Why do Spanish People Talk Fast?
iHola! I am wondering how the spainsh moves their tongues very quickly when speaking. I have a friend who is fluent in english and spanish and she said that a lot of 'em speaks quickly. I asked her that and she said idk. And when I hear her on the phone from time to time, she is really quick. I asked her again and she said that she doesn't know¡ how they do it. I tried sayin' a word I know in spanish very quickly, but its just too hard for me to do. Every time, i try it and failed, I always think to my self, "how the heck do they do that?" So any help with this will be nice. Thanks!
P.S.
The mucsules in my are also making it hard for me to do so. They tightin up when I try to speak a word as fast as they can. So I am not sure if their's is looser than ours or what? If its not that, then what do they do that allows them to speak quick?
16 Answers
Hi TwilightLinkable,
It seems that all the answers I have seen, assumed that you can't understand fast speaking Spanish speakers. What I see is that you are struggling with your inability to match their speed. Please, do not try to match speed as much as enunciation. Speed comes with experience and muscle training.
For example, look at the commercials with young children. Most of the children (but not all) speak slowly in comparison to their adult conterparts. This is how it has always been for new learners at home or elsewhere. They must want to communicate first, then by pactice over time they pick up speed through brain and mouth experience.
You have heard two and three year olds in English and Spanish speak with "baby talk". This is what every new language speaker goes through. Just "practice, practice ,practice" and your speech improves in each part until you are fluent.
One last thing. I know a family with six sisters and five brothers, and they all complain about the way each other speaks in spanish. Two sisters speak so fast that the others beg them to slow down so that they can be understood. Enough said. Just learn at your own speeds and let the rest just happen as you go.
Good luck and keep practicing,
Quizas , yo escucho demasiado despacio.
Porque tengo que esta problema también
Maybe, I listen too slowly.
Because I have that problem also.
I have, on occasion, switched on the TV and after a few minutes realised I was not understanding a single word.
Not Spanish but English! - somehow my brain was not "tuned in".
Fascinating to continue like that for a while and realise just how unintelligable English can sound.
readytodictate wrote:
Mexicans and Argentinians Don't
Cubans Do (most spanish natives don't even understand Cubans)
How do you know this???? I know rapid speaking Mexicans and Argentinians. How does the accent from Oaxaca sound to you? Slow? I don't think so.
and "most spanish natives don't even understand Cubans", sorry, but you are overgeneralizing, a lot. Although Spanish in the Caribbean has a distinctly different accent, that doesn't mean you can't understand it.
problem here! same question here!
i have a mexican friend when we talk on the phone i cant understand and once i ask her to slow down she slows down for just 2 or 3 sentences and then she starts over the same habit! why do they speak so fast?! it seems like the devil is chasing their words and sentences!
Some Spanish dialects tend to be faster than others. I; however, am yet to find an accent that I could not understand regardless of how fast it is spoken.
Generalizing about a certain accent can be a huge mistake. Language enunciation and pronunciation are highly associated with each person's social background and education.
Absolutamente esto no es cierto. Loa hispanohablanas se hablan más lento que las personas que sehablan iglés. ¡Sigue estudiar español intensivamente!
Mexicans and Argentinians Don't
Cubans Do (most spanish natives don't even understand Cubans)
Have you ever heard English-speaking girls going at it? My English is fluent and in terms of knowing clichés and idiomatic expressions' as well as proper English, I fall behind no native English speaker.
But Teenage girls!!! I get to hear them every day where I teach. I can't understand half of what they say. As far as why Spanish speakers can go fast, it's that our syllables are shorter, and don't take as long to say. It's "stressed-timed" speech (English) vs. "syllable-timed" speech (Spanish) At least that's what they taught us at the teacher factory.
The Cubans do have some weird speech patterns though, you will hear them say things like:
Co' ta.te? ¿Cómo está usted? or En e'te momento e'toy e'cribiendo en e'pañol. I could go on and on but you get the idea.
I always have to ask a Spanish speaker to "habla más despacio por favor", but I would guess that is because I am not used to hearing spoken Spanish that much any more. I am even told that I speak too fast which surprises me because I think that I speak pretty slowly as I am with elderly people all day and have to repeat what I say very slowly and loudly. I also take into account when I speak with an English learner how fast I am speaking and try to slow down a bit.
I must say that I do find Spanish on television much too fast to understand.
Hopefully, someday the listening skills will come.
They don't speak any faster than English speakers in general. The problem is a lack of familiartity with sufficient vocabulary to break the stream of sounds (syllables) into coherent words. With listening experience and growth of vocabulary someone you thought talked fast a year ago will now sound perfectly normal.
We are used to hearing words and all of a sudden we recognize very few if any words, just a stream of sounds so it seems fast because our mind is busy searching for words and quickly falls behind. Then we panic and blame the speaker.
It is dangerous to generalise about languages and speech patterns , but mate there
is no way you would understand me when I am in full flight and in my stride .
We are all different , and that is the beauty of language. 
Or its just that we English people talk slow.....don't blame me, blame Einstein's theory on relativity.
I'd like to stuff a rag in some English speakers' mouths. Ever listened to financial analysts on TV? Drives me nuts. I barely understand them and I'm a native speaker, so I know how difficult this is for non-natives.
There are Motor Mouths in every group. You can't slow them down. They're on caffeine or worse.
First, to answer your question 'why':
I once read about a research that concluded that, whilst some languages use more syllables to express a certain idea, ALL languages use about the same amount of time to express that idea.. as a result: in some languages, natives use a higher syllables per minute density. On average, I don't think Spanish has a particularly higher density than English, though.
(On a side note: I've noticed Castillians to be more keen on talking (in particular telling stories)(so much even, that interrupting one another isn't considered nearly as rude as it is here) than the average North-American or European, and it's possible they at times speak faster because they don't want to give others the opportunity to interrupt, or just so they can talk more. )
What you're experiencing is probably due to a lower proficiency in Spanish than English which makes it more difficult to keep up(or maybe it's the other way around and because your English speaking partners are aware of that, they decide to speak more slowly for you), different speed of speech between the people you speak English and Spanish with (due to personality) or the situations in which you use Spanish respectively English (at a relaxed family dinner, a discussion with academics trying to prove how smart they are etc.).
A factor specific to Spanish that may very well play a role, is that they don't pause between their words as much as speakers of English do. This makes Spanish sound more sing-songy (and beautiful, in my opinion) and I certainly recommend you to learn to do this if you really want to sound like a native. The downside of this, is that it makes the language harder to understand for non-native speakers.
Talkingasifmymentalspacebarwerebrokeninenglish wouldn't be as hard to understand for you (though you may just have read 'gas', 'brokenin' etc.) comosiloicieraenespañolporquenoestulenguamaternasinotra (did you even try read all of that? if you did it's very likely you read 'silo'(??), cierta(without 't'?), oest-(not 'e' but 'u'?) etc.) The difficulty isn't only in lack of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, but also in not being as used to spoken language as I suppose you are to the written variant, as well as knowing which words to expect (I bet you half knew I was going to say 'well as' after saying 'as' in that context!) and pronunciation rules that make things difficult: it'd be easier to tell 'he ido' (have gone) apart from 'e idioma' (and language) if the 'h' were pronounced and the 'e' and 'i' wouldn't be pronounced as a diftongo, but that's the case and we'll just have to learn to deal with it.
So to answer you question: "how the heck do they do that?".. this is their secret )
- Twice the same vowel in a row is pronounced as 1: for example, at the end of the spacebar-less Spanish clause above: sino otra --> sinotra (and can therefore be understood as 'sin otra', cause some confusion and cost you some more time to understand the sentence!)(also, to skip the pause and one of the sounds = speaking faster!)
- Two different vowels in a row are pronounced as a diftongo: for example: u otra --> uotra, se lo dio a ellos --> aéllos, and in cases of rapid speech: dióaéllos
- A vowel after a consonant. Spanish likes the sound order CV for syllables most, and will try to combine them as if they were within 1 and the same syllable: for example: en el agua --> e-ne-la-gua.
Lastly, some words are shortened in day-to-day speech (because everyone's lazy, including natives of Spanish ) such as:
para-->pa, película-->pelí, el/la profesor-->el/la profe, la televisión-->la tele, la bicicleta-->la bici, la información-->la info, la película porno/la pornografía-->el porno, el autobús--> el bus, el bolígrafo--> el boli, la universidad-->la uni, el colegio-->el cole.
When you start talking like this, people will wonder if you're a native. I hope this helps. 
In general, if you want to speak a language faster, practise, practise and more practise is key. This will train your movable speech organs(lips, tongue, uvula..) to produce Spanish sounds in their natural context. If you can't chat with natives, I suggest singing along with Spanish songs. I currently have these on: lista de canciones disney y no disney en castellano
