Satire/literary voice hard to understand?

Question

I can read Spanish, but I often find myself having difficulty understanding satire or sarcasm or literary voice.

I assume it´s the same thing as with English, where you just have to know based on context whether something is meant to be a joke or not. There aren´t exactly "key words" to look for.

But I also find it hard in other contexts. For example, in English, the Wall Street Journal news has a very very different tone or voice than, say, Cosmo magazine. Even though the vocab might be similar, you can tell that Cosmo is more friendly or colloquial.

When I read a Spanish magazine or article, I can never tell if it is more formal or not. A lot of times they aren´t speaking in 2nd person so you can´t do the easy "tú or Ud" detection.

I can only imagine if I were to read the Spanish equivalent of The Onion and think it were real news.

Anyone else have issues with this?

Answer 1

Yeah Missy, I think you pretty much answered the question for yourself in your post! Just like for English learners it takes a while to quickly understand the mood of a story. But, like you mention, the type of magazine/paper itself is a good indicator. I always think that the more bright colors and advertisements there are, the less formal it is.

And that's so funny; I ALWAYS wonder how many people the Onion fools on a daily basis. I've even seen people unwittingly link to the Onion to support their theories in columns! ha