Do you know the difference between all the Spanish spoken?

Question

Like in Mexico, Dominica, Spain, Africa, Guatemala and places such as this? for instance in dominican spanish they take out the r and say l like Pol favol instead of Por Favor.

Many members here are trying to learn English, so we like to use standard spelling, capitalization and punctuation. - KevinB, Oct 9, 2010

Answer 1

Spanish is the official language of the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, and Spain. Some African countries speak Portuguese which sounds similar to Spanish. Most countries develop their own phrases and dialects which may vary the language between countries much the same way English varies between that spoken in the UK and that in the USA. Most Latin American countries speak Spanish with the exception of Brazil. Hope that answers your question. Google "Spanish" and it will pull up some information which may better answer your question.

Ciao!!

Spanish is one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea, along with French. 5 countries in Africa have Portuguese as their official language. - KevinB, Oct 9, 2010

You are correct. I meant to use "Some." - UTStorm, Oct 9, 2010

I usually forget about Equatorial Guinea speaking Spanish. There are also two cities on the north coast of Africa that are still part of Spain. - KevinB, Oct 9, 2010

Answer 2

It's all the same language, with local differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. It's not just by country, either. Different areas within a country will have variations. It's just like the differences in English between Brooklyn, Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Glasgow, Mumbai, Sydney, Cape Town, etc.

Answer 3

The people who study (are knowledgeable) about such matters are called (I think) "dialectologists" (their interest/field of study) concerns the differences (characteristics) of various dialects.

Normal speakers of a language are, for the most part, unable to say more than "this person does/doesn't speak the same dialect that I do. Americans, for example, may do somewhat better at identifying American dialects (e.g. you must be from Texas/Boston/California/etc.) but lump all the dialects of Great Britain into the single category "English" (despite the fact that there are dozens of dialects there). Obviously, citizens of GB also are not attuned to distinguishing among the dialects of the U.S.

The same is true of Spanish. On a number of occasions (after hearing someone say "He's sounds like a Colombian.") I've asked "Why? What, specifically, do you consider to be characteristic of Colombian speech?" The answers have been uniformly vague. There are certain assumptions that are statistically justifiable. e.g. Someone who uses the "seseo" is probably not from Spain (except for all those folk in Andalucia). The use of "el voseo" is mostly in indication of Southern Cone Spanish (except when it's not). Mexicans tend to speak with a musicality that is their own as do Argentinians (different musicality).