i'll never dance with a hairy bear (beemo) wrote in linguaphiles,
2012-09-19 11:57:00

spanish questions

i'm starting to learn spanish on my own and i have a couple of questions. (btw i'm canadian and anglophone, and i speak quebec french as a second language.)

1. i can't roll my R's. but i found out that in some dialects people don't roll their R's. what a recognizable/natural sound i can make instead? if you have youtube links or something, i'd be forever grateful. i haven't been able to find this stuff on google.

2. do most spanish speakers understand most dialects? is there a standard? do i need to be considering dialect when i pick out a grammar book?

3. for people who know french and spanish, do you have trouble keeping them straight?
Tags: dialects, french, spanish
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  • 23 comments

helenadax

September 19 2012, 16:18:55 UTC 8 months ago Edited:  September 19 2012, 16:19:27 UTC

I'm from Spain. I didn't know in some dialects people don't roll their R's. Are you sure about that?

And, well, yeah, of course there's a standard. Grammar rules in American Spanish and Castillian Spanish are mostly the same. The main difference can be found in the accent and some words. By example, in my country is totally okay to use the verb "coger", since it means "pick up" or "take", but it's a rude word in most Latin countries, where it means "fuck". And most Americans speak with a "seseo"; in Spain, that only happens in some parts of the country.

I'd say Spanish works like English, French... You speak English, but I guess it isn't the same English that is spoken in New York, New Orleans, London, Glasgow or Sidney.

carerica

September 19 2012, 16:52:39 UTC 8 months ago Edited:  September 19 2012, 16:58:20 UTC

Yep, for example in northern parts of Argentina the rr isn't rolled as much as pushed.

To be more exact, Wikipedia explains this accent as español andino norteño which covers the Andean region from southern Colombia to northern Argentina and gives the IPA as following: "Es común la realización arrastrada o asibilada de la /rr/. Es decir se pronuncia como [řř]"

And the español andino (wider span) has the following IPA: Se asibilan las erres, en los grupos /rr/ > [řř] (sonoramente), /tr/ > y /r/ > [ř]. Esto es considerado 'culto' sólo en Ecuador y Bolivia.

beemo

September 19 2012, 17:27:09 UTC 8 months ago

according to an old post here on arabic, R's are different in argentina, costa rica, and uruguay... i dunno how accurate that is though.

french dialects don't work like english, so i'm wondering how things go in spanish. for example, in language classes for immigrants in canada, they teach canadian english and standard (parisian) french. canadian french is considered substandard. it's a good thing immigrants taking french are in quebec or they'd end up like anglos from other provinces who can't order food in quebec, lol.

helenadax

September 19 2012, 19:58:12 UTC 8 months ago

Well, I'd say it's better if you can do the "rr" sound, but it isn't that important. We know that it's a difficult sound for some people (even some Spanish people can't do it).

I really don't know what kind of Spanish is taught to inmigrants in Mexico or Argentina etc. I know that here, in Spain, they learn our Spanish. But my point is that no matter where you learn it, you'll be able to understand any Spanish-speaker person unless they're using slang or very colloquial terms.

ti_ana

September 21 2012, 01:00:03 UTC 8 months ago

As far as I know "coger" is only rude in Argentina and Mexico (maybe Uruguay as well?). Most other Latin American countries whose population I have interacted with have used it without a problem.

lobolita

September 21 2012, 03:29:41 UTC 8 months ago

In Chile as well.

vega_jd

September 23 2012, 02:00:47 UTC 8 months ago

It's rude in Venezuela as well.

Deleted comment

helenadax

September 19 2012, 16:34:29 UTC 8 months ago

Catalan, Basque, Galician and Asturian aren't dialects, they are languages on their own.

muckefuck

September 19 2012, 16:48:34 UTC 8 months ago

Every Spanish-speaking country has its own dialects of castellano. I speak Peninsular Spanish, and sometimes people here (overwhelmingly of Latin American origin) don't understand what I mean.

archaicos

September 20 2012, 22:51:24 UTC 8 months ago

I read it at first as Pimsleur Spanish. :)

muckefuck

September 21 2012, 14:26:58 UTC 8 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is the Spanish Pimsleur teaches.

emofordino

September 19 2012, 16:52:47 UTC 8 months ago

I don't speak French or Italian fluently (although I know quite a bit of vocabulary in both languages) but I do speak Spanish and (Brazilian) Portuguese, and I have quite the same problem with those that you do with mixing up Spanish and Italian, since all three of them are pretty similar!

Also, in regards to the tongue-rolling, I can definitely vouch for your advice to keep practicing! It wasn't until I was forcing myself to study for several hours every day for several months (after years of taking Spanish classes casually) that I could finally roll my R's in Spanish. (I'm American, and American English is my native language.) Keep practicing, OP! Rolling R's is really tough for a lot of people, but you'll get it eventually with practice! :)

mintyfreshsocks

September 19 2012, 16:48:55 UTC 8 months ago

1. If I remember my Spanish socioling correctly, all the major dialects trill the [r]. That being said, the ability to trill [r] is partially environmental (i.e. did you learn it when you were little) and partially genetic (i.e., some people's tongues may not move that way). There are some native Spanish speakers who simply cannot do it.

There's definitely methods you can use to learn how to roll an [r] (I'll post a wikihow link in a followup), and I definitely know many people who've taught themselves how. If you find that your tongue just won't cooperate, though, I think the usual strategy is either to ignore the distinction completely, or to produce a guttural [r] instead, like in French. I often do the last, as I am bollocks at trilling [r].

beemo

September 19 2012, 17:52:54 UTC 8 months ago

and people are okay with your uvular R's??

i'm tongue-tied and had it corrected in my teens, and i'm too aware of my mouth, i guess. i can't get my tongue to relax properly.

wasureneba

September 20 2012, 21:01:34 UTC 8 months ago

From what I've been told, it sounds like a bit of an accent, but it's perfectly understandable.

I don't know what's up with my being unable to do trilled alveolar Rs. I also can't whistle or roll my tongue. :(

mintyfreshsocks

September 19 2012, 16:49:22 UTC 8 months ago

Here's the Wikihow link.

barush

September 19 2012, 16:54:06 UTC 8 months ago

I'm learning both French and Spanish and can't say I mix them up. My Spanish is way better than my French, but it only helps. Some words are similar enough that it helps me remember them, but not so much that I'd confuse them.

muckefuck

September 19 2012, 17:09:29 UTC 8 months ago

1. If you're a native Anglophone, you may be rolling your r's without knowing it. Or rather, you might be tapping them. With some work, you should be able to extend this tap into a trill.

If not, you could substitute an uvular trill such is found in (Standard) French. This is a feature of some Caribbean varieties and although it's marked and may be stigmatised in some quarters, it would at least allow you to distinguish r and rr clearly.

2. Most educated speakers will understand each other. You may run into some trouble with more marginalised populations (e.g. rural, poorer, illiterate) and you will definitely come across slang and colloquialisms that wouldn't be understand much outside their countries of origin. But it's always possible to communicate provided there is goodwill on both sides.

Practically speaking, each country has a national standard, although the differences are not great. In North America, the most commonly taught variety is sort of a Latin American koiné (i.e. seseante, yeísta, limited use of the perfect, no coger, etc.) though Standard Peninsular Spanish is taught as well, especially by the Instituto Cervantes. Go with whatever you have the best resources for.

3. For the most part, no I don't. However, I did once return from a trip to Montreal and find myself saying "Ouais!" instead of "¡Sí!" which was awkward because ouais sounds like güey, a common insult in Mexican Spanish.

beemo

September 19 2012, 18:06:22 UTC 8 months ago

i tap t and d, but i was tongue-tied until i was about 15 and i may not be moving my tongue the same way most people do. people have been trying to get me to do this for 20 years and i can't.

how do i distinguish r and rr with a uvular trill? i'm thinking i just say "peto" for "pero" and trill for "perro" (no idea if perro is a word, but you get my point)

muckefuck

September 19 2012, 18:18:19 UTC 8 months ago

Perro is a word; it means "dog".

The tricky part will be learning not to flap t in a word like peto (which means "bib", btw). You may have to think of it as "pet-to" for a while until you train your tongue.

If all else fails, trill rr and use an English r for r. It will sound odd, but everyone will understand you. I hear native English-speakers (usually foremen or restaurant managers) communicate successfully with Spanish-speakers despite using a pronunciation that makes no concessions whatever to actual Spanish phonetics.

tortipede

September 22 2012, 19:53:32 UTC 8 months ago

Late joining in on this, but we have a new baby in the house, and I seem to be getting round to doing everything a bit later than I mean to...

Actually, the new baby is relevant: even a comparatively minor, difficult-to-diagnose, tongue-tie can interfere seriously with breastfeeding, and as we've been having some feeding issues, my partner's been reading up on tongue-tie. It turns out that I may have a minor, undiagnosed and uncorrected tongue-tie myself. I'm also a native (UK) English speaker, and I can't do Spanish 'rr'.

Basically, I can do the tapped 'r' but for the life of me I've never been able to turn it into a sustained trill, although I have tried. But when I was learning Catalan I complained to my tutor that I was unable to distinguish between -r- and -rr-, and he said that I was actually doing it accurately enough. I know I'm not doing a proper trill, so I've tried to figure out what I am doing. I think I'm managing to do some sort of double tap — I'm kind of flipping my tongue-tip forwards past the alveolar ridge behind the teeth (tap 1) & then making a second contact with (I think) the flat blade of my tongue just behind the tip, also against the alveolar ridge (with the tongue tip arriving more-or-less as far as the back of the teeth).

So: point #1 — it ain't right, but it's good enough. It works: keep experimenting, even if you know you can't get it right.

Point #2: the same tutor reckoned that -rr- was the last phoneme learnt by native Spanish- (& Catalan-)speaking children, and the first one lost by drunk adults. Apparently "No estic (estoy) bodatxo (bodacho)" is the same kind of self-negating speech-act as "I'm not pished."

beemo

September 22 2012, 20:35:43 UTC 8 months ago

ty for the detail!

lareinemisere

September 19 2012, 21:20:16 UTC 8 months ago

>3. for people who know french and spanish, do you have trouble keeping them straight?

My mother tongue is English, and for foreign langaguges I learned French first and Spanish second (and much later). I don't recall having any trouble with mixing them up - if anything, my French supported my Spanish pretty well, and I remember correctly guessing the word 'biblioteca' in a test, based on the French, when the teacher had forgotten that he hadn't actually taught us the Spanish for 'library'.

However, I did find that when I then (even later, as an adult) started learing German I kept on wanting to use Spanish words. I came to the conclusion that my brain had filed all my Spanish and my brand-new German as 'words which are used when it's not English or French which is needed', having not yet twigged that the new acquisitions belonged in a new and entirely separate category. ISTR that my linguistics module at university talked about a 'language acquisition device' which atrophies some time in one's teens, so this may be why...