Talk:Spanish dialects and varieties/Archive 1

Archive 1

Seseo vs ceceo

In the main article we read the following "The first Spaniards to settle in the Americas, mostly Andalusians, brought..."
Where is the evidence that the first Spaniards were Andalusians? I know Boyd-Bowman studied this problem and came to the conclusion that many of the Spaniards that emigrated to America were from Andalucia but then again, many inmigrants may have claimed that they were Andalusians so they could get the preferential treatment accorded to Andalusians. Another consideration is the fact that most inmigrants embarked from Andalusian ports and it is easy to deduce that many would have stated their residence as being in Andalucia if they had moved to that area hoping to be able to embark to the colonies. Rowenna1019 (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Argentine LL and Y

Why say the LL and Y are pronounced similar to English Z in "azure" instead of using the symbols?: one reason would be that for most non-experts the symbols are meaningless. Non-experts will understand the sound when it relates to a word they already know. The use of the symbols may not communicate to them, and Wikipedia is a non-expert encyclopedia which is very useful to non-experts. When I learned to speak Castilian in Argentina in 1960 I learned this sound first from the comparison to "azure" and then by listening to the people in Cordoba and Buenos Aires. Incidentally, this sound seems to be gaining traction outside of Argentina and Uruguay. I have a number of friends in the United States, native Castilian-speakers all, who use this sound for those letters on a regular basis, and not only to imitate me.

Rcallen7 21:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Malmberg

Bertil Malmberg's position is from Det spanska Amerika i sprakets spegel, Stockholm, 1966

Other dialectal differences listed by Malmberg are leísmo/loísmo, hubo / hubieron perros, the sibilant pronunciation of rr and tr in Chile, Paraguay and Northern Spain (Ribera del Ebro?).

Those should be included or referenced in the article.

Perder

"Perder" is not an "irregular verb" really, only by tradition; in fact it's quite regular. (And regularity doesn't have much to do with being a good example of variation...) The changes in the root vowel in "perder" et al are not a product of dialectal variation, but of stress: "e" becomes "ie" when stressed. The changes in the position of stress are a product of dialectal variation, but only secondary to the change in the verb form. Some of these are truly irregular: I think I've heard "que (vos) perdás" here in Argentina, though in most cases one hears "que (vos) pierdas".

On the issue of these pseudo-irregular verbs, I remember people suggesting that Spanish grammars should add two conjugations, for verbs with alternating "e-ie" and "o-ue". --Pablo D. Flores 14:57, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Que vos perdás is not "truly irregular", it is merely the subjunctive form of voseo (compare: vosotros perdéis, que vosotros perdáis, vs. vos perdés, que vos perdás, vs. tú pierdes, que tú pierdas). But Argentinian voseo rarely uses the true voseo forms for the subjunctive, instead commonly replacing them with the tú forms (note the voseo pronominal paradigm is also a hybrid: vos/te/a vos/contigo/tu/tuyo). See my other comment below for an external reference. Uaxuctum 14:11, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

It just hurted my eyes to read belongs to a class of verbs where the root, and not just the verb endings, change as it is conjugated to just say "irregular". And perder suffers "perd -> pierd" in the present tense of all three moods, that's enough for me to call it irregular, otherwise... yes is quite regular, but still I wouldn't call it regular. The explanation is just something I jot down without really thinking, feel free to modify it. --SpiceMan 19:33, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

French influence

This also affects verb conjugations, which are replaced by forms related with the plural vosotros, either without the diphthongization of those forms or without the final s. This originated because an influence of French (where even if the singular 2nd person is Tu, when talking to someone with respect Vous [2nd person plural] is used).

Are you sure that French is the cause? Second person plural as respectful singular also happened in English, Romanian and Basque.--Error 02:15, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Second Person Verb Conjugation in Chile

I've removed the following lines:

In Chile informal speak has yet another aspect to Second Person Verb Conjugation. The second variant :used for the first person is simply applied to the second person as well.

Spain - yo soy moreno pero tu eres aún mas moreno

Chile - you soy moreno pero tu soy aún mas moreno

Though this variant is ill looked at and concidered to be found in the language of the lower class is :it quite wide spread as well.

It seems to me (without being a linguistic; only a Chilean and user of spanish on a daily basis) that rule is not right: the use of the term 'soi'(not 'soy') as second person conjugation is a degeneration rather the use of the first person's conjugation. Sometimes the forms 'erís'or 'erí' are also used. (Applied to other verbs: 'estái','querí','buscái',etc) Also i've some concerns about the generic examples of second person conjugation. I think it is important to emphatise that the forms presented as chilean conjugation are highly informal and familiar. Correct and accepted ways are spanish - standard ones. In other way, the form presented are mainly of popular and youth use and in a familiar and casual context: you may listen them in the telenovela, in a movie or in an radio show, but are total inacceptable for formal or educated talk. You are never listen the president, a politician or your news anchor talk like that; it is alos inacceptable for teachers o lecturers to address and audiencie and personally I'm not going to talk my boss or my grandparents using that language ;-). So, i question if this informal way of talk should be presented between 'vos'and 'usted', which are acceptable for the situations i've just described. ('vos' conjugation is the official one in Argentina) Baloo rch 23:43, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the removal. In Argentina we also sometimes hear forms where the final -s has become -i (as in vos hablás → vos *hablái [bOh a'blaj]), but only in certain dialects, and it sounds extremely uneducated (though that might be my Rioplatense bias). I don't think such forms should be here; maybe in a separate article, probably as a section in Spanish dialects and varieties. If the phenomenon (-s → -i is widespread, it would be especially worth mentioning. --Pablo D. Flores 10:44, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

It's not that -s becomes -i, it's that Chilean-style voseo and Argentinian-style voseo have made different changes to the cantáis/bebéis/partís/sois/estáis/habéis/tenéis/vais diphthongized vosotros forms. Argentinian-style voseo reduces the diphthongs to its strong vowel, resulting in cantás/bebés/partís/sos/estás/habés/tenés/vas (note some of the resulting forms like estás and vas coincidentally merge with the tú forms). Chilean-style voseo keeps some diphthongs but dropping the final -s, while reduces others to the weak vowel of the diphthong (here a trace of the final -s is kept but frequently realized as a mere aspiration -h), resulting in cantái/bebís/partís/soi/estái/habís/tenís/vai (note the resulting soi coincidentally sounds the same as the 1st person soy). Imperatives in both drop the final -d: cantad/bebed/partid/sed/estad/habed/tened/id → cantá/bebé/partí/sé/está/habé/tené/andá* (given that the form í that would result from id is too short, it was replaced with the suppletive form andá from andar). The following essay explains the variations, origin and social status of voseo in detail: El voseo en la historia y en la lengua de hoy. Las fórmulas de tratamiento en el español actual por Norma Beatriz Carricaburo. Uaxuctum 14:01, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, and for the link. Again my dialectal bias (Rioplatense) showing through, alas. :) Also thanks for the note on Talk:Yeísmo, which I'm mentioning here also as advertising for other possible contributors that the page needs (on the issue of prescriptiveness). --Pablo D. Flores 14:36, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Cuando he llegado, la he visto

This sentence seems just bad. I think it should be one of the following:

• Cuando hube llegado, le he visto. (?)
• La he visto cuando llegé.

The previous construction is correct in Italian (Quando sono arrivato, l'ho vista), but I think it isn't in Spanish.

Maybe is not the best example for that section. -Mariano 09:26, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

the correct 'preterito anterior' usage is: hube llegado que comenzó la reunión (you'll never hear someone talk this way though xD). It implies a past action which was done right after something specific, usually implying that the previous action was a necessary condition for the next one. (hubo llegado el barco, partimos, etc.). Regarding the frase, I concur that is not spanish at all :P. Maybe something like la he visto al llegar? (la he visto cuando llegué is also fine with me, but I can't help but feel it unnatural, probably because we don't use perfect past tense in argetina, right, mariano?). SpiceMan 10:05, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm from Spain and I don't find anything wrong at all with "Cuando he llegado, la he visto", as long as you aren't talking about yesterday or some other 'non-current' time period. OTOH, the other two are wrong (in the standard language at least). The first should be "Cuando hube llegado, la ví" and it would always imply that you saw her right immediately after you arrived (the implication of immediate adjacency of the two events is absent in "Cuando he llegado, la he visto", but it doesn't rule it out). The main clause cannot be "la he visto" because the time period it is set in (the one established by the past anterior tense in the subordinate clause "cuando hube llegado") is an instantaneous 'finished' moment which is always seen as 'non-current', and so it clashes with the use contraints of the present perfect tense. The second should be either "La he visto cuando he llegado" (if you're talking about a 'current' time period like today or this morning) or "La ví cuando llegué" (in other cases). Uaxuctum 23:11, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Prince with a lisp story

I've heard from a number of places that in Spain, pronouncing s as /θ/ was to done to emulate a prince, but I've heard elsewhere that it is a myth. Which is it? I'm surprised to not see this discussed here.

It is most definitely an urban legend. The history of why Castilian Spanish has /θ/ is well known and well documented. It originates mainly from Latin "c" (before front vowels "e" and "i") and "t" (in the "-tion" ending), which eventually turned into affricates, later deaffricated into laminal sibilants, and finally became fronted into interdental in order to increase its acoustic distance from the apical sibilant "s" (which still remains as such in Castilian). Thus, actually the relevant question is not why in Castilian we pronounce /θ/ (we merely maintain a distinction between "s" and "c/z" that has always been there because they are of different etymological origin), but instead why Latin American and Andalusian accents have merged them. There is some explanation in Spanish phonology and Spanish dialects and varieties, and more in detail in Castilian lisp, but I think it would be fine to have it explained under a specific article on ceceo and seseo (both ceceo and seseo should be treated in the same article, because they are instances of the same phenomenon—that of merging the medieval laminal and apical sibilants into the laminal one). Uaxuctum 22:23, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Question

In the article it says

"Ascensión is pronounced in Spain as aSθenθión, while in Latin America is pronounced just asensión."

"s" is pronounced "s" in Spain, it's only the "z" and the "c" before i and e that is pronounced as "th". So it should be "asθensión", right? --Revolución (talk) 03:30, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's a mistake. I'll correct it right away. Uaxuctum 14:49, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Arabic ustad?

Quoth the article:

the formal pronoun is usted, which was originally "vuestra merced", meaning "Your (singular) grace" (though others have traced it to the Arabic Ustad, professor/sir).

Citation please? Who are these others? It just seems unlikely to me. First of all, correct me if I'm wrong, but usted came about after the Reconquista, did it not? Don Quijote, for example, written ~150 years after Arab rule of Spain, uses not usted but vuestro merced. So usted had not been fully developed at that point. Second, if usted comes from a word for "sir" or "doctor", why does it take the third person conjugation? "Your grace is" (vuestro merced es) makes sense; for the second person "doctor is" or "sir is" does not. –Andyluciano 20:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

French influence II; Ladino?

Since the statement on the French origin of the use of vos in Spanish was unsourced (and rather unlikely) and the question asked almost a year before now was never answered, I've removed it. I've also taken out some non-standard pronunciations and replaced them by IPA, but in some cases it was impossible (you simply can't describe a sound properly by saying it's "in between j and y"). Some parts of the article should be refactored, since they've accumulated several layers of edition of various qualities. I've done as much cleanup as I'm capable of.

I've also taken out a couple of sentences on a hypothetical pronunciation of vos with the s "as it should be" in Chile. The article is not meant to instruct people on how to deal with the natives in order to fit, and the whole "if you pronounce it like that you'll be marked as a foreigner" doesn't read well, really.

Besides that, I'd like to know why we need Ladino all over the article. Ladino is not a dialect of Spanish and is only tangentially important as a historical sample; the interested reader should jump directly to Ladino language. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 21:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Ladino

The formal Ladino language is a calquing language, used to render Hebrew and Aramaic into Romance. The spoken language of the Sefaradi people, Djidyo or Judeo-Spanish, is most certainly a dialect of Spanish, within it persists quite a bit of usage which was once common as well numerous innovations since 1492 and so it is quite relevant to the study of Spanish and Spanish dialectology as well as general linguistics. –Kadosh di Pomi

Ecuador and vos

I am an Ecuadorian and completely disagree with calling "vos" the most prominent form of second person singular. It is present, but it is by no means "the most prominent."

My Ecuadorian boyfriend agrees! He even says, he never ever heard this word in daily speaking亮HH 16:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Conjugation of the second person in Ecuador

Vos is NOT the most common form of second person, at all. It can, indeed, be heard sporadically throughout the country, but it is not very frequent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.13.186.1 (talk) 19:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

To answer both preceding comments, vos is definitely not used in the Costa region, where it is replaced in all aspects by tú. However, it is still used rather frequently in the Sierra region, where tú is barely used. I would say therefore say that tú is the more commonly used term due to the coastal region having a slightlier larger population than the highlands. I will edit the article to reflect this. (Relatedly, no distinctive Spanish dialects or accents have developed in the Amazonic region nor in the Galapagos Islands, since their populations were built by migrants from the two other regions.) 70.171.29.45 (talk) 00:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

"Le amo" vs. "lo amo"

Another case of Spain vs. Americas. "Le echo de menos" is common in Spain, but gramatically wrong... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Elpincha (talk • contribs) 15:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC).

It's not gramatically incorrect, maybe in Latin American, but certainly not in Spain, and proper Spanish is European Spanish, so I would definitely say it’s proper Spanish.

Leismo is typical from part of the north half of Spain. You would struggle to find any leista where I come from, in Andalusia. Asterion^talk 01:08, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Saying "le" for a direct object is only permitted if you are talking about a male person. Using it for a female or an object, place, etc. would be "leísmo" and grammatically wrong. Hence, you can say both "le amo" and "lo amo", but only "la amo" if referring to a girl. Anna —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.45.103.12 (talk) 16:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Using Leismo, Loismo or even Laismo is not grammatically wrong or right - they are dialectal features marking a speakers connection to a certain dialect area or speech community. Thats why the page is called Spanish dialects and varieties. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved here from article

Malmberg is not a hispanist. (However, Malmberg and others have pointed) Who is others in this sentence? Please provide references or sources for such claims as “Others have pointed out that Mexican Spanish is tending towards stress timing and concomitant vowel reduction, and that this is likely to be caused by the influence of geographically close English of the United States and strong economic and social-cultural ties between the two countries” Any studies that have pointed this out? Proof? Retract statement as it is not true and there is no evidence for this claim. --Ecw3378 (talk · contribs)

The Bertil Malmberg covered by the article in English Wikipedia is another one! See sv:Bertil Malmberg (fonetiker). I read Malmberg and he said that, so please don't just claim that "it is not true". I don't have the book at hand, as I took it from a library years ago; it may or may not be the one cited in the References section (Bertil Malmberg, Det spanska Amerika i språkets spegel, Stockholm, 1966). Someone should check that. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 15:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

A useful source

I don't know how much what this lot say is right (I tend to disregard value judgements about speech) but there's some good, if limited, analysis of many of the dialects of Spanish here (in Spanish). --Estrellador* 20:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Argentinean conjugation

With respect to the table in the article, shouldn't the most common conjugation for the 2nd person singular form of the present subjunctive in Argentina be "que vos perdás" instead of "que vos pierdas" ? 161.24.19.82 17:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

UN

Does anyone know which variety of Spanish, if any, is used by the UN? Brutannica 06:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think there is any need to do that. As long as slang is avoided, all varieties of Spanish are easily understood. Is there an official "English variety" for the UN ? --Jotamar 20:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes - British English according to the Oxford English dictionary. See United Nations#Languages. Brutannica 21:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Second person singular in Uruguay

"In Argentina and Uruguay it is the standard form of the informal second person singular, and is used by all to address others in all kinds of contexts, often regardless of social status or age [...]"

This is incorrect; depending on region and people adressed, all three vos, usted and tú may be used by the same person. See a better description here. -- NaBUru38 15:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Use of Sumercé

I don't agree the use of the pronoun "sumercé" when it's referred to a Colombian form of speaking. I currently live in Colombia and it is so rare here, that, even though I know it exists, I actually have never seen somebody using it. I've heard "su persona" pronoun sometimes but nobody either uses it.

Kool Lat'n SD (talk) 20:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Archive 1

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Spanish dialects and varieties/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Much of this article is most impressive, but the almost complete lack of in-line citations and the small number of sources certainly precludes any rating better than C class. There may be other issues (such as completeness), but I didn't check it right now. G Purevdorj (talk) 21:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 21:31, 19 July 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 15:50, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Geographical dialectology/geolects

Would there be any interest in dividing regions into broad zones like the zona castellana, zona alteña, and zona bajeña with descriptions of linguistic variance?-Flaquito (talk) 04:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean reorganizing the data to fit into regions or do you mean adding a section describing the regions of dialect groups? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking reorganizing the data to fit into the three main groups and then subdividing each group for the various regionalisms. There seems to be a lot of literature that supports such broad categorization.-Flaquito (talk) 04:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Distinción vs. seseo/ceceo incorrectness

On the article, it says that Andalusians were the first to go to the Americas and influenced the sound of "z" and "c before e and i" , but, in fact, Old Spanish was still spoken then, and the sounds for z was /ds/ and c before i and e was /ts/, and /θ/ was not a sound yet. Shouldn't this be fixed? ₭øμt̪ũ 02:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

According to our article on ceceo, the dialectal divide between what is now Castilian and what is now Andalusian existed even in 15th century Spanish where they differed in the place of articulation for dental affricates. The /s/ pronunciation of z and soft c has its roots in this difference, so that in itself doesn't rule out the statement. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I would argue that as most of the Conquistadores came from Extremadura, this argument in itself is irrelevant. Knowing both regions well, I know how different the dialect is, and for someone to say that all Spanish is the same is a little naïve. Yes, it is the same basic language, but it varies wildly from region to region, even from town to town. I live in a village that is acknowledged as not speaking "Spanish" at all, but a hybrid of Portuguese and Spanish, which is uniquely theirs. Only two villages in this region do this, and they don't correspond either. To imply that the regional differences do not exist is rather idealistic, to a native speaker they probably aren't as pronounced as in the UK, which of course is a foreign language to him, but believe me, as a UK national, the Spanish regional differences are as pronounced to me as the ones in my own country. Try asking the locals. They can tell you where someone comes from just by the way they speak, and I am not talking hundreds of miles here, I am talking village to village. Exactly like my home area in Britain. My grandmother could tell you even though the villages were 5 miles apart! its exactly the same here. The nuances are subtle, but they exist and to deny them is to diminish people`s identity. Try meeting a Catalan in Andalucía or vice versa, and tell them you know where they are from by their accent and watch them blossom! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.141.130.146 (talk) 20:25, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

"Dialects"

Ok, I'm not going to start an edit war for this article, but many changes I made recently have been reverted. In the interest of harmony, I won't re-edit the piece, but I have to say that the tone of the article is completely misleading. The language properly called Spanish may have many regional variations in accent, and variations in local words for everyday things, as all languages do, but there are no "dialects" of the sort implied by this article. What the hell does it mean to say "there is a gap" between the Spanish in Spain and that in Latin America? As a native Spanish speaker from Puerto Rico who has traveled extensively in Latin America AND Spain, I can tell you it's the same freaking language! I have no trouble whatsoever conversing in Spain (or anywhere else Spanish is spoken). The Spaniards may at times sound quaint to me, with their "ceseo" and occasional use of the "vos" forms, but those TRIVIAL differences not only do not impede comprehension, they are forms of speech well known in all Spanish-speaking countries, and occasionally, if even for fun, used just about anywhere you go in Spanish society. The "vos" constructions were taught in my grammar school classes in Spanish grammar as just another variety in the richness of the language. It was noted by the teachers that it is not in common use in Puerto Rico, and more used in other countries, but it is part of the Spanish language and known by all. Similarly the "ceseo" doesn't make a dialect, and in fact, is occasionally used in Puerto Rico for emphasis or in a jocular vein when "putting on airs."

This article implies that the Spanish language is replete with "dialects" characterized by mutually incomprehensible gibberish which will make a person from Uruguay, for example, unintelligible to someone from Spain. No mention is made of the Real Academia. Articles like this are the genesis of the misunderstanding non-Spanish speakers have about this language. I live in the "upper 48" United States, and I've had people actually argue with me, trying to tell me that I can't be understood, nor can I understand, people from Spain or Cuba. It's arrant, ignorant nonsense. Wikipedia would be an excellent forum to address these issues of misunderstanding; instead, it's stoking the fires of ignorance.74.239.2.104 (talk) 16:15, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Well... to be fair, I was raised speaking three languages. One of them was Spanish, and as a child, I was exposed to the erudite Spanish of well educated adults from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain as well as my own native country. I noticed that they all had slight accents, that the Argentinians used vos instead of tu, that the Spaniards used vosotros while the rest said ustedes, and that they were all careful to avoid using their own local words or even slang when speaking with people from other countries. However, the first time that I heard the Puerto Rican dialect, it was incomprehensible to me. With much effort, I was able to guess, and to ask many questions, but that speaker was uneducated, mispronounced seemingly everything, and quickly became exasperated with my numerous questions to attempt to extract meaning from his babbling: Social class influences comprehensibility. When I traveled in Mexico, I met some speakers from the lower social classes who spoke something that sounded like Spanish but with very heavy use of cliches that we're unknown to me and rendered their speech incomprehensible. When I had a Cuban girlfriend we spoke English because although she understood my Spanish, I didn't understand hers. When I had a Spanish girlfriend, her lisping did not prevent our mutual intellegibility. I would guess that the Puerto Rican dialect's relationship to other Dialects concerning mutual intellegibility is similar to that of either Irish, Scottish, or Cockney English with Standard American English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.108.7 (talk) 08:31, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The two preceding comments—respectively from "74.239.2.104" at 16:15, 12 October 2009 and from "166.147.108.7" at 08:31, 13 June 2013—seem to be based on an assumption that the term "dialects" implies lack of mutual intelligibility. But, on the contrary, definitions of "dialect" in reference works such as The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (P. H. Matthews) or A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (David Crystal)—as well as Wikipedia's own article "Dialect"—refer to the well-known principle that different dialects of the same language generally are considered to be mutually intelligible. The Wiki article does mention two distinct uses of the term: one—common among linguists and presumably the one used in this article—refers to any distinctive variety of a language, while the other refers to a "a language that is socially subordinated to a regional or national standard language". If this latter use of the term attaches a stigma to it, that is an issue separate from the matter of mutual intelligibility, and it would need to be addressed throughout the article and even in its title. Kotabatubara (talk) 03:00, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

More on "Dialects"

To amplify on my above post, I notice that the article on "English Dialects" seems to imply that English speakers enjoy a mutual comprehension not present in other languages, and that the varieties of English differ only slightly. As a fluent English speaker who has traveled extensively in England and Scotland, as well as the United States and Canada, I can attest to the misleading nature of that contention. I am a native Spanish speaker, born and raised in Puerto Rico. I know from experience that the difference between Spanish as spoken in Puerto Rico and Spanish spoken in any other Caribbean or South American country, or in Spain, is minimal. I have traveled also extensively in Central and South America, and have been in Spain numerous times. The language is virtually identical, the differences are trivial and in no way impede comprehension. However, if you travel throughout England, you will be stupefied by the difference in the spoken English language just within that country. There is no problem for a person educated in standard American English understanding English spoken with the recieved pronunciation of, for example "BBC English." You can converse just about anywhere in London, as long as it's a "nice" area. Just try, though, to speak to someone with a Cockney accent. It's another freakin' tongue! Seriously, it's well nigh incomprehensible. In Scotland, once again, as long as you are in Edinburgh or Glasgow you can get along famously, but head out to the country, and you almost need an interpreter (or a Scot with monumental patience). The variability between those spoken English dialects (inside one country!)is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more pronounced, and impede comprehension much more, than any variety of Spanish spoken throughout the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.239.2.104 (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Provide documentation for the anecdotal evidence, and you are welcomed to make changes.---Flaquito (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

"Documentation?"

My contentions, which are not "anecdotes," are provided on the basis of my personal experience with the language. My experience with the language, which I share with all Spanish speakers, is in itself a form of documentation, since the degree of comprehension between variations in a language can only be ascertained by the assertions of those who speak the language. I understand that an entry in an encyclopedia article requires documentation of purported facts, but we are not talking of stating the molecular weight of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or the population of Mukden, Manchuria, that is, independent quantifiable entities. We are rather discussing how well a Spanish speaker from one particular region or country can understand a Spanish speaker from another region. There is no quantification of this. Linguistic analyses of phonemes, glottal stops, bi-labial fricatives and the like do not help clarify that issue. Only the experience of native speakers does. I am a native speaker and experience in this is, or should be, a valuable input into this subject.74.239.2.104 (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Merger discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Following this discussion, pages were merged. They can be split again if the lists become too large. Cnilep (talk) 15:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

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The article List of Spanish words having different meanings in distinct Spanish-speaking countries was recently discussed for deletion. The discussion ended with no consensus. Several editors argued that the topic is notable and that there is no reason in principal that a discriminate, well-sourced list cannot be created. On the other hand, several editors argued that a complete list would be unwieldy, making the List of... format inappropriate. Similarly, editors argued that the list is more like a directory of dictionary definitions than a glossary.

The article Spanish dialects and varieties mentions that some varieties are distinct in terms of vocabulary, but does not illustrate specific lexical differences. Merging the list of words into this article would strengthen the article and move around some of the objections to the list.

Please indicate whether you support or oppose the proposed merger, offering specific reasons. Cnilep (talk) 16:10, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

• Support as nominator. Cnilep (talk) 16:10, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, out of mere practical reasons. A list of that nature could grow to a huge size, and sooner or later it should be split from this page, so better keep it apart from the start. Something worth mentioning here is that the current List of Spanish words having different meanings in distinct Spanish-speaking countries is really poor, someone could improve it a lot just by copying from this page: es:Anexo:Diferencias de vocabulario estándar entre países hispanohablantes, with the additional advantage of using English alphabetical order! And also from this other page: Wiktionary:es:Apéndice:Palabras no de jerga del español que pueden causar malentendidos. --Jotamar (talk) 16:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
  • These are valid reasons to oppose. I would point out, though, that (1) the current list contains only seven words and (2) there is no reason in principal to add more if the articles are merged. Compare articles such as Eggcorn, RAS syndrome, and others that include a small number of items to illustrate a point described in the article. This contrasts with, e.g. List of words having different meanings in British and American English: A–L, which is apparently meant to be inclusive, but which has been nominated for deletion on more than one occasion. IANVS, below, suggests another solution in the case that the list does grow. Cnilep (talk) 20:52, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
• Support (provisory) I propose merging both articles, until the list grows large enough so as to have its own article. Salut, --IANVS (talk) 17:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
• Support As IANVS points out this list should be allowed to grow inside Spanish dialects and varieties. The objection that merging discourages growth can be countered with the fact that the list has received virtually no growth at all as a seperate article. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 15:00, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vowel reduction

With regard to the vowel reduction of central Mexico, I have deleted the statements that attempted to attribute it to English influence, mainly for two reasons: (1) The Mexican vowel reduction that I have witnessed and read about in linguistic literature involves mainly the loss of voicing (vocal cord vibration), while English vowel reduction involves neutralization of height, roundness, etc. in schwa; they are phonetically different. The Mexican reduction is more like that of Japanese than of English (see the section "Devoicing" in Japanese phonology). (2) Mexican vowel reduction is usually associated with "central" Mexico; it is not a particularly U.S. border phenomenon. Kotabatubara (talk) 03:22, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Evolution

I deleted the brief section "Evolution" for the following reasons: (1) "Evolution" is a broad term; we assume all dialectal differences came about through evolution. (2) The section seemed to be only about the weakening of syllable codas, with just an allusion to /l/ and /r/ and a not-very-specific statement about the debuccalization of coda /s/. Debuccalization is treated fully elsewhere in the article, making this section redundant. (3) The relative instability of syllable codas compared to onsets is not unique to Spanish; in fact, it could be seen as one of those truisms that are sometimes called "boring universals" in linguistics. It was not a bold discovery by Malmberg. By the way, there are two Bertil Malmbergs. The linguist Bertil Malmberg (1913-1994) is found only in the Swedish Wikipedia; there is no Wikipedia article about him in English. Meanwhile the poet and actor (1889-1958) by the same name appears both in English and in Swedish. Kotabatubara (talk) 04:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

El año pasado he viajado a España

There seems to be a misunderstanding abot the sentence El año pasado he viajado a España. This sentence is basicly ungrammatical for most Spanish speakers, both in America and in Spain. As other ungrammatical expressions, though, it cannot be ruled out some sporadic use by natives, under certain psychological circumstances. El año pasado viajé a X is the sentence that you would expect from any illiterate person in Spain. Also, I don't like Bello's mention, as he's been pushing up daisies for some 150 years, after all. Jotamar (talk) 18:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I accept the "blame" for citing Bello, and I agree a fresher source would be preferable. What's the modern counterpart, prescriptive, for the Americas? I googled "el año pasado he" and got 317,000 hits. Granted, about half of the first 20 are false positives (with punctuation or other clausal boundary before "he"), but there remain many instances of the compound tense with "el año pasado". I would yield to the expertise of others on this whole verb-tense question, if it's based on good data. Kotabatubara (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

"...a (los) Estados Unidos"

There's certainly nothing wrong with using the article in "a los Estados Unidos", but that article is quickly withering away in usage, if you believe the Google Books Ngram Viewer. The no-article version surged ahead in the 1990s. Kotabatubara (talk) 17:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Debuccalization of coda /s/

I've changed the transcription of the pronunciation of standard Spanish [ˈto̞ðo̞z lo̞s ˈθizne̞s sõ̞m ˈblãŋko̞s] to [ˈto̞ðo̞s lo̞s ˈθisne̞s sõ̞m ˈblãŋko̞s] because the final -s and the medial -s- are not voiced in that context. Anyone can check that by putting his/her hand in the throat and feel the absence of vibration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.79.146.218 (talk) 18:18, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I reverted the above-mentioned change, restoring the [z] that had been changed to [s]. Reason: It is well established in the literature on Spanish phonology that the phoneme /s/ becomes voiced—realized as [z]—when it directly precedes a voiced consonant, as in "todos los cisnes". For example, see page 108 in Navarro Tomás, or page 81 in Barrutia and Terrell. Feeling your own throat is not a scientifically reliable indicator, since your pronunciation might be influenced by your expectations. Kotabatubara (talk) 20:15, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Open-mid vowels

I've rewritten this section to focus on the vowel opening in eastern Andalusian, because that is where one dialect differs from the others with regard to the open-mid vowels. I've also given it a source citation, which it didn't have previously. The replaced text alluded to the Andalusian phenomenon in its first sentence, but the rest of the section referred to "all dialects". Phenomena that affect all dialects are not relevant to this article. Some of the replaced text's statements about the distribution of relatively open mid vowels (in all dialects) were controversial (in disagreement with, for example, Navarro Tomás, sections 52 and 59, and with D'Introno/Teso/Weston—Fonética y fonología actual del español—pp. 187 and 193)—but since the all-dialects phenomena are irrelevant to this article, this is not the place to discuss those controversies. Hualde's phonetic transcription of libro and libre puts a diacritic like an inverted T below the final o and e; I was able to duplicate it on the e, but not on the o. Kotabatubara (talk) 16:33, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

The section title is inaccurate in my opinion, what we have is a double set of vowels (open/closed or perhaps tense/lax, etc.) which some authors assign to all five vowels, not just a, e, o. However I won't change further the section until I find a source. --Jotamar (talk) 17:21, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Word-initial <r>: free variation?

The sentence quoted below seems wrong. Can we have some documentation or delete it? "There is a [sic] free variation in word-initial positions [sic] (only after a pause or consonant-ending words), following l, n, or s, and in lexical derivations: [r ~ ɾ]ey, [r ~ ɾ]opa, al[r ~ ɾ]ededor, en[r ~ ɾ]iquecer, en[r ~ ɾ]ollar, hon[r ~ ɾ] a, Is[r ~ ɾ] ael, ab[r ~ ɾ]ogado, sub[r ~ ɾ]ayar, ciudad[r~ ɾ]ealeño.[citation needed]" Kotabatubara (talk) 16:06, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

I've removed the content in question. It's been uncited for more than a year and a half, so editors have had more than enough opportunity to provide documentation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:41, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

"Middle" America? No, sir. "Central" America

The article incorretctly uses the term "Middle America" instead of "Central America" in section 3.1.1, "Second person singular", when it says "(in parts of Middle America, especially, Costa Rica and Colombia)" as opposed to "(in parts of"Central America, especially, Costa Rica and Colombia)". --Fandelasketchup (talk) 13:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

See Middle America (Americas). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:19, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Then why do most English maps prefer the term "Central America"? --Fandelasketchup (talk) 09:59, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Because they see value in dividing the Americas up into North, South, and Central. That has no bearing on whether using a different term to refer to a different regional grouping is incorrect. It's not. It is incorrect, however, to refer to Colombia as part of Central America. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:38, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Catalan "Dialect"

It really looks almost offensive to have put Catalan on the Dialects section, I'm guessing that it refers to the Catalan characteristics in spoken Spanish, but Jesus Christ putting it the way it's put is a crime in Catalonia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GuillemVS (talk • contribs) 19:48, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. --Jotamar (talk) 07:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Sets of variants

So, the current classifications of sets of variants are unsourced. I've found a few different classifications we could use instead. Pedro Henríquez Ureña describes Latin American Spanish as being divided into 5 different zones: The Rio de la Plata (including Paraguay); Chile; the Andes; a Mexican zone including Mexico, Central America, and the American southwest; and the Caribbean. I found this in his El Español en Santo Domingo, from 1940. Then I have two classifications of Latin American Spanish into 10 regions from John M. Lipski, both of which are broadly similar. The first is from "Geographical and Social Varieties of Spanish: An Overview" in 2012, and is apparently based on the classification used in his book Latin American Spanish. The classifications are:

• Mexico (except for coastal areas) and southwestern United States;
• Caribbean region: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela, Caribbean coast of Mexico, and also Mexico’s Pacific coast;
• Guatemala, parts of the Yucatan, and Costa Rica;
• El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua;
• Colombia (interior) and neighboring highland areas of Venezuela;
• Pacific coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru;
• Andean regions of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northwest Argentina, and northeast Chile;
• Chile;
• Paraguay, northeastern Argentina, and eastern Bolivia;
• Argentina (except for extreme northwest and northeast) and Uruguay.

In "Dialects of Spanish and Portuguese" from The Handbook of Dialectology in 2018 he gives the following classification: "Mexico and Guatemala; Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua; Costa Rica; the Caribbean basin (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, northern Colombia, and Panama); the interior of Colombia; the Pacific coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru; the highlands of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina; Chile; Paraguay, eastern Bolivia and northeastern Argentina; central and southern Argentina and Uruguay." The only big difference between the two is that in one of them he groups Guatemala with Costa Rica and in the other he groups it with Mexico. The 5-zone classification ignores the Pacific coasts of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and all of these classifications ignore the Amazon.

As for classifications of Spanish dialects in Spain, both Lipski sources I have describe the main division as being north vs south. Lipski (2012) gives 11 different dialect regions, not including the Canary Islands, while Lipski 2018 gives north (including Madrid and Castile-La Mancha apparently), south (Extremadura, Andalucia, Murcia), and Canaries.

Does anyone have any preferences as to which classification systems we should use? Any input? Erinius (talk) 23:35, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

The Henríquez Ureña classification is pretty old, and in general the classifications of Spanish dialects made by Latin Americans tend to be centered around their country; Lipski seems to be the best we have. About Spain, while dialectologists resist to explicitly say that Madrid is southern dialect, all classifications are useless. --Jotamar (talk) 03:28, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair, Lipski's seem to be the best for Latin America. I'll put his in there, though I feel like merging all of Central America into a single group and mentioning in the list that s-aspiration is more common in El Salvador Honduras and Nicaragua. What do you think about that? And I'm not too familiar with different Peninsular Spanish varieties. I guess I could mention more explicitly that the main divide is north-south and source that. Erinius (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Right, Guatemala is a highland dialect, just like Mexico, and Costa Rica, or rather central Costa Rica, seems to be quite particular. In Spain one has to choose between the reality and the sources. For example the divide between north and south used to be quite marked, but the northern dialects are close to disappearing, and for that reason the divide will soon vanish; however that is unsourceable. Another example, the dialects in Granada and Murcia are closer than those in Granada and Seville, but the notion of one Andalusian dialect is too strong to be challenged. Cheers. --Jotamar (talk) 00:05, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

As you can see by now, I ended up putting Central America as a single bullet point on this page. I could mention higher rates of s-aspiration in the central countries and lower s reduction + assibilated R in CR and Guatemala in the list on this page, but anyone who clicks on Central American Spanish would see that and I don't feel the dialect list is the place to put that kind of information.

As for Spain, I don't think you have to just ignore reality. I mean, I've seen it written in citable sources that s-aspiration is spreading to northern cities, and I've seen writing on internal diversity in Andalusian Spanish as well as on similar phenomenon in Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish. The issue is I don't think the mere presence of s-aspiration is a huge dividing line in Spain by itself at least, but it's not really about what your or I think. Erinius (talk) 04:29, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

[h]

Is the "weak" Latin American pronunciation of j, g really always [h], the same sound as in English house? I'm no expert in Spanish, I don't speak it, and quite frankly I'm not often exposed to it at all. But I used to know someone from Colombia and their [h] seemed to have much more friction, actually sounding a lot like [ħ] or [ʜ], the pharyngeal consonant sounds known in Arabic, if somewhat weaker. (It was definitely not [x] or [χ], I know these sounds from my own native language, but it didn't seem to be [h] either.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.148.137 (talk) 03:17, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Probably you are right and a mere [h]/[x] division is simplistic. We should find a good, authoritative source to fix that. --Jotamar (talk) 18:00, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Is anyone going to update the missing link in this section?Psantos4 (talk) 00:32, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

There may also be a velar [x] that has a weak friction. A formant analysis can show that friction to be velar, rather than glottal or pharyngeal. That is the case in Serbo-Croatian and increasingly also in Polish. To call that glottal is just false, and there is no glottal class in Spanish phonology. /x/ is phonologically velar. I agree that the nature of Spanish /x/ is probably an underresearched phenomenon.

⟨h⟩ may also not be always the correct choice for the 'aspirated' /s/. Per Salvadoran Spanish#Phonetics and phonology, an intermediate, [θ]-like fricative (most probably the voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative with a laminal articulation, much like the Icelandic /θ/ but probably weaker) is an alternative to [h] in Salvadoran Spanish. I've definitely heard it used in Muñeca Brava, by multiple actors (who obviously speak Rioplatense Spanish and have nothing to do with El Salvador). So both /x/ and /s/ are underresearched. Sol505000 (talk) 11:36, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

There definitely are different degrees of constriction possible for [x], and Donny Vigil's dissertation on the Spanish of Taos, northern New Mexico distinguishes between a strong and a weak [x]. Also I added in the info about the [θ]-like fricative in Salvadoran Spanish. Brogan, in his thesis, transcribes that sound as [s^θ], and he says that pronunciation is the same as the ceceo studied in Andalusia and documented elsewhere. Erinius (talk) 00:53, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Divisions of Peninsular Spanish

So, we all know that the main, especially phonetic, division in Peninsular Spanish is between northern and southern varieties, and that at the same time these dialect boundaries are fuzzy at best. The thing is, right now I have two sources which give big-picture divisions of Peninsular Spanish. One, Lipski 2018, has a binary division between the southern varieties of Andalusia, Murcia and Extremadura, and northern varieties (everywhere else). The other one, from Introducción a la lingüística hispánica , divides (monolingual) Peninsular Spanish into three regions - a conservative northern-central one north of Madrid, an intermediary area, and Andalusian. On the page Peninsular Spanish I mentioned both divisions, and the more thorough one from Lipski 2012, but I'm wondering what we should do on this page. Just mention both? Mention (what I assume to be) the principal isoglosses/criteria used in each classification? Erinius (talk) 01:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

What is the basis for the Lipski division? I guess it is: Avoiding confrontation with the Spanish philological establishment. Lipski is a specialist in Latin American dialects and he's also studied minority dialects and creoles in other parts of the world, I don't think he's ever researched Spain. For me, it's obvious that any dialect division that includes Madrid in North is automatically rubbish. I already told you, the sources about dialects in Spain are conditioned by the prevalent ideologies and are unreliable. --Jotamar (talk) 23:04, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

From what I can tell the closest Lipski's gotten to researching Spanish in Spain is Gibraltar, lol. Anyway, thanks for your comment, it made me think about the issue a bit more. I assume the basis for Lipski's binary classification is the handling of final consonants, which is reasonable enough. But there really is no clean division (as Lipski himself admits) and Madrid itself is pretty clearly an intermediary dialect zone - it has both the "Madriz" and "verdaz" thing shared with provinces to the north, and not just s-aspiration but the same "ejque" found in the former capital of Toledo. So it makes sense to (as the Introducción does - you can find it here and gain access through the Wikipedia Library) mention a really conservative northern region, the super-innovatory southern region of Andalusia, and an intermediate zone in between. It gives a clearer overview of the situation and has a lesser chance of misleading readers. Erinius (talk) 09:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I should also say - the tripartite map from the Introducción looks a lot like this map, which the page already uses - and this map, which I'm pretty sure you made. Makes sense cause the isoglosses are the same. Erinius (talk) 09:58, 20 January 2023 (UTC)