Spanish as a sociolinguistic dialect chain ¿?
My discovery on the SD dictionary of the word ‘demasiadamente’ seemed to provoke brief controversy, with some seasoned hablantes commenting that they had never heard of it, then subsequently confirming (after brief research) that it does indeed exist in the RAE although is rarely used. For my part I think I have identified it (through Google Translator) as a standard Portuguese word as well (meaning ‘excessively’ or ‘overly’), albeit pronounced according to the Portuguese system (something like ‘demasiadamenche’).
This has caused me to wonder to what extent Spanish operates as a kind of sociolinguistic dialect chain. To take the Iberian Peninsula, for example, there are a number of Iberian Romance languages (e.g. Castilian, Portuguese, Catalan & Galician), & while each of these may be considered as a distinct language in its own right, nonetheless, given their similarities, it seems logical that, for example, native Spanish-speakers born near the border between Spain & Portugal must be able to understand their Portuguese cousins born only a few miles away on the other side of the border and vice versa. And presumably this phenomenon extends across the entire peninsula to the other extreme where native Spanish-speakers born on the periphery of Catalunya can understand their Catalan cousins when they speak Catalan (although I appreciate the vast majority of Catalan-speakers are bilingual). Yet put a Portuguese-speaker and a Catalan-speaker in the same room & they may not be able to understand each other’s native tongue.
The same phenomenon exists, for example, in North Africa, where over 400 million individuals speak ‘Arabic’, yet a native Moroccan cannot walk into a shop in Oman & expect to be able to converse with the shopkeeper. Of course, I recognise the Arabic experience may well be quite different from the Spanish one as there is no real Arab equivalent of the RAE (to my knowledge), which I suppose has acted for Spanish much as the Academie Française has for French in attempting to stamp one unified version of the language on as much of the Spanish-speaking world as possible, while resisting forces of change.
That said, even in the English-speaking world sometimes there can be huge differences in dialects, even to the extent of mutual unintelligibility. One need only look at the differences between British & American English in driving-related vocabulary to see this (bonnet/hood, boot/trunk, bumper/fender, gearbox/transmission, lorry/truck, petrol/gas, licence/permit, motorway/freeway, pavement/sidewalk etc), and there are many more examples where British & American English differ in terms of common vocabulary (& even grammar). Of course, many of these differences are nowadays mutually understood owing to the prevalence of shared multi-media heritage, perhaps most significantly cinema & TV. Nonetheless, they do still sometimes cause confusion, even among educated speakers.
I once had a friend, a Scotsman from Glasgow (which is in the Lowlands not very far from the English border), who was well educated and had previously served as an artificer in the Royal Navy, a role that brought him into contact with individuals from many walks of life and from many parts of the United Kingdom, not all of whom were so well educated. He told me of two shipmates of his in the Navy. One was from the South of England near Birmingham while the other was from the North of Scotland near Inverness. He could understand both of them in their native dialects, but they could not understand each other, and neither could speak standard English very well. Therefore, whenever they wished to speak with each other my friend had to interpret for them. And this was in English !!
Accordingly, I wonder if ‘demasiadamente’ would provoke the same confusion in a native-Spanish speak born near the Portuguese border.
¿?
1 Answer
Hi there OP I did a course in college on diacronic (from vulgar latin to modern Spanish) and syncronic (dialects of Spanish) variation.
First I'd like to point out that Catalan, Gallego and Basque are officially recognised as distinct languages in Iberia. Catalan and Gallego, being romance languages, do share their roots in Latin with Spanish and due to mainly being used by bilingual people who also speak Spanish and the close geographic, legislative, commercial etc yadayada relationship of the people who speak these seperate languages, they are very similar. Basque, being the only non-Indoeuropean one with its mysterious origin and very limited use, isn't similar at all. On my trips to Catalonia I noticed that when Catalans speak Spanish, they systematically say certain things differently and speak with a bit of an accent as well. I've learned that even in areas that don't have a seperate language, dialects can be quite strong, for example in Andalucía, where Arabian influences were and still (to a much lesser degree) are more present than in other parts of Spain.
I forgot the exact terms, but in Spain (according to my teachers), there are both vague, grey areas in which one dialect flows over into another (a nice example is that people along the coasts like to say 'la mar' whereas on the meseta you'll only ever hear 'el mar') and more or less strict lines for which there's a different pronunciation, grammatical structure, word etc. used in a specific situation. (They liked to draw maps with many small areas & many layers in which they marked ceceo, seseo, leísmo, lo/laísmo etc. etc.. and we'd be given a text on the exam and be asked what specific area the speaker was from, how we could tell in the right terms and underline all examples of each characteristic etc. (in other words, it's a miracle I passed, haha))
The little differences accumulate indeed the further you move away from a certain place in Spain as well, though Spanish is a language in which worldwide, despite the influence of indigenous languages in Spanish-America, Spanglish etc. etc., people tend to understand each other pretty well. It's said that the most 'pure' (that is to say: normatively 'correct') Spanish is spoken in and around Salamanca, which is why so many language students go to its university to learn Spanish. 
I've heard my Catalan friends speak down on latinos and andalucians for their errors in grammar, spelling and pronunciation, but my teachers have always stressed that all dialects of Spanish are valid and equal (to the Spanish law?) and it's good to study them so that you can really indulge yourself in local culture and mingle more easily with locals when you visit a certain area. This is why we not only study normative grammar, but also the descriptive kind.
