What's the difference between Spanish Spanish and South American Spanish?

Question

Is it just minor differences, like between American and British English? Can you tell which country somebody is from by the accent?

Answer 1

There can be quite some differences between King's Spanish and the many variations spoken throughout South America.

Apart from accent and spelling, some words have different meanings, objects have different names. Yes one can tell more or less by how clearly a person speaks their spanish as to which part of South America a person has come. Argentines, Peruvians, Columbians, Chileans; they all have a distinctive entonation and variations in the meaning of their words.

As a simple example, a Carro in Spain is a cart, as drawn by a horse or a donkey. In South America it is a car.

Hop into http://www.rae.es/ and look around (sadly, no english version.) The Diccionario Panhispanico de Dudas covers exactly that region, the crossover between different variations of the basic Spanish.

The Real Academia Española, the body that govern the Spanish language in Spain have ties with their correspondents in other spanish speaking nations.

According to their site, the 2001 edition of the Official Dictionary, the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary in Great Britain contains a significant increase in the usage of words from the Americas and the Philippines:

12,122 articles that have one or more usages from those regions (the previous edition had 6,141.)

18,749 usages have one or more marks corresponding to America and the Philippines. (The previous edition had 8,120.)

There are 28,171 marks corresponding to the aforementioned zones. (The previous edition contained 12,494.)

As you can see from these numbers, the original Spanish language is actually being increased as it accepts the words brought back home by the descendants of those spaniards that colonized the Americas so long ago. Stronger trade ties have a lot to do with that, but mostly it comes from the immense influx of immigrants coming "back" from the Americas to Spain. Some through immigration laws that recognize descendants of recent emigrants as citizens with a right to Spanish nationality and greater numbers of immigrants that simply hop on a plane and turn up, blending in and living and working illegally, below the radar. Recent changes in the immigration laws have allowed them to legalize their situation and all of a sudden the Social Security system has received an incredible boost in income, with every probability of helping to solve the age bubble crisis caused by an aging working population.

Answer 2

I don´t want to criticize, but most of the answers have something wrong.

To start with the spanish in South America has had less influence than the spanish in spain which uses many words from other countries like french and english plus. This is accepted by the same spaniards because they are surrounded by countries with another languages plus all the other languages inside their own country, which are compulsory at school.
In South America apart from Brazil all the countries speak spanish, with different accents yes, and with different slangs yes, but spanish.
Also it is very easy to distinguish between the accents when you talk to people from different countries and of course the spanish accent jumps out.

Answer 3

For sure I can't tell in written format. I still can't hear it, but my Ecuadorian friends tell me there is a huge difference between the Spanish spoken in Cuenca and what is spoken in Gualeceo, a 30 minute drive from Cuenca. Written, the differences melt away. I have heard similar about one side of Mexico City to the other side of Mexico City. Multiplied by all of Spanish speaking America, that is ALLOT of dialects for a language with supposedly perfect phonetics. Personally, as a long-time second language speaker, I can hear allot of the dialects, such as Mexican, Cuban, Ecuadorian, Argentinian, Bolivian, etc., but the sub-dialects elude me. Spain, herself, currently has something like 5 national languages. What little I have heard of the Spain dialect (excluding television) seems to get confused within that internal confusion.

Answer 4

In Spain, Castiallian Spanish is the dominant language, but there are several other dialects other than Castiallian spoken there.

In South America, all the Spanish spoken is descended from Castiallian Spanish of the 15th century with influence from other languages from other countries and Native American tribes. This is similar to U.S. English which is descended from 16th century English, with influence from other languages from all over the world.

Answer 5

The accent is very different from one country to another just like Americans an British. The words we use when we speak are different too.

Answer 6

People can understand each other pretty easily.

In Spain they pronounce z, ci- and ce- like the "th" in three - while s is always pronounced like "s." (This is called "ceceo")

Next - they use "vosotros" - the plural form of "tu."

Other than that - it is mostly just a few word preferences....
In Spain you say "ordenador" in Latin Amer. it's "computadora."

In general, you can also tell where someone's from ppretty easily.... people from the Carribean are hard to understand because they drop their s's.... Eg, in Cuba they say "como ta tu" for "como estas (tu)".

Intonation is a big clue (people from Northern Mexico have the ugliest intonation --- they overdo the differnce between high and low).

Educated people tend towards a more international Spanish (just like English - understanding a farmer from Mississippi is a lot harder than understanding a professor there).

Lastly --- Argentinian Spanish is kind of "earthy" and muted -- it's hard to understand the first time you hear it, I think. They use a special pronoun "vos" instead of tu. Tú hablas -- vos hablás.

Answer 7

South American Spanish is not as pure as original Spanish. It has lots of words of other local Indian languages and Portugess too.

Answer 8

The accents are a little different and it's mostly the slang thats different, as with all spanish speaking countrie. Puerto Rican Spanish, mexican spanish-they all use different slang. Except Brazil-they speak portugese.

Answer 9

Estoy muy apasionada de este mundo y todos mis amigos han confiado en mí a la hora de comprar un ordenador, yo siempre les he comprado de sitios web porque tienen la mejor oferta al mejor precio, pero, el ultimo ordenador que he comprado ha sido uno de juguete para mi hija, y como siempre he acertado, tiene la dimensión perfecta para ella, buenas canciones, aprende con él y imita muy bien un ordenador portátil con su ratón con todo, a ella le ha encantado muchísimo.

Answer 10

Ones got South American in front of it.