Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 1

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September 1

How is American Spanish different from the Spanish spoken in Latin American countries and Spain?

There is "American English", which sounds and looks different from British English or Australian English. What about "American Spanish"? Since there are so many Spanish-speakers in the U.S., how are these Spanish-speakers different from their Hispanic and Spanish counterparts? 65.24.105.132 (talk) 14:50, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Have you read Spanish language in the United States? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:47, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

It's also important to note that local words and idioms, as well as pronunciation, vary noticeably across Latin America and Spain. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:50, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

See also: Spanglish.   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 18:34, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

That article Spanish language in the United States contains lists of miscellaneous variations, but it is still hard for the reader with no knowledge of Spanish to get any handle on how different the varieties really are. I have skimmed through the article, and I still have no feel at all for whether the differences are similar in scope to those between British and American English, or less, or much greater. I know this issue is complicated by variations within language varieties that are conventionally lumped together, but I still think it should be possible to say something more useful on this point than the article presently does. 86.128.1.232 (talk) 19:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I studied Spanish throughout high school, including an Honors class. I know a couple of linguistic and cultural differences in Spain and Latin American countries, but Spanish in the United States was lightly touched. Maybe there was Nueva York or Miami or San Antonio. Not sure if those places speak Spanish any differently than the Latin American countries or that in Spain, though. 65.24.105.132 (talk) 20:05, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand what the OP wants. The differences between the varieties of English have t do with pronunciation, spelling and idioms. But generally any English speaker can understand any other English speaker. The same is true of Spanish speakers in general. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

This source seems pretty informative. The language of recent immigrants is quite close to that of their country of origin (Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc.), whereas Spanish speakers born in the country may be what that author calls "transitional bilinguals" and display speech patterns more influenced by English. The most obvious difference is the greater use of English words. One noticeable grammatical influence in a greater use of the nominative personal pronouns, e.g. in "yo quiero", "tú vas", etc., which tend to be omitted in the more standard varieties when they aren't needed for emphasis. Lesgles (talk) 23:41, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

[edit conflict] U.S. Spanish is not a variety of Spanish in the same way that American English is a variety of English. There are actually many varieties of Spanish spoken in the United States. In fact, virtually every variety of Spanish spoken in the world is also spoken in the United States. There is at least one variety of Spanish indigenous to the United States — New Mexican Spanish. Aside from that variety, the most widely spoken Spanish variety used in the United States is Mexican Spanish, which is the most common variety everywhere but in the Northeast and Florida, where Caribbean varieties of Spanish are more common. First generation immigrants naturally continue to speak their own national variety of Spanish, though they may mix in some English words. In subsequent generations, (American) English has more of an impact on people's Spanish, to the extent that they may speak Spanglish, but these mixed forms do not constitute a uniform U.S. Spanish variety, because their starting point is different national varieties of Spanish. Marco polo (talk) 23:54, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

• In NYC there is a huge amount of borrowing of vocabulary from English, including even verbs remodeled on the -ear subtype. The verbs chequear, parquear, and liquear ("to check, to park" and "to leak") are examples. One night around midnight I heard drastic pounding at my front door. I walked out into the entrance, separate from the livingroom to find an inch of water on the floor and its was the super (who spoke just a few nouns in English) at the door yelling "tus pipas tan liqueando al piso abajo!" They are fully treated as Spanish verbs, and pronounced with the typical accent of the speaker (i.e., there's quite an obvious difference between a Mexican and a Puerto Rican). Actual Spaniards throw fits at such things. My own English is peppered with Ruthenian words like "gotchies" for underpants, which has actually become normalized in certain parts of Canadian English, which shocked me when I first came acrost it. I am unaware of any typically "American" pronunciations by Spanish speakers in the US that have anything to do with linguistic interference by English. This source mentions words like boila, frizando and biper (now archaic!) typical of Spanish of the NE US. μηδείς (talk) 02:11, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

U.S. Spanish is not a variety of Spanish in the same way that American English is a variety of English. The introduction to the article Spanish language in the United States fails to make this clear. In fact, the prominent mention of the term American Spanish gives every impression that the opposite is the case. 86.128.1.232 (talk) 02:24, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

The statement you've italicized is quite correct. If anything there might be a difference between Chicano and other dialects. But I don't live out West, and in NYC, for example, there is a difference between Spanish spoken by Mexicans spoken with a Mexican accent and Spanish by Puerto Ricans (actually mostly Dominicans) spoken with a Caribbean accent. Each population retains its pronunciation, but they have a common vocabulary particular to the details of in the US.

I just spoke with my father who is a native English speaker who spoke enough Spanish to be the foreman of an all Spanish-speaking construction site in PR. (A lot of his Spanish accidentally came out in German, with humous effects.) He said their speech was full of borrowings like troque for truck (should be camion). My dad would say authentic Spanish words like el martillo and be responded to with Spanglish like la jama for "the hammer".

The only actual phonetic influence I can think of from English to Spanish is the use of sh for ch in words like show and shampoo where the sh sound is not native to Spanish. μηδείς (talk) 02:48, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how to answer the OP's question, apart from stating that—unlike Portuguese, French, Dutch, and (worst of all) English—Spanish pronunciation is extremely simple and, thus, rather difficult with which to form creole or pidgin languages. Regional dialects exist, of course, and I'd advise said OP to avoid using certain expressions such as, ahem, cojer among certain Hispanics.

Although the English language has significantly corrupted "American Spanish" (for lack of a more proper, linguistic term) these contributions remain far from standard. To wit, if the New York City government distributed a Spanish pamphlet entitled Oficinas Municipales en La Loisaida `City Offices in the Lower East Side`, it may very well seem condescending—and even racist! Though most people, today, still consider American English and British English two dialects of the same language, they really do so for historical, political, and cultural reasons, at least as much as for linguistic ones; indeed, the two "dialects" are, in fact, less mutually intelligible than Hindi/Urdu or Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian/Montenegrin. The dialect continuum in Spanish, however, remains remarkably narrow.

I'll simply note that (outside of northern and central Spain) one would pronounce z, ce, ci, and cy akin to an "s" in English, and not similar to a "th" in English. Also, in Modern Spanish, ll sounds identical to y in English. In fact, wherever someone goes in the Spanish-speaking lands, he will not likely notice any difference whatsoever between halla and haya, callò and cayò, or malla and Maya. Only in Bolivia, parts of northern Chile and eastern Peru, and a handful of small villages in Spain's Castille region, has the distinction between ll and y remained preserved to this day (sort of like the lli in the English word million). Also, in the River Plate region of Argentina and Uruguay, many pronounce it—in informal settings, at least—similarly to the "s" in the English word measure, (although, I've heard that it has now started trending more toward the "sh" in the English word shop).

Pine (talk) 12:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Um, Loisaida is in all sorts of official documents, and there was certainly no rioting when this happened 25 years ago. And linguists don't say corruption. They speak of linguistic interference. μηδείς (talk) 16:56, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

American Spanish is more influenced by the various versions of Spanish spoken elsewhere in the Americas than Spain itself. For example, burrito is taken to mean the food item in the US, whereas in Spain it would be more likely to be taken literally, meaning "small burro. StuRat (talk) 13:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

"Though most people, today, still consider American English and British English two dialects of the same language, they really do so for historical, political, and cultural reasons, at least as much as for linguistic ones" -- I cannot possibly agree with this statement. 86.155.134.106 (talk) 20:10, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

The differences between American and British English are cosmetic, superficial, anecdotal. They aren't different enough to be consider dialects. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:10, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

It seems I may have completely misunderstood the intended meaning of that statement. I thought it was saying that they were more distant than dialects of the same language, like separate languages or something. 86.155.134.106 (talk) 21:42, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is quite interesting. Of course, many U.S.-born Spanish-speakers will be influenced by English, and I'm sure that the level of influence will be variable from person to person, depending on various factors. What would be interesting is to what extent children of parents from smaller source countries, like, say, Costa Rica, tend to adopt features of more common varieties, like Mexican Spanish, in their communities. For example, do children of Costa Ricans in the U.S. continue to use voseo? What is the influence of the Spanish-language media in this regard? These questions haven't really been addressed in this discussion. 96.46.207.140 (talk) 02:08, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Indecipherable Czech (written)

Looks a bit like chteliste žrati, possibly means stuff your faces or eat like pigs or some-such, or just maybe you wanted to gorge yourselves - any ideas? Thanks --catslash (talk) 23:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

It must be chtěli jste žrát, "you (all) wanted to eat (like an animal)", so basically your last translation. The word žrát, common to many Slavic languages, means to eat when referring to animals, and is colloquial or vulgar when referring to people. Compare German fressen. Lesgles (talk) 23:53, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Brilliant - thanks! --catslash (talk) 01:41, 2 September 2014 (UTC)