Hello Deplorable Spanish-learning Tankies.
I want to draw your attention to The Linguistics of Spanish.
If you are learning Spanish, you may find it useful to read up on the linguistics. The following link gives
"information and analysis on the following subjects:
- the pronunciation of standard European Spanish
- variation in the Spanish-speaking world
- aspects of Spanish syntax
- the history of Spanish"
This website is very useful for helping you understand the sounds of Spanish, to better understand / parse what you hear, and how to improve your accent. The section on phonemes and minimal pairs is especially helpful.
Minimal pairs will help you learn to distinguish the different sounds in Spanish. These allow you to learn what each letter sounds like when it is next to each other letter.
Once you read the theory, you can search Youtube for audio examples. You can also practice speaking the minimal pairs if you struggle with any of them, although I advise you to listen first and lots to ensure that you are practicing the correct sound. Some minimal pair examples:
paso, peso, piso, poso, puso
And:
capa, cata, caca, cava, cada, caga, caza, casa, etc
Do any of you other Spanish learners / speakers have any other useful suggestions for learning about Spanish linguistics?
Any tips on pronouncing the ‘lr’ sound in e.g. ‘alrededor’ will be welcome!
That’s useful to know :)
Quick question: would you say that there are different Spanish accents? I think there are. But I said this to someone from Spain and they said, ‘Spanish does not have accents!’ That seems incorrect to me…
Well, it depends on what you consider accents. In Spanish when we say accent we mean this: ´, á, é, í, ó, ú. Maybe they thought you were talking about this? Still, we do have, and we have that one and the dieresis: “pingüino”. If you mean different ways people talk phonetically, of course we do, it’s impossible for a language to not have one, here in Argentina alone we basically have different ways to pronounce everything in every province. In Entre Rios they pronounce the “r” as the Chinese do, in Santa Fe people generally don’t pronounce the “s” for plural words “Los perroh”, in Cordoba the prolong the first syllable of each word in a funny way, and so on and so on. Is this what you were asking?
Thank you.
I thought so.
Yes, that is what I was asking, and you have cleared it up for me.
Interesting to know there is so much variety within Argentina; I often hear that the Argentinian accent is the most unique, but maybe that depends on the region within Argentina (it also seems like a strange thing to say, but people learning languages do talk about strange things). I like the Argentinian accent(s) that I have heard so far, and contrary to what I have heard, it’s a lot easier to understand than some others.
Well, because when people say the Argentinian accent they mean the rioplatense, which is what is spoken in Buenos Aires, the capital, the rest of the interior are regarded as low level humans compared to them. Still, most of the country sounds like variants on the rioplatense, in some provinces even with zero to little difference depending on how rural the region is.
That doesn’t surprise me.
Inside Spain? Yes. Has that person ever spoken to an Andalusian?
That’s where they were from!
Maybe it was a Spanish joke and I just didn’t get it?
Edit: they were adamant, though. If this was not the driest of dry humour, they were outright refusing to accept the idea that there are different Spanish accents.
European Spanish accents are heavily influenced by the other national languages spoken in the regions. Unless this is a nationalist matter that I don’t get as a foreigner, they were fucking with you.
That’s what I thought.
The only other thing I can think of is that it was a kind of nationalist joke; like, there are no Spanish accents because if they don’t sound like me (the person from Andalucía), they’re not really speaking Spanish.