Talk:Spanish dialects and varieties

Geographical dialectology/geolects

Would there be any interest in dividing regions into broad zones like the zona castellana, zona alteña, and zona bajeña with descriptions of linguistic variance?-Flaquito (talk) 04:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean reorganizing the data to fit into regions or do you mean adding a section describing the regions of dialect groups? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking reorganizing the data to fit into the three main groups and then subdividing each group for the various regionalisms. There seems to be a lot of literature that supports such broad categorization.-Flaquito (talk) 04:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Distinción vs. seseo/ceceo incorrectness

On the article, it says that Andalusians were the first to go to the Americas and influenced the sound of "z" and "c before e and i" , but, in fact, Old Spanish was still spoken then, and the sounds for z was /ds/ and c before i and e was /ts/, and /θ/ was not a sound yet. Shouldn't this be fixed? ₭øμt̪ũ 02:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

According to our article on ceceo, the dialectal divide between what is now Castilian and what is now Andalusian existed even in 15th century Spanish where they differed in the place of articulation for dental affricates. The /s/ pronunciation of z and soft c has its roots in this difference, so that in itself doesn't rule out the statement. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

"Dialects"

Ok, I'm not going to start an edit war for this article, but many changes I made recently have been reverted. In the interest of harmony, I won't re-edit the piece, but I have to say that the tone of the article is completely misleading. The language properly called Spanish may have many regional variations in accent, and variations in local words for everyday things, as all languages do, but there are no "dialects" of the sort implied by this article. What the hell does it mean to say "there is a gap" between the Spanish in Spain and that in Latin America? As a native Spanish speaker from Puerto Rico who has traveled extensively in Latin America AND Spain, I can tell you it's the same freaking language! I have no trouble whatsoever conversing in Spain (or anywhere else Spanish is spoken). The Spaniards may at times sound quaint to me, with their "ceseo" and occasional use of the "vos" forms, but those TRIVIAL differences not only do not impede comprehension, they are forms of speech well known in all Spanish-speaking countries, and occasionally, if even for fun, used just about anywhere you go in Spanish society. The "vos" constructions were taught in my grammar school classes in Spanish grammar as just another variety in the richness of the language. It was noted by the teachers that it is not in common use in Puerto Rico, and more used in other countries, but it is part of the Spanish language and known by all. Similarly the "ceseo" doesn't make a dialect, and in fact, is occasionally used in Puerto Rico for emphasis or in a jocular vein when "putting on airs."

This article implies that the Spanish language is replete with "dialects" characterized by mutually incomprehensible gibberish which will make a person from Uruguay, for example, unintelligible to someone from Spain. No mention is made of the Real Academia. Articles like this are the genesis of the misunderstanding non-Spanish speakers have about this language. I live in the "upper 48" United States, and I've had people actually argue with me, trying to tell me that I can't be understood, nor can I understand, people from Spain or Cuba. It's arrant, ignorant nonsense. Wikipedia would be an excellent forum to address these issues of misunderstanding; instead, it's stoking the fires of ignorance.74.239.2.104 (talk) 16:15, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

More on "Dialects"

To amplify on my above post, I notice that the article on "English Dialects" seems to imply that English speakers enjoy a mutual comprehension not present in other languages, and that the varieties of English differ only slightly. As a fluent English speaker who has traveled extensively in England and Scotland, as well as the United States and Canada, I can attest to the misleading nature of that contention. I am a native Spanish speaker, born and raised in Puerto Rico. I know from experience that the difference between Spanish as spoken in Puerto Rico and Spanish spoken in any other Caribbean or South American country, or in Spain, is minimal. I have traveled also extensively in Central and South America, and have been in Spain numerous times. The language is virtually identical, the differences are trivial and in no way impede comprehension. However, if you travel throughout England, you will be stupefied by the difference in the spoken English language just within that country. There is no problem for a person educated in standard American English understanding English spoken with the recieved pronunciation of, for example "BBC English." You can converse just about anywhere in London, as long as it's a "nice" area. Just try, though, to speak to someone with a Cockney accent. It's another freakin' tongue! Seriously, it's well nigh incomprehensible. In Scotland, once again, as long as you are in Edinburgh or Glasgow you can get along famously, but head out to the country, and you almost need an interpreter (or a Scot with monumental patience). The variability between those spoken English dialects (inside one country!)is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more pronounced, and impede comprehension much more, than any variety of Spanish spoken throughout the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.239.2.104 (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Provide documentation for the anecdotal evidence, and you are welcomed to make changes.---Flaquito (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

"Documentation?"

My contentions, which are not "anecdotes," are provided on the basis of my personal experience with the language. My experience with the language, which I share with all Spanish speakers, is in itself a form of documentation, since the degree of comprehension between variations in a language can only be ascertained by the assertions of those who speak the language. I understand that an entry in an encyclopedia article requires documentation of purported facts, but we are not talking of stating the molecular weight of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or the population of Mukden, Manchuria, that is, independent quantifiable entities. We are rather discussing how well a Spanish speaker from one particular region or country can understand a Spanish speaker from another region. There is no quantification of this. Linguistic analyses of phonemes, glottal stops, bi-labial fricatives and the like do not help clarify that issue. Only the experience of native speakers does. I am a native speaker and experience in this is, or should be, a valuable input into this subject.74.239.2.104 (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Vowel reduction

With regard to the vowel reduction of central Mexico, I have deleted the statements that attempted to attribute it to English influence, mainly for two reasons: (1) The Mexican vowel reduction that I have witnessed and read about in linguistic literature involves mainly the loss of voicing (vocal cord vibration), while English vowel reduction involves neutralization of height, roundness, etc. in schwa; they are phonetically different. The Mexican reduction is more like that of Japanese than of English (see the section "Devoicing" in Japanese phonology). (2) Mexican vowel reduction is usually associated with "central" Mexico; it is not a particularly U.S. border phenomenon. Kotabatubara (talk) 03:22, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Evolution

I deleted the brief section "Evolution" for the following reasons: (1) "Evolution" is a broad term; we assume all dialectal differences came about through evolution. (2) The section seemed to be only about the weakening of syllable codas, with just an allusion to /l/ and /r/ and a not-very-specific statement about the debuccalization of coda /s/. Debuccalization is treated fully elsewhere in the article, making this section redundant. (3) The relative instability of syllable codas compared to onsets is not unique to Spanish; in fact, it could be seen as one of those truisms that are sometimes called "boring universals" in linguistics. It was not a bold discovery by Malmberg. By the way, there are two Bertil Malmbergs. The linguist Bertil Malmberg (1913-1994) is found only in the Swedish Wikipedia; there is no Wikipedia article about him in English. Meanwhile the poet and actor (1889-1958) by the same name appears both in English and in Swedish. Kotabatubara (talk) 04:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

El año pasado he viajado a España

There seems to be a misunderstanding abot the sentence El año pasado he viajado a España. This sentence is basicly ungrammatical for most Spanish speakers, both in America and in Spain. As other ungrammatical expressions, though, it cannot be ruled out some sporadic use by natives, under certain psychological circumstances. El año pasado viajé a X is the sentence that you would expect from any illiterate person in Spain. Also, I don't like Bello's mention, as he's been pushing up daisies for some 150 years, after all. Jotamar (talk) 18:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I accept the "blame" for citing Bello, and I agree a fresher source would be preferable. What's the modern counterpart, prescriptive, for the Americas? I googled "el año pasado he" and got 317,000 hits. Granted, about half of the first 20 are false positives (with punctuation or other clausal boundary before "he"), but there remain many instances of the compound tense with "el año pasado". I would yield to the expertise of others on this whole verb-tense question, if it's based on good data. Kotabatubara (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

"...a (los) Estados Unidos"

There's certainly nothing wrong with using the article in "a los Estados Unidos", but that article is quickly withering away in usage, if you believe the Google Books Ngram Viewer. The no-article version surged ahead in the 1990s. Kotabatubara (talk) 17:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)