I tend to agree with most of her choices based on my own impressions of the way people speak in these cities and regions. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Andalucia included.
I think the list is quite accurate and there are no surprises in there in my experience. I expect Colombia to be on there and the same holds true for Peru and Spain. What makes the list even more credible is the fact that the writer gave specific cities because as we know the language varies greatly within the same country. Using Colombia as an example people from the coast do not sound like people from Medellín and people from Medellín do sound like those from Bogotá and so on but even with the many accents all are identifiably Colombian. The Venezuelan accent is very similar to the Colombian and at times indistinguishable. In my experience, I have had to narrow it down to intonation, cadence and vocabulary. However, one thing I have noted, I have never thought a Colombian was a Venezuelan but the other way around yes. I got it now after many years of hearing both accents.
It is interesting how Ecuador passes under the radar but from what I have heard from speakers of the larger cities, Guayaquil and Quito it is absolutely clear (neutral) sounding Spanish but notably South American from the sentence structure, forms of address and politeness in their speech. Many years ago (the job I had at the time) on my lunch break, I would read the dictionary. It was one of those easy to ready ones, good size font, colourful, unilingual Spanish dictionary with great explanations of words and usage. I went to a pasta place on a regular basis for lunch and I had the dictionary on the tray and the lady that served me before she asked me what I would like to order she saw the dictionary saw that it was a Spanish dictionary and right away she said
español, qué bien. De hoy en adelante voy a hablarte en español. Soy de Ecuador. From that day on, every time I went I got full service in Spanish and for me it was great to hear her speak because I had not heard much of the Ecuadorian accent prior to that. Bottom line is I was glad to see Guayaquil on the list.
Spanish being the second most spoken language in the world today is so important in my opinion. English is a
lingua franca and if you speak Spanish and one of the key European languages such as German or French you are in good shape. I am not sold on the learn Mandarin mantra that started about two decades ago. It is a question of numbers (population) but I think English and Spanish are more worthy to learn but to each his own in terms of choice of one of the top ten languages.
-MP.
qpasa.com
