it's a very simple question

I had my last Spanish lesson today. More fiesta than learning on the last day. :nervous: We had two guests, one from Spain and one from Mexico. Of course and I've heard this before the Spaniard said they are the only ones that speak the true Spanish Language.

Lesley I finally remember to ask what the title of the book from shich we are being taught from. It's Barron's and printed in the States.

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)

do you need to ask that? Obviously Spain speaks the purest Spanish. Well, thats my opinion. Mexico is next.

2. Which country's accent do you personally prefer?

I prefer Mexico and Spain. Gosh! I have a hard time comprehending Dominicanos speaking in Spanish. Can you imagine? They speak without an S sound on some words. Do you know whats the difference? and if you ask what accent i personally prefer if it is ENGLISH Language, NO DOUBT i will pick BRITISH. Oh! God i love to hear BRITISH having a conversation. Their accent is music to my ears. Just compare Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell when they make comments in their show. such a big difference.


3. Where does the DR fall into the mix?

Well, i would say if African-American speaks english in a Hip-Hop way and so with the Dominicans in spanish. If you get what I mean. YO!

MaineGirl said:

and prolly been asked before....

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)

2. Which country's accent do you personally prefer?

3. Where does the DR fall into the mix?

Click to expand...

Well considering my first trip to the DR I knew NO spanish..literally (I though "hola" was what they say in Hawaii for Hello) :nervous:

Now I can converse, I have taught myself to write and read some spanish so that I can carry on MSN convos with Dominican ppl.

So my viewpoint is very narrow, limited and biased (since I only learned Spanish in the DR). But I will give it anyways.

1. I believe as well the the purest Spanish comes from Spain, but I do not like how it sounds compared to Dominican Spanish....which brings us to...

2. I like the sound of Dominican spanish. I have heard Columbians, Chileans & Venezuelan ppl speak spanish, and I found it very hard to udnerstand. Just like the general sound of Dominican spanish.

3. I know Dominican spanish is not "proper" spanish to many other spanish speaking countries. I met a Dominican women who lives in Canada on the airplane, and she told me how her other spanish speaking friends make fun of her Dominican style spanish when ever she "forgets herself" and "slips" into her Dominican way of speaking Spanish. So while it may be looked down upon by other Spanish speakers...I personally love how it sounds.

CNN Espanol uses Colombians and Mexicans for clarity I am told. Plus Colombianas are especially hot looking,

Well ....

1. The best? Ugh. I would hate to judge any country over another. Let's just say that in the industry - voiceovers, film, translation, interpreters, etc. COLOMBIAN Spanish is used by those in the know. While it can include words that other speakers may not use, the accent is very pure and understandable. There is not of the lispy effeminate Zeta crappolina from Spain, and none of the eating the end of the word which endears us to Carribbean Spanish, say Dominican, for example.

2. My favorite? Hmn, the Spanish spoken wherever I am visiting. (Easy out).

3. I forgot the question. I just wired my pension remains to my sanky bank express account, and the brain drain is considerable.

Back to #1 -- For those who know this already, excuse me. For those new to Spanish, here are some rough comparisons of accents between Spanish and English that I have come across in my 20 or so years of habling espanool:

Castilian/Spain -- proper British
Colombia - - Canadian English
Dominican --- Southern USA -- as in "Y'all come back nawuh, heyah?" and calling everybody honey/sweety/darling = "mi amor"
PR and Cuba fall under Dominican with all the eating of the ends of the words
BUT
the PR population tends to get busted for coining and leaning heavily on way too much Spanglish.

Argentinians use "vos", have a thick almost Germanic accent ( I wonder why!) and consider themselves to be Europeans. I've heard them compared to English speakers in India, who knows why.

That is it for now.

Well I really can tell you that I have heard all type of accents in Spanish, I have had the opportunity of I think heard them all.

MaineGirl said:

and prolly been asked before....

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)

Click to expand...

In this one I'll have to say COLOMBIA, not the one's that live on the Coast, they have a different accent is similar to the way of Dominicans, is amazing. I thing is because of the Coast life or something like it.

2. Which country's accent do you personally prefer?

Click to expand...

I prefer PARAGUAY and COLOMBIA, the people from PARAGUAY have this way of talking is not the same as ARGENTINA. I just like their accent and COLOMBIA I just love the way they talk.

3. Where does the DR fall into the mix?

Click to expand...

Can't tell you that. From my point of view every accent has it's own history. Remember that all Latin American countries belongs to Spain, so the accent from my point of view is a way of adaptation of each country to their own style of living and region.

I can say that some people find it funny and amusing the way we Domincans speak.

Certain people have told me that they like my way of speaking.

Accents in Spain vary greatly. From the Canary islands where they sound a lot like Cubans, to Andalucia where the accent is perhaps closest to certain Latin American and Caribbean Spanish accents, to Madrid where they speak with cotton wool balls in their mouths, to the nasal Catalan and Galician accents - there is no single 'Spanish' accent.

It largely depends what you are used to. I broadly agree that Colombian and most of the Andean accents tend to be easier on the ear, but my real answer would be to say that any well-spoken person from any part of the Spanish speaking world can be said to be speaking 'pure' Spanish, whether they be Dominican, Argentinian or Castillian.

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)

That's hard to say since I have heard Spanish from most countries except for three. Before I answer may I ask how do you define pure as opposed to what?

2. Which country's accent do you personally prefer?

Colombia all the way. Especially the coast and the "Valle del Cauca" region. I love the way people from Cali speak.

3. Where does the DR fall into the mix?

Read my book review which is a sticky in this forum. That should give you plenty of insight.

In general I am very open minded when it comes to accents, speech patterns etc. but I definitely have my preference which is Caribbean "sounding" Spanish especially from Panama and Colombia. I also love to hear grammatically correct Spanish- music to my ears. I speak three languages daily so I try to remain as neutral as I can- not easy.


LDG.

ESOLteacher said:

For those new to Spanish, here are some rough comparisons of accents between Spanish and English that I have come across in my 20 or so years of habling espanool:

Castilian/Spain -- proper British
Colombia - - Canadian English
Dominican --- Southern USA -- as in "Y'all come back nawuh, heyah?" and calling everybody honey/sweety/darling = "mi amor"
PR and Cuba fall under Dominican with all the eating of the ends of the words
BUT
the PR population tends to get busted for coining and leaning heavily on way too much Spanglish.

Argentinians use "vos", have a thick almost Germanic accent ( I wonder why!) and consider themselves to be Europeans. I've heard them compared to English speakers in India, who knows why.

That is it for now.

Click to expand...

I really apprecaite your comparisions! Thank you for that!
I don't have much to comapair it too since the only spanish i have ever know is what I picked up directly from the DR...which is also why I have trouble understanding other native Spanish speakers from different countries...

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)
That would be spain for sure.

2. Which country's accent do you personally prefer?
Well I am accustomed to mexicans but I think I also like chileans and Venezuelans

3. Where does the DR fall into the mix?
DR spanish is very had for me to understand they have a very different accent, as do cubans. After that I say argentinians are hard to understand.

Hummm

I like to hear people from Columbia, certainly, as well as those from the north of Argentina. However, upper class people from just about every country speak a well educated Spanish.

Upper class Dminicans do, too., JIC you don't meet too many of them....

HB

I have to put my two cents in here especially with people mentioning Mexico.

When I was in H.S. in Chicago, all they taught was Mexican Spanish.

What was even stranger, in H.S. we had an exchange program with a German H.S. were I lived for 9 months. The previous school year the students came from Germany and lived with us. Well one of the German exchange students was Spanish by birth and had lived in Spain up until the age of 10. He couldn't even communicate with our Spanish (Mexican) teacher at our H.S.!

Also being from Chicago, Mexicans are what I was around most of the time (Chicago is currently 48% hispanic, 80% of them Mexican) and now that I am learning Spanish, it is nothing like what I heard coming out of their mouths.

One other note I was told by my linguistics teacher is that Mexican Spanish is so off because of the native Indians and the fact that their language was incorporated into Mexican Spanish.

So I am very perplexed by people listing Mexican as being close to true Spanish, especially since I know that a Spaniard and a Mexican Spanish teacher couldn't even communicate!

On the DR side of things, where I started learning Spanish, the one big difference I hear now with other Hispanics talking is they all talk so slow. After listening to Dominicans talk, it seems that everyone else is talking at half speed.

Panama

MaineGirl said:

1. Which Spanish speaking country speaks the purest Spanish in your opinion? ("best" being too subjective)

Click to expand...

Panama!

helpmann said:

Panama!

Click to expand...

Peru! Slow and clear for my still learning ears.

I have to take issue with some of these answers. You can't just name a country, with the range of accents that exist in each one.

Take the DR, a small country as far as the Spanish-speaking world goes, and yet you have several distinctive accents according to region, and cutting across these you have accents according to the speaker's status/education.

There is a world of difference between a sure?o campesino's accent, and an educated cibae?o, just to take two examples.

Same goes for any of the other countries mentioned. Several people have said 'Spain'. An educated Dominican speaks much 'purer' Spanish than an uneducated person from any part of Spain (in my case, Malaga and Cadiz provinces).

We had a similar discussion in 'El Espa?ol de Santo Domingo' a while back.

I might be wrong ( that's happened once but I think people are just naming the country which they seem to understand best. Which of course is a personal thing.

1. No answer. Always subjective. I've heard clearly "impure" Spanish spoken in Valladolid and beautiful fusions in Miami.

2. Speaking of fusions, I like all accents in Spanish. Even more, the people who seem to have their individual accents, adages, and prosody, usually a mix of two or more dialects. I'm biased to my native Caribbean rythms, but I've met people with very unusual, but correct and pleasant accents in people with mixed cultures or travels, e.g. Porte?o (Buenos Aires)-Peruvian (Lima), Colombia (Cauca)- Costa Rica (San Jos?), Gallego (Spain)-Cuban (Oriente), Ecuador (Quito)-Mexico (D.F.) etc..even more fun when one of the parents might be from Italy or Brazil, or if the person grew up in a country where other romance languages are spoken but Spanish was spoken at home, or viceversa. Spanish is both universal and individual, at the same time.

3. Dominican Spanish can be as good or as bad as each individual Dominican.

- Tordok

Don Tomas said:

I have to put my two cents in here especially with people mentioning Mexico.

When I was in H.S. in Chicago, all they taught was Mexican Spanish.

What was even stranger, in H.S. we had an exchange program with a German H.S. were I lived for 9 months. The previous school year the students came from Germany and lived with us. Well one of the German exchange students was Spanish by birth and had lived in Spain up until the age of 10. He couldn't even communicate with our Spanish (Mexican) teacher at our H.S.!

Also being from Chicago, Mexicans are what I was around most of the time (Chicago is currently 48% hispanic, 80% of them Mexican) and now that I am learning Spanish, it is nothing like what I heard coming out of their mouths.

One other note I was told by my linguistics teacher is that Mexican Spanish is so off because of the native Indians and the fact that their language was incorporated into Mexican Spanish.

So I am very perplexed by people listing Mexican as being close to true Spanish, especially since I know that a Spaniard and a Mexican Spanish teacher couldn't even communicate!

On the DR side of things, where I started learning Spanish, the one big difference I hear now with other Hispanics talking is they all talk so slow. After listening to Dominicans talk, it seems that everyone else is talking at half speed.

Click to expand...

Mexican spanish is not pure that is for sure and it has the most variations and the most slang out of all of the countries. You can say one thing in one part of the country and in another part of the country they say the same thing but completely different. EXAMPLE IN MEXICO D.F they say "No mames" in VERACRUZ they say "No manches" they mean the same thing but are two entirely different words.