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Which variety of Spanish to learn? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Belle700 Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 128 posts - 143 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 100 18 February 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was reading this thread today on choosing between Latin American Spanish and Castilian, but I am actually still a bit undecided on which variety of Spanish I should focus on.
I live in the United States, and was taught Standard Latin American Spanish in school. After high school, I went on an end of the school year trip to Spain. Since finishing up with school, I have been continuing learning Spanish on my own. I understand that the most spoken variety of Spanish in the United States is Mexican Spanish. In the part of the country that I live in, 29.4% of the Spanish speaking population speak Puerto Rican Spanish, 28.6% other types of Spanish, 19.7% Dominican, 12.4% Mexican, and a very small amount of Salvadoran and Cuban. Overwhelmingly, most of the Spanish speaking people in the US speak Mexican Spanish. Part of me says that due to the linguistic makeup of Spanish in the U.S., the variety of Spanish I should choose to learn is Mexican Spanish, but part of me is drawn to the formal nature of Castilian Spanish too. If anyone would like to weigh on on this topic, I would be interested in knowing what you think. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 100 18 February 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the best thing to do is to make sure to get exposure to all the variants of Spanish, especially those you're likely to encounter, whether in your home country or while travelling. Edited by Serpent on 18 February 2012 at 5:14am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 100 18 February 2012 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||
As someone who has lived both in Mexico and Spain, I'm curious why you perceive peninsular Spanish to be more formal. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4864 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 100 18 February 2012 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I, personally, am trying to learn something about many regional varieties but adopt for my own use the most "neutral" or widely understood dialect, which I have been told by many people is Colombian Spanish. (Even though my personal favorite is Argentinian Spanish.)
I think if you avoid the most quirky pronunciations and the most local of vocabularies you will be well understood everywhere. However it is always helpful to know how to listen to the quirky pronunciations and to learn to recognize the unique local words like the Aztec words in Mexico or the Chinese words in Peru, without ever intending to use them yourself. (Just as speakers of American English learn to recognize uniquely British words, even though we would never use them in conversation). 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Belle700 Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 128 posts - 143 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 6 of 100 18 February 2012 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is simply what I have read about it, that it's considered to be a formal, standard Spanish, so that is where the perception came from. Is this correct? Much like Florentine Italian is from what I have seen, said to be the standard form of Italian. I am very interested in knowing the particular qualities of each variety of Spanish and I would appreciate it if you could explain more about that. Thank you very much for your input. Edited by Belle700 on 18 February 2012 at 3:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Belle700 Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 128 posts - 143 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 7 of 100 18 February 2012 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I do want to become familiar with multiple varieties of Spanish, however, if I do not focus on one particular variety, I think that my Spanish will become an amalgamation of too many varieties and will sound scattered and odd. I have a copy of "A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish" 5th ed. by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin, and in it they recommend to those learning Spanish that they focus on one national variety so as to avoid this very thing. I guess when I said "formal" in regards to Castilian Spanish, what I meant was that I was always taught that it was standard. If that is not so, please clarify this for me - all comments and insight are welcome and I really do appreciate everyone's input. Logically, just by sheer numbers, it makes sense to me to focus on Mexican Spanish, but I am really starting to like Castilian and its sounds, even though much more people in my country speak the Mexican variety. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4679 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 100 18 February 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Castillian Spanish" isn't standar Spanish at all. It's just one kind of Spanish. Just like London English is not standar English. Nobody in Latin America is going to speak ever that way. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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