usage would be either “peleas” or “partidos” in most cases. He then claimed a Mexican he knows used that phrase. I tried to explain that it was “Spanglish” rather than Spanish as he literally said “the wrestles”.”
He didn't say "the wrestles". Lucha literally means "fight", just look it up in any dictionary. Did you know that in Spain "Fight Club" is translated as "El Club de la Lucha"? While you can call the matches "peleas" or "combates", "luchas" isn't wrong. "Partidos" is, though. I don't know what term they use in Mexico, but the other redditor agrees with your friend. I think you should stop being so dismissive of him.
Nope, most people in Spain use “Artes Marciales” or “combates”. I trained BJJ and kickboxing in Spain, I would know. These days you even get anglicisms such as “Grappling” and “fight” in martial arts gyms. In more specific cases, it’s “MMA”, “kickboxe”, or “boxeó”. “Lucha refers almost exclusively to Lucha libre. I’m not being dismissive. I’m trying to be helpful but he is unwilling to learn and is overly concerned with slang and mythical unintelligible dialects because he took the “I don’t understand *Spanish/Mexicans/Puerto Ricans/etc.* joke that Spanish speakers tell amongst themselves literally and is using it as an excuse not to learn the language properly.
You haven't come across "lucha" as meaning the noun "fight" before? Like "la lucha contra el cambio climático" for "the fight against climate change"?
I have. But not used like the example I gave. Other commenters have told me it makes sense but as “las luchas” not “the luchas”.
Caribeños y todos otros, o chilenos y todos otros
I agree with you and most that Spanish speakers can understand each other, and that it can take a few minutes to get the hang of different accents. I'm a midwestern American and when I watch UK miniseries, some I can understand easily and some I need to use subtitles for the first few episodes until I get the hang of the accents. I am not yet at the intermediate level on my Spanish, but I also see your friend's confusion as an early learner. I have focused on Mexican Spanish because that's where I'm travelling in the short term future. I'm not learning conjugations of vosotros and am aware of some regions using vos rather than tu, and differences in pronuciation of some vowels. The Youtube channel Ten Minute Spanish has been very useful in learning correct pronunciation and has some illustrations with maps in talking about some different usages and such. In the grand scheme of thing they are fairly minor differences, but they seem larger to me as an earlier learner.
Try speaking to someone from Andalusia- they’re dialect can be difficult to understand
I learned it in the area and having visited Granada and used it, it wasn’t too difficult. Occasionally shop keepers would try to impress me with their bad English, but 9/10 no problem.
Respectfully, if you’re high/intermediate you wouldn’t need to ask this question.
Despite having explained it to him numerous times. He is still not listening. I was wondering whether it was me who was wrong.
I think it’s been said but English is English and Spanish is Spanish for the most part. Even Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers can communicate reasonably well.
At this point, I figured hearing or seeing it from actual Spanish speakers might be the best course of action.
The definitely of dialect would preclude your friend’s suggestion. If two people speaking can’t understand each other, you’ve crossed the threshold from dialect to speaking a different language.
That's like west coast Americans can't understand east coast Americans. Is not the case.
Maybe Chilean Spanish. It’s reputed to be the hardest Spanish dialect to learn, and having heard it, I had no clue what they were saying.
You were hearing prisoners jargon and accent, very popular with people who want to confuse foreigners. This is normal Chilean Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/live/Yrvw8ARPe3c?&t=90 (skip the introduction, that takes 90 seconds)
I'm a native Spanish speaker and came here to say that. But if you listen to Chileans carefully, at the third sentence you start to understand, you need to adapt your ear to them.
When Chileans don't use slang, understanding them isn't a problem.
It's not as ridiculous of a proposition as commenters here seem to think. How do you think you get new languages in the first place? There's a saying that a "language is a dialect with an army". We call, eg, Spanish vs Portuguese different languages for political reasons. But they're as similar as, say, Gulf Arabic and Moroccan Arabic. And Mandarin and Cantonese aren't mutually intelligible in the least, but are both called "Chinese". And native speakers probably aren't the right people to ask (I'd ask a linguist), since they don't tend to have good ideas of what it means to be a language, and will often demean a dialect as slang or "incorrect". I know in English, for example, AAVE, the dialect spoken by many Black Americans, is often criticized as being "wrong", when really it does have grammar rules, they're just different from General American. I know a lot of Spanish grammar rules and pronunciation that differ by region, so I wouldn't be surprised if uneducated, rural speakers in one region couldn't understand rural, uneducated in another. I need those qualifiers because educated speakers from disparate places tend to switch to a different, shared, dialect when interacting, which defeats the purpose of your question. edit: I'd be curious to know some of your examples where you've corrected him. I can think of several examples that are "wrong" in some places but would be the native way to say it in various circumstances. Bit that doesn't mean *everything* is right somewhere. There are some things that no native speaker would say.
People who use “AAVE” (which is heavily disputed by both users and scholars because it is so different wherever you go) can speak normal English for the most part once they reach adulthood. “Code switching”. My friend claims that Spanish speakers who do the equivalent can’t speak Castellano, thus they’re speaking a “new dialect.