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Going to Cuba | ||
Tags: Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5966 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 1 of 5 30 June 2009 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||
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It now appears more or less inevitable that I'm travelling to Cuba this winter. Me and my girlfriend will be living with the family of her stepdad, and so I've decided to start freshen up my Spanish, of which I have made little use in the last six years.
So now I'm simply curious: what can you tell me about the Cuban dialect of Spanish? What interesting peculiarities does it have? What will I have trouble comprehending, given my standard-schoolbook-Iberian Spanish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 5 30 June 2009 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's a lot of English and French influenced vocabulary (eg the Buena Vista Social Club song "Dos gardenias para tí" -- English "garden" -- whereas standard Spanish would be "dos jardines") due to the continual changes of colonial master and various waves of settlement in the Carribean. Recognising these words shouldn't be a problem.
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 5 30 June 2009 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Gardenia is just the name of a flower. Nothing specifically Cuban there. The Cuban variant of Spanish will take some getting used to if your background is with schoolbook Castillian Spanish. It's mainly the way of speaking: the articulation will feel sloppy as they just skip over some sounds eg. many of the s's, and the sing-song melody and rhythm patterns can be challenging. It's clearly more difficult than, say, Mexican Spanish. Educated and formal speech, such as the TV news shouldn't be too difficult to follow. You can probably follow them with a similar level of comprehension as you would the TV news in Spain. The further you go from formal towards the colloquial and slang end of the scale the bigger the differences. Don't be discouraged though. Spanish is still Spanish and the same familiar structures are all there, even if they come disguised with a slightly different packaging. Maybe you can google up some Cuban podcasts or online radio to listen to in the meantime, and develop a feeling for it before your trip. As for vocabulary you can check here, here and here too. You might also want to have a look at this on-line youtube course :o). Edited by Hencke on 30 June 2009 at 4:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 4 of 5 30 June 2009 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I visited Cuba in December 1994 - January 1995.
I found spoken Cuban Spanish rather hard to follow (I am more used to Castilian). It seemed a little slurred and quite a few word endings were lopped off. Even Che Guevara, a Hispanophone but from Argentina, was sometimes thrown by individual words in Cuban Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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