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There are a series of significant differences in the way the Spanish Language is spoken in the 20 or so countries and territories where it is an official language. PRONUNCIATION The letters ''s'', ''c'' (before ''e'' and ''i''), ''z'' and ''x'' Within Spain one can roughly distinguish between the standard Castilian and the Andalusian Dialect s of Castilian Spanish . The first Spaniards to settle in The Americas , mostly Andalusians, brought some of their regionalisms with them. Today distinct accents are found in the different nations of the Americas. Typical of Latin America is '' Seseo ''. The modern European Castilian phoneme IPA as in '' ciento'', ''ca'''z'''a'' (interdental voiceless fricative, like English ''th'' in ''thin'') does not exist in American Spanish; it combined with as in '' '''s'''iento'', ''ca'''s'''a''. Since some words would become Homonyms in Latin America with the confusion of the pronunciation of '' Z '' or '' C '' before '' E '' or '' I '' and that of '' S '', it is preferred to use instead Synonym s or slightly different words. E.g., ''caza'' ("hunting") and ''casa'' ("house") become Homonyms , as do ''cocer'' ("to boil") and ''coser'' ("to sew"). So, in Latin America they use instead mostly ''cacería'' ("hunting expedition") and ''cocinar'' (which means "to cook" in other dialects). The most distinctive feature of the Spanish variants is the pronunciation of ''s''. In Northern and Central Spain, and in Antioquia , Colombia , it is Apico-alveolar ; in Southern Spain and most of Latin America it is Lamino-alveolar or Dental . In most of Latin America (except Mexico , Andean Guatemala , Costa Rica , Andean Venezuela , Quito and most of highland Ecuador , and highland Bolivia ), Parts of Colombia, mainly only Bogota because the rest of the country does pronounce the s as an aspiration, Syllable-final ''s'' is pronounced as an Aspiration (a Voiceless Glottal Fricative , ), or even not pronounced at all in some variants in rapid speech. For instance, ''Todos los cisnes son blancos'' ("All the swans are white"), can be pronounced as , or even . In parts of Andalusia, the distinction between syllables with a now-silent ''s'' and those originally without ''s'' is preserved by pronouncing the syllables ending in ''s'' with Open Vowel s (that is, the open/closed syllable contrast has been turned into a lax/tense vowel contrast). The pronunciation of the letter '' X '' in casual speech in Spain Lenites and can drop the initial ''k'' component ending up just like their apico-alveolar ''s'' (). In Latin America it is pronounced as ''ks'', with a regular lamino-alveolar or dental ''s'', but when an ''s'' sound (spelled ''s'' or ''c'') follows, it is assimilated resulting in ''kss'' > ''ks''. This merging of two adjacent ''s'' sounds also occurs in the cluster spelled ''sc'', that in Latin America is pronounced merely ''s''; while in Spain this cluster doesn't merge because for them there aren't two adjacent ''s'', but the apico-alveolar followed by the interdental . For example, ''excelente'' is pronounced in Northern and Central Spain as , but as by the rest. " Ascensión " is pronounced in Spain as , while in Latin America is pronounced just . Since Ladino speakers were expelled from Spain in the 15th century, they have preserved the old sibilants. See also '' Ceceo ''. The ''y'' and the ''ll'' Traditionally Spanish had a phoneme , a palatal lateral, written ''ll''. This was lost in most of the Americas (with the exception of bilingual areas where Quechua and other indigenous languages that have this sound in their inventories are spoken), but now it is also being lost in Spain (also with the exception of bilingual areas of Catalan and other languages that have preserved this sound in their inventories). It has been preserved in Ladino however, as well as in Tagalog (Filipino) words of Spanish origin such as ''cordillera'' (Tagalog ). In many Spanish-speaking regions, the palatal lateral has merged with the palatal approximant (usually written ''y''), and this merged phoneme is pronounced in a variety of ways. This phenomenon is called '' Yeísmo ''. In most of the area where yeísmo is present, the phoneme is pronounced just as . In the area around the Río De La Plata ( Argentina , Uruguay ) this phoneme is pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, voiceless or weakly voiced (similar to or ). Sets of variants In a broad sense, the Latin American Spanish could be grouped in six sets of variants, according to the pronunciation. The first group, the '' Caribbean '' is spoken in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panamá, the Colombian Caribbean, and the Caribbean parts of Venezuela and Mexico. The second one is the ''South American Pacific'', which comprises Perú, Chile and Guayaquil, Ecuador. The third is the '' Central American '' (just Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador). The fourth is the ''Argentinian-Uruguayan-Paraguayan'', which probably includes the Santa Cruz de Bolivia variant. The fifth, which probably is not a group, but a cluster of places that resisted changes in the pronunciation of the s sound in the end of a syllable, has been called the ''Highland Latin American Spanish'', and is spoken in México, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Andean Colombia, Andean Venezuela, Quito, and Bolivia (except in Santa Cruz). The sixth is the set of Ladino speakers, with speakers scattered mainly in Europe, Turkey, Israel and the Americas. Spanish sound library GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCES Second person singular Most Spanish dialects have two second person singular pronouns, one for informal use and one for more formal treatment. In most dialects the informal pronoun is ''tú'', which comes directly from the Latin, and the formal pronoun is ''usted'', which is usually considered to originate from "vuestra merced", meaning "Your (singular) grace" (though others have traced it to the Arabic ''Ustad'', ''professor''/''sir''). In a number of regions ''tú'' is replaced by another pronoun, ''vos'', and the verb conjugation changes accordingly (see details below). "Vos" comes from Latin ''vos'', which was simply the second person plural informal pronoun. In any case, there is wide variation as when each pronoun (formal or informal) is to be used. In Spain, ''tú'' is informal (for example, used with friends) and ''usted'' is formal (for example, used with older people). In several countries, however, the formal ''usted'' is also used to denote a closer personal relationship. Some Chileans, for instance, not only employ ''usted'' to address from child to parent, but also from parent to child. Some countries like Cuba privilege the use of ''tú'' even in very formal circumstances and ''usted'' thus remains seldom used. Meanwhile, in other countries, the formal vs. informal use of second-person pronouns are used to denote authority. In Peru, for example, senior military officers will use ''tú'' to speak to their subordinates, while junior officers will only use ''usted'' to address their superior officers. Using ''tú'' informally, especially in contexts where ''usted'' was to be expected, is called ''tuteo''. The corresponding verb is ''tutear'' (a transitive verb, the direct object being the person addressed with the pronoun). ''Tutear'' is used even in those dialects where the informal pronoun is ''vos''. The use of ''vos'' instead of ''tú'' is called '' Voseo ''. ''Voseo'' is informal in most countries. In Argentina and Uruguay it is the standard form of the informal second person singular, and is used by all to address others in all kinds of contexts, often regardless of social status or age, including by cultivated speakers and writers, in television, publicity, and even in translations from other languages. In Uruguay ''vos'' and ''tú'' are used concurrently, though ''vos'' is much more commonplace. In both cases the verb is conjugated as ''vos'' ("''Vos querés / Tú querés''", rather than "''Vos querés / Tú quieres''"). The name ''Rioplatense'' is applied to the particular dialect, spoken around the mouth of the River Plate (Río de la Plata) and the lower course of the Paraná River, where ''vos'' is always used, with verb conjugations that resemble those of the Castilian second person plural. This area comprises the most populated part of Argentina (the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe) as well as an important part of Uruguay including Montevideo, the capital. In Ecuador, ''Vos'' is also the most prominent form throughout the country, though it does coexist with ''usted'' and the lesser used ''tú''. ''Vos'' is regarded as the unofficial standard, but it is not used in public discourse, the media or television. To make things more complex, in Ecuador the choice of pronoun to be used depends on the participants' likeness in age and/or social status. Based on these factors, the addresser can assess himself as being an equal, superior or inferior to the addressee, and the appropriate choice of pronoun to be employed can then be made. Ecuadorians generally use ''vos'' among familiarized equals, or by superiors both social status and age to inferiors; ''tú'' among unfamiliarized equals, or by a superior in age but inferior in social status; and ''usted'' by both familiarized and unfamiliarized inferiors, or by a superior in social status but inferior in age. ''Vos'' can be heard throughout most Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a small part of Peru as well, but in these places it is reproached as sub-standard and the speech of the uneducated and ignorant. It is also used as the unofficial standard in the Department of Antioquia (Colombia), in Maracaibo (Venezuela), in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the State of Chiapas in Mexico. In Chile, ''tú'' is the preferred pronoun in all normal and educated speech. ''Vos'' is used, pronounced with an aspiration at the end instead of ''s''. When so pronounced, it is always derisive to some extent, with the magnitude of this disdain depending on the inflection of speech. In this form, it is used in informal speech between very close friends as playful banter (usually among men), but even then a change in inflection can change the meaning of a statement, which can result in an offensive comment. A usage similar to ''voseo'' is ''vos'' with the verb in the grammatically plural form (as if it used ''vosotros''). It appears as a formal or disrespectfully familiar use in the works of the Spanish Golden Century and period works placed in that era. In Colombia, the choice of second person singular varies with location. In most of inland Colombia (chiefly the Andean region), ''usted'' is the pronoun of choice for all situations, even in speaking between friends or family, but in large cities ( Bogotá mainly), the use of ''tú'' is becoming more accepted in informal situations, especially between young interlocutors of the opposite sex and among young women. In Valle Del Cauca ( Cali ) Antioquia ( Medellín ) and the Pacific coast, the pronouns used are ''vos''/''usted''. In the Caribbean coast (mainly Barranquilla and Cartagena ), ''tú'' is used for practically all informal situations and many formal situations, ''usted'' being reserved for the most formal environments. A peculiarity occurs in Boyacá and among older speakers in Bogotá: ''usted'' is replaced by ''sumercé'' for formal situations (it is relatively easy to spot a ''Boyacense'' by his/her use of this pronoun). ''Sumercé'' comes from ''su merced'' ("your mercy"). In parts of Spain, fifty years ago a child would not use ''tú'' but ''usted'' to address a parent. This would be very unusual today. Among the factors for the ongoing substitution, there are the new social relevance of youth and reduction of social differences. Being addressed as ''usted'' makes one feel older. It has also been attributed to the egalitarianism of the right-wing party Falange . On the contrary, Spanish leftists of the early 20th century would address their comrades as ''usted'' as a show of respect and worker's dignity. Joan Corominas explains that ''vos'' was a peasant form in classical Castilian, and since most Spanish immigrants to the New World belonged to this class, ''vos'' became the unmarked form. Another explanation is that in Spain, although ''vos'' denoted high social status by those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.) these people never actually used the pronoun themselves since there were not any people above them in society. Those who used ''vos'' were the inferiors (lower classes and peasants). When the waves of Spanish immigrants arrived to populate the New World, they were primarily comprised of these lower classes and peasants. These would then want to raise their social status from what it was in Spain and would demand to be addressed as a ''vos''. Everyone thus became a ''vos'' in the Americas, and the pronoun was transformed into not only indicator of low status for the addresser, but also for the addressee. Conversely, in Spain today "vos" is still considered a highly exalted archaism that is confined to liturgy, and its use by native Spaniards is seen as deliberate archaism. Speakers of Ladino still use ''vos'' as it was originally used, to address people higher in the social ladder. The pronoun ''usted'' was not introduced to this dialect of Spanish when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, hence the reason why ''vos'' is still used much like ''usted'' is used in modern Spanish. Other less frequent forms analogous to ''usted'' are ''voacé'', ''bosanzé'' and ''boxanxé'' (by Morisco s), ''vuecencia'', ''v/usía''. The latter are short for vuestra excelencia and vuestra señoria. The most common analogous form of ''usted'', still used today is ''vusted'' which can be heard in Andean regions of South America. Second person plural In Standard European Spanish the plural of ''tú'' is ''vosotros'' and the plural of ''usted'' is ''ustedes''. In Latin America ''vosotros'' is not used, and the plural of both ''tú'' and ''usted'' is ''ustedes''. This means that speaking to a group of friends a Spaniard will use ''vosotros'' and a Latin American will use ''ustedes''. The verb conjugation for ''ustedes'' employs a grammatically third person plural form (even though ''ustedes'' is semantically second person). In Argentina, schoolchildren are taught the conjugation of ''vosotros'' and are not taught to use ''usted'' at all. Though, it is only a formality, as nobody ever uses ''vosotros'' in real-life situations. The only vestige of ''vosotros'' in America is ''boso''/''bosonan'' in Papiamento . Joan Corominas supposes that the ''vos'' forms in the Caribbean were perceived as slave-talk, and disrespectful for, initially, whites and later for everybody. The plural of the Colombian ''sumercé'' is ''sumercés/susmercedes'', from ''Sus Mercedes'' ("Your Mercies"). In some parts of Andalusia, the usage is what is called ''ustedes-vosotros'': ''ustedes'' is combined with the verbal forms for ''vosotros''. In Ladino ''vosotros'' is still the only second plural pronoun since ''usted'' does not exist. Conjugation of the second person Changes in the pronoun also bring along a change in the second person of the verb. Speakers who use ''vos'' also replaced the corresponding verb forms by others related with the plural form used with ''vosotros'', either without the diphthongization of those forms or without the final ''s''. When irregular verbs are observed it is obvious that ''vos'' conjugations are related to the ''vosotros'' forms. Some examples follow (note that in Ladino ''-áis'' is pronounced , and the medial ''s'' in ''vosotros'' is voiced to ).
:Spain Spanish singular - ''tú hablas'' :Argentina and Central America - ''vos hablás'' :Uruguay - ''vos hablás, tú hablás'' :Chile - ''tú hablái, vos hablái'' :Colombia - ''usted habla, tú hablas, sumercé habla, vos hablás'' :Venezuela (Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular - ''vos habláis'' :Ecuador - ''vos hablas, vos hablás, vos habláis'' :Ladino formal singular - ''vos favláis'' :Spain Spanish plural - ''vosotros habláis'' :Andalusian Spanish plural - ''vosotros/ustedes habláis'' :Latin American Spanish plural - ''ustedes hablan'' :Ladino formal and informal plural - ''vosotros favláis'' pronounced '' vozotros favlash''
:Spain Spanish singular - ''que tú pierdas'' :Central America and Argentina - ''que vos perdás'' :Ecuador - ''que vos pierdas'' :Puerto Rico - ''que tú pieldah'' :Uruguay - ''que vos pierdas, que tú pierdas'' :Chile - ''que tú perdái, que vos perdái'' :Colombia - ''que usted pierda, que tú pierdas, que sumercé pierda, que vos p'''e'''rdás'' :Venezuela(Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular: ''que vos perdáis'' :Ladino formal singular - ''que vos perdáis'' pronounced perdásh :Spain Spanish plural - ''que vosotros perdáis'' :Andalusian Spanish plural - ''que vosotros/ustedes perdáis'' :Latin American Spanish plural - ''que ustedes pierdan'' :Ladino formal and informa plural - ''que vosotros perdáis'' pronounced ke vozotros perdásh
:Spain Spanish singular- ''ven tú'' :Argentina, Central America, Uruguay, Venezuela (Maracaibo) - ''vení vos'' :Ecuador - ''vení vos, ven vos'' :Ladino formal singular - ''vení/d vos'' :Chile - ''ven tú, ven vos'' :Colombia - ''venga usted, ven tú, venga sumercé, vení vos'' :Spain Spanish plural - ''venid vosotros'' :Andalusian Spanish plural - ''venid ustedes'' :Latin American Spanish plural - ''vengan ustedes/vustedes or vengan susmercedes'' :Ladino formal and informal plural - ''vení/d vosotros'' The term ''voseo'' also applies when a pronoun other than ''vos'' is used but the verb immediately following is nonetheless conjugated according to the norms of ''vos'': hence "''tú subís, tú decís, tú querés''" is still considered ''voseo''. Verb tenses Spanish has two ways to express an action finished in the past: the simple past called ''pretérito indefinido'', and the compound tense called ''pasado perfecto''. In Spain and many other places, the compound tense is preferred in most cases:
However, in other dialects the simple past tense is preferred:
In Argentina and Uruguay (Rioplatense Spanish), the compound past tense is used rarely, most notably when the action has been finished recently, to stress its immediacy, much like the present perfect in English, but even in those cases the simple past tense is prevalent.
In this dialect, the first example of the compound past given above (''Yo he viajado...'') is grammatical, though it sounds affected or foreign. The second example (''Cuando he llegado''), however, would be considered grammatically incorrect due to the presence of the compound tense in the clause started by ''cuando'' ("when"). EVOLUTION The Swedish Hispanist Bertil Malmberg holds that there is a tendency in the evolution of Spanish to prefer syllables that end in vowels. In variants like that of Argentine Gaucho s, which were less subject to the standard, this leads to a weakening of final consonants like , or . The realization of syllable-final as a barely audible or simply nothing is rather noticeable in many dialects, including the Argentine ones. In the Castilian variety, this tendency exists but is less marked. However, Malmberg and others have pointed out that in Mexican Spanish, it is vowels that lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. Malmberg explains this by the influence of the consonant-complex Nahuatl Language through bilingual speakers and place names. Others have pointed out that Mexican Spanish is tending towards Stress Timing and concomitant Vowel Reduction , and that this is likely to be caused by the influence of geographically close English of the United States and strong economic and social-cultural ties between the two countries. MUTUAL COMPREHENSION The different Dialect s and Accent s do not severely block cross-understanding among the educated. The Basilect s have diverged more. As an example, early Sound Film s were Dubbed into one version for the entire Spanish-speaking market. ( Disney Pictures used educated Puerto Rican speakers). Currently, non-Spanish (usually Hollywood ) productions are dubbed separately into each of the major accents, but productions from another Spanish-language country are never dubbed. The popularity of '' Telenovela s'' and Latin American Music familiarize the speakers with other varieties of Spanish. , preserving (for example) certain verb tenses considered "bookish" or archaic in most other dialects. SELECTED LIST OF SPANISH DIALECTS AND VARIETIES
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