what is the everyday dialect of spanish?
I am constantly told that this is not the spanish that most people speak everyday. Is there another site that teaches the more everyday dialect?
7 Answers
Remember, Spanish is not a dialect! --- The problem is that there are many countries and each one has no one, but many dialects of Spanish. To be safe, I would stick to "perfect Spanish" That way you would not be dealing with dozens of dialects. Examples of good Spanish are those from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador. Those neighboring countries have managed to conserve a good quality of Spanish, sometimes even better that the one from Spain.
Spanish is a world language.
English is a world language
Now, consider if the English spoken in Newcastle- upon- Tyne is the same as that spoken in Devon. Perhaps not exactly.. So, should you recommend that a person learns Midwest American instead ( it's nice and slow, for sure!)? This is not an attempt to answer your question, it's an attempt to make you think about languages. They are very interesting! On my very first visit to England ( don't ask when) I stepped out of the Inter-rail train in Glasgow and cried. After years of learning English at school I couldn't understand a word..Avoid Glasgow at all cost, it's not typical!
I just watched El Norte and it said that all you had to do to sound authentically Mexican was say "Chingado" a lot... Is that a curse word? I don't know. I'm sure Deanski can tell me if this is right or not, he's really chido.
Just learn the general Spanish, the ones the books and websites teach, everyone understands it. Then when you go somewhere pick up the regional version. This is true of every language, even Irish which only has 70,000 native speakers. There are at least 3 completely different versions of it and the one we learn in school is like a mix of 2 of them.
There used to be a lot more of course, but that's life.
I once read an article about Harry Lauder. He was a Scottish comedian who was very popular before I was born (or when I was still a "wee bairn"). The article attributed his success/popularity to the fact that he used "pseudo Scots" dialect in his performances. They explained that there had been many performers before him but that their use of their local dialect had rendered them unintelligible to other Scots (and, even more so to non-Scots).
I am constantly amazed by Americans who seem to believe that we all speak the same way (as opposed to speaking a large number of different ways).
I used to live in Denmark and one of my engineers went on a training course in England.
He was one of about 12 engineers most of whom came from various places in Britain.
On his return I asked if he had improved his English. "Which English?" he said "there were about a dozen different ones!"
Dialects?!
Denmark has a population of about 5 million +.
It has about 50 defined dialects.
Great!
