Canarian Spanish?
Does anyone know the main differences between the spanish spoken in Spain and the spanish spoken in the Canary Islands? I'm travelling there soon and I want to make sure that I have a basic grasp of the dialect.
2 Answers
I spend a lot of time in the Canary Islands every year for the past five years. My level of Castillian Spanish is Intermediate and therefore not fluent by any means. But I get by in most situations, and because I have a home there have to deal with things out of the normal range of tourist Spanish (dos cervezas por favor etc) with officials at the town hall, banks, car mechanics, tradesmen etc. It is not the fact that the locals speak a slightly different style of Spanish, but they speak SOoooo fast. Much faster than anything I have come up against on the Spanish mainland. Most fairly well educated locals, are very understanding and of course they can also speak good pure Spanish if they are so inclined. So I have not found it an obstacle in the main.They do have some vocabulary which is particular to the Canaries but that becomes obvious after some time spent there.
If this Wikipedia page is correct it mostly resembles Latin American Spanish.
