They laughed. Apparently picking up Spanish from your Spaniard friend has some downsides.

As in South American backpackers find it funny/amusing this drunk Chinese guy in an Australian pub used the Castellano equivalent of “y’all” in a sentence.

angery

They were ultimately nice about it, much better than the time my (English speaking) Canadian coworker tried to speak to some Parisians in school level Québécois and they scoffed and continued in English.

  • redtea
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    10 months ago

    I’ve always wondered how people take that kind of thing. I’ve not had anyone to practice my Spanish with yet. I can’t think the same thing would happen with English. If someone spoke British English to me as a second language, I would just be impressed and let the conversation going without mentioning that we don’t quite say this or that in the same way here. Unless they ask; I’ve had some fun nights with with international friends, speaking about different ways to say things in different places.

    The Parisians are parody of the delightful end of Lingua Franca. When they can’t turn on their reactors for lack of uranium, they’ll wonder where their influence went.

    • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      10 months ago

      A lot of people from Latin America will be used to speaking with people from all over Latin America, which means different vocabulary and accents, even the “vos” person used in countries like Argentina, etc. But nowhere in LatAm is vosotros used, and interactions with actual Spaniards are rare, so it may be a really novel thing. This just from my own experience in Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, I have friends and acquaintances from all over south and Central America, people from Chile get given a lot of shit for their Spanish. But in all my interactions I’ve never heard somebody actually using vosotros except for in movies from Spain.

      • FloridaBoi [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        10 months ago

        I think there’s even differences within Spain such that “vosotros sois” isn’t used by all Spaniards. Ultimately, “ustedes son” also had to come from somewhere in Spain to eventually become dominant in latam

        • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          Well, the way it was explained was “vosotros sois” is casual and “ustedes son” is more respectful. Like addressing your acquaintances or friends vs addressing your bosses.

          • FloridaBoi [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            10 months ago

            Voseo is a weird subject and so is the use of vosotros. In Peru where I’m from, 2nd person plural is only ustedes for both formal and informal but 2nd person singular, tu is informal and usted is formal. Other countries and regions have what you’re saying plus a 3rd level of further familiarity.

            To my ears, saying “vosotros sois” comes off like reading scripture or arcane royal decrees. I immediately thought of Pan’s Labyrinth where the faun speaks like that and the human characters mostly do not.

            • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              10 months ago

              Today, the informal second-person plural pronoun vosotros is widely used by Spaniards except in some southwestern regions and in most of the Canary Islands, where its use is rare.

              Yeah damn I wish someone told me that 72 hours ago

    • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      10 months ago

      It’s also fairly casual, it’s the informal form of ustedes, which LatAm doesn’t even have anymore.

      So it’d be more like if you ran into someone who not only was using British English, but specifically spoke Cockney and used the phrase “apples and pears” to refer to stairs completely unironically, on the complete other side of the planet.

      I can kinda see how that would be funny.