Hi, first a thank you for the Spanish course. I joined initially to learn welsh because I found I seemed to have an ear for it, as opposed to Irish or French that my brain had problems with. I enjoy it and will continue with the 6 minutes a day sessions (many thanks for that too!), I know I’ll never really have a chance to use it though.
I’m from the US and in a state (Rhode Island) where there’s a lot of Spanish spoken, and Spanish language radio and tv so exposure is easy.
My question is do you know of any particular differences between the Spanish taught here and that from other areas? I’d say the majority of Spanish speakers here are either from the Dominican Republic or Guatemala.
I know I’m no where near it making a difference, in spite of 4 years of high school spanish, but if there are any general things anyone knows about I’d be grateful for a heads up.
Thanks again for these wonderful courses. For the first time I’m actually confident I can actually be able to speak and understand spanish. And welsh too just because it’s fun.
I originally learnt Spanish living in a multicultural community in Australia surrounded by people from various parts of Central and South America. My personal observation was that the people from Central America were easier to understand than some of the others, e.g. Chileans and Argentinians, though I became used to them as well. The main differences were vocabulary, words for everyday things, and pronunciation, with some groups seeming not to pronounce ‘s’ at all, and grammatical when some use vos as the familiar ‘you’ instead of the more standard tu.
Now I live in the Basque Country, in northern Spain, where the Spanish is a little different again. They pronounce the ‘z’ and ‘c’ as a sort of lisped ‘th’ and have some different words for things. One example is ‘car’ which is coche here, but was carro to friends from Colombia, and a Venezuelan I know here always says auto.
The Spanish you learn with ‘SSi’ is about as ‘general’ as you can get, not strongly one dialect or another, and likely to be understood by Spanish speakers from everywhere. The male speaker is from Argentina, so you do get a little of the typical Argentinian accent coming through, but I believe the female speaker is from Mexico. Her pronunciation is likely to be closer to your speakers from Dominican Republic and Guatemala, but as I said, the content of the course is fairly ‘standard’.
(Actually, some of the clearest Spanish speakers I met in Australia where from Guatemala, so that could be a bonus for you!)
With your Welsh, do you know about the SSiW online group of learners in North America that have regular online conversation sessions? They post the Zoom link in the Welsh Speaking Practice (WSP) Slack group. I can send you an invitation to that if you’re not a member already.
Thanks so much for the reply, exactly the info I was looking for. I’m already hearing the differences between the two speakers pronunciation, so now I know to concentrate on the female voice where there’s differences. Thanks again for all you do.
I just joined slack. Haven’t had a chance to look around yet.