Which countries have the easiest spoken Spanish to understand?
Obviously it's personal opinion, but where do you think it would be easiest to understand spoken Spanish without being fluent yet?
I'll try to say this in Spanish. Please correct me if it is wrong:
¿En cuales países hispanohablantes piensas que es más fácil entender lo que se dice para alguien que no hable español fácilmente?
Corregir mi español si sea necesario.
Gracias
11 Answers
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Muchos opinan que el sonido del Español en Lima es uno de los más neutrales de Latinoamérica. Por lo general, entona mucho menos que los vecinos del norte y el sur. Probablemente esto se debe a que durante la época colonial, Lima tenía mucho contacto con España y su nobleza. Además la Universidad de San Marcos regularizaba la enseñanza del idioma. Durante aquella época, el español en esta ciudad se mantuvo aislado de influencias nativas durante mucho tiempo. Sólo a partir del siglo XX, empieza el español en Lima a tener pequeñas influencias del acento andino. Muchos turistas opinan que Lima es un muy buen lugar para practicar el Español, porque el acento es fácil de entender.
I tried doing copy and paste, this is from the website," News in Slow Spanish."
I'd say the wide variety of responses clearly show how impossible this question is to answer.
So the best countries so far are: Spain, Perú, México, Colombia.
The most difficult: Chile, Puerto Rico, República Dominicana, Cuba and Panamá-
Coming form a South American background, I think they speak a lovely, easy to understand Spanish in Colombia, Chile, Panamá, República Dominicana...
It's taken me years and Mexican relatives to accept the fact that Mexicans do speak some sort of Spanish (kidding - a little), and I find the Spanish from certain areas of Spain very difficult to understand.
Sure many people speak a very confusing Spanglish in Puerto Rico, but plenty of people speak great Spanish there too. Nothing wrong with Cuban Spanish, kind of fun in fact. Argentinians speak Argentinian, no doubt. 
, and Venezuelans speak very fast. But if you are used to Venezuelan Spanish, then Ecuadorian Spanish is very weird.
In conclusion, forget all this nonsense and stick with Russian. 
In the country of Cogumela they speak the clearest, prettiest, most easy to understand Spanish en todo el mundo.
One cannot classify the countries like that. You cannot say "Oh look, in Cuba I don't need to know the word "grande" in order to understand them."
It's a home truth that like many other countries, in Spain because of the coofficial languages (Catalán, Aranés, Valenciano, Euskara, Gallego) it's hard to pick up the words, harder that expected. Because in my opinion, those languages affect the way they speak Spanish. But, this doesn't mean that you can understand equally every Mexican you see. Dialects change the pronunciation a lot. Or in Colombia, it's valid everywhere. So, don't think about the easiness, all of them are easy and also difficult per se.
It also depends on the course you go. For example if you have a Spanish teacher it will be easier for you to understand the idioms which are used in Spain. It won't change anything in the communication, though. When you say "¡Hola!" There won't be anybody who cannot understand it.
But again, if you are talking about the pronunciation, it's difficult everywhere! Even two people from the same city speak differently.
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¿En qué países hispanohablantes piensas que es más fácil de entender lo que se dice para alguien que no hable español con fluidez?
Velocity certainly makes a difference to me (non-native) when it comes to listening comprehension. For this reason, I enjoy listening to people from Colombia. They (in general) speak more slowly than people from Chile, Argentina and Spain.I'm just speaking of my personal impressions being in those countries, of course.
I have found that it is typically more difficult to understand native speakers from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Panama. I say this because these nations tend to use more slang in there everyday vernacular than other hispanohablantes that I have encountered.
For instance in Panama the majority of people also speak Pawtuah (SP) which is similar to Jamaican English. Many people came to Panama from the West Indies during the building of the Panama Canal and with them brought that heritage which has mixed with Spanish. My boyfriend is from Panama and at times it is difficult to understand his parents as they also cut words short.
I think the easiest people to understand aren't neccesarily those of a particular nation but instead those who articulate their words correctly. The same can be said of an American from the South versus an American from Maine.
Hola amigos. swampy's answer is correct. I've been going to a Latin American Spanish speaking church for a year or so and I can tell you about my experience here. This congregation is a mixture of all Spanish-speaking nationalites and I have asked this question to a great number of people. By far and large they say that the Spanish accent from people living in Lima the capital of Peru is the best; meaning that it is very clear and the people don't speak overly fast. Even a Spanish professor from Paraguay told me this. She said that it's better, especially for males, to avoid 'Spanish' Spanish because unless you're planning to live in the country or physically be in contact with Spaniards all the time that the Spanish that Spaniards speak, is a dying language. She commented that the lisp-like aZTHul (azule) sound that Spanish people make is quite laughable, specifically when men make it because it makes them sound a little bit, coughs.. how can I say? .. effeminate. Apologies to any Spanish men reading this. I actually like your accent.. (except for the lisp like sounds). Argentine accent is pretty good, too. However they pronounce doble ll as 'sho', for instance, 'calle' becomes 'cashe'. However it's also quite musical as is the Columbian one which is great if that is your cup of tea. My personal opinion is that when you're learning any language it's important to have access to a variety of accents especially if you like being in the international community because you're going to bump into people that use different pronunciations and slang. I don't pretend to be an expert on the matter but if anybody has any questions they can iMessage me or email me at chadlee884@ g mail dot com ¡Suerte! (English/???/español)
Mexico and Colombia. I'm studying for being a spanish second language teacher and that's what they told us.
The ceceo is interesting. I only began trying to learn Spanish properly last summer, but I already knew about the ceceo because I'd dabbled in Spanish a long time beforehand when I was at uni. More recently I decided to try to learn the language properly because my wife has an opportunity to work in Spain, so we may live there for a while. Therefore, I felt I had to choose whether to ceceo or not to ceceo.
I decided to ceceo.
However, I have to say that this has not been an easy decision. All the audio courses that I've followed so far (I've done all the Michel Thomas courses and I've almost finished level 1 of Pimsleur Latin American Spanish) don't ceceo. During Michel Thomas I found the speakers on the discs would pronounce words non-ceceo, then I would repeat them ceceo.
With Pimsleur, however, I do find I'm beginning to drop the ceceo. Of course, Pimsleur gives you no indication of spelling (Michel Thomas gives a little), so if you were following only Pimsleur you wouldn't know when to ceceo or not anyway. And I've observed not all European Spanish-speakers consistently ceceo anyway, and 'graSSias' is as common as 'graTHias', or certainly where I've been (mostly Catalonia).
As a near absolute beginner, I find all varieties of spoken Spanish very hard to follow. That said, Latin American seems a little easier. Latin Americans seems to speak a little slower than Spaniards. I like the Argentinian accent, which reminds me of Italian.
Another slightly worrying factor for me is, as has been mentioned above in the foregoing thread, European Spanish is influenced by the various other Hispano-Romance dialects/languages that surround it. My wife and I have young kids, so if we do move to Spain, and if we do it's likely to be Catalonia, they'll have to attend school there where the law stipulates that they must be taught the regional dialect/language, most likely Catalan in our case. I'm pretty sure the kids will pick it up easily enough, but for my wife and myself, I'm not so sure. I have bought books on Catalan and skimmed through them. It doesn't seem a particularly challenging language, particularly for learners who already have French (like my wife and I), but I've decided not to try to learn Castellano and Catalan at the same time for fear that their close similarities would lead only to confusion. For example, I can handle 'si us plau', but the Catalan word for 'leg' is 'cama', and knowing this I'm already concerned that I might confuse my 'bed' and my 'leg' without delving any deeper into the language (the Catalan for 'bed' is 'llit', incidentally) ¡!
All are fairly easy except for Chilean Spanish.
Yeah, I was referring to accents. For example, I noticed that a lot of the speakers I have heard from Dominican Republic tend to leave off syllables of words very frequently. Is it like this everywhere?
Every country has it own way of speaking Spanish. It's like asking:
Hey, I heard that in the USA they say "I'm gonna do this." Is it like that everywhere?
Of course it's not. But there are other ellipsis examples in the world. For example in Spain you can hear "escuchado" pronounced "escuchao"... And stuff like this.
