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How Spanish varieties are viewed?

  Tags: Accent | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
35 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4
Alas Oscuras
Diglot
Newbie
Mexico
Joined 6860 days ago

38 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, Japanese

 
 Message 33 of 35
29 June 2006 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
I back Tadeo's affirmations on the perception of different accents.
The impression I've got of people in my surroundings is that
Argentinean Castillian is generally liked. Maybe because it has a very
distinct intonation. Yeah, maybe it is perceived as cool, but certainly
not more or less proper than any other accent. Just different.
Madrid's accent is viewed along the same lines, though without the
coolness factor. Cuban accent sounds amusing to many people, I've
heard hundreds of times people imitating a Cuban in many
situations, and yes, puns. But as in any other.....dialect, could be
said? (or is it too much?), there's no negative stigma against anyone
because of his accent. Even the people of Yucatán who as Tadeo
said, sound extremely funny to the people with the accent of central
Mexico, especially Mexico City. I can't imagine someone giving a
serious speech with that accent! But I actually like it.
But now that I think about it, there's an accent that's stigmatized,
but it's extremely regional. Some people in Mexico City speak with a
charachteristic intonation,elongating the final syllables of the final
word of a sentence. I'm not sure how to describe it, but these people
are generally of very poor background, and haven't had a good
education, so anyone who speaks with that accent is regarded as
very uneducated.
Hey Tadeo, about what you said on the dropping of unstressed
vowels and consonant emphasizing in Mexico City's speech, I've read
somewhere that it's because of the Náhuatl influence. Do you have
any info on this? Or anyone?
Oh, Lucia, I forgot. Probably you couldn't understand Amores Perros
very well because they use lots of slang, tons.

Edited by Alas Oscuras on 29 June 2006 at 10:01pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Alfonso
Octoglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 6861 days ago

511 posts - 536 votes 
Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Spanish*, French, English, Tzotzil, Italian, Portuguese, Ancient Greek
Studies: Nahuatl, Tzeltal, German

 
 Message 35 of 35
01 July 2006 at 4:57pm | IP Logged 
This is an interesting thread I missed to participate in for a while. I regret I didn't noticed this topic before. Sometimes I don't have enough time -due to my work- to check all the posts in every section of this forum dayly.

I don't know whether there are "chic" accents in Spanish. It depends on your taste. For example, many people here in Mexico dislike European Spanish accent (in fact most of people in Latin America usually don't distinguish between Andalusian, Madrilenian, Catalonian or Galician accent, they all sound the same for them and label them as "gachupín" Spanish). I personally like European Spanish and distinguish at least a little bit every accent listed above. Nevertheless I prefer myself standard Chilean accent. I find it quite elegant and well modulated.

Lucia wrote:
Newsreaders speak in a standard,no-accent,Spanish,just like BBC newsreaders do.


I think that there is in the Mass Media (T.V. radio, internet) a kind of Spanish that we could name "standard Spanish" or "international Spanish" that consists in avoiding words, slang and any accent that could be too regional for the general audience.

In the other hand, Mass Media and mainly movies allow us to be in contact with different accents in every language in spite of what Lucia said (for it's impossible to get rid 100% of one's own accent no matter how much we try to overcome it). When we watch BBC or CNC news, we listen to the different accents in English (British, U.S. etc.etc.). I think it's the same in Spanish. When I watch TVE (Televisión Española) I enjoy listening to the different accents. Unfortunatelly not all the people like to listen something in a different accent like his/her own. Sometimes we need to be patient to understand and admire something different.

Lucia wrote:
    Tadeo,what variety of Mexican would you say was spoken in "Amores perros " ? I´ve read "Retorno 201"by Guillermo Arriaga ,the same person that wrote the screenplay for the movie.I didn´t have any problem with his written language but I could barely understand what the actors said in the film.


So did I, although I'm Mexican. "Amores Perros" is a Mexican film composed by three stories. The first one shows how people, coming from the lowest socio-economical stratus in Mexico City, speak. The film presents a situation in which most of characters speak in a coarse and rude way and use lots of slang words that even Mexicans coming from outside the Capital (States) don't use. The second story shows a high-class couple speaking in a different (more "educated") way. BTW according to the story, the lady comes from Spain as far as I remember.

Like everywhere else, there are always different accents between the various social, cultural and economical groups in a city, region or country.

Tadeo wrote:
So yes, when Mexico and other American countries dropped vos, the verbal endings for vos disappeared. But they remained in the countries that kept vos, and evolved in a different way that they did in Spain. So vos cantás derived from vos cantáis, and decíme vos evolved from decidme vos.


Tadeo: Through all your posts in this topic I've realized that you know quite well many of the Spanish dialectal differences by region. It's a pity that I need to get used to the linguistical terms that I hardly know. :) Incredible!

What I would like to add is that the vos form is used in the Mexican State of Chiapas (where I've lived for the last three years) and Guatemala. Here people say: vos cantás, vos hablás like in Aregentina. It's a familiar way to talk with someone you already know, it's informal. In fact, people here use the three forms to address someone: tú, usted and vos.

Edited by Alfonso on 01 July 2006 at 10:57pm



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