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Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish Language , some of which are quite divergent from Standard Written Spanish , which is based on the dialect of the province of Castile . While all Spanish dialects use the written standard, many spoken varieties differ from this standard variety. There is a gap between European Spanish and the Spanish of the Americas , as well as many different dialect areas both within Spain and within Latin America . The term "dialect" does not apply to the Spanish regional languages such as Catalan , Galician , and Basque . Prominent differences between dialects of Spanish include the distinction or lack thereof between or . The maintenance of the distinction, known in Spanish as '' Distinción '' or by the neologism ''ceseo'', is characteristic of the Spanish spoken in central Spain. Most dialects of Latin America and Southern Spain lack this distinction, and have merged the two sounds into , a feature called '' Seseo '' in Spanish dialectology. Dialects with ''seseo'' will pronounce the words ''casa'' ("house") and ''caza'' ("hunt") as Homophone s, whereas dialects with ''distinción'' will pronounce them differently (as and , respectively). In some parts of Andalusia, the two sounds have merged, but into sounds ; these dialects are said to have '' Ceceo ''. Another widespread dialectal difference concerns the existence, or lack thereof, of a distinction between the Palatal Lateral (spelled ''ll'') and the Palatal Approximant (spelled ''y''). In most dialects, the two sounds have merged together (a process known as '' Yeísmo ''), though the realization of the resulting merged sound varies from dialect to dialect. This merger results in the words ''calló'' ("silenced") and ''cayó'' ("fell") being pronounced the same, whereas they remain distinct in dialects that have not undergone this merger. Another feature associated particularly with Caribbean and South American Spanish is the weakening (to ) or loss of the consonant when syllable-final. A prominent grammatical feature that varies between dialects is the use of the 2nd person forms. In Spain, the informal second person plural pronoun is ''vosotros'', which does not exist in Latin America, where the only second person plural pronoun is ''ustedes'', which takes third person plural verb agreement. For the second person singular familiar pronoun, some dialects use ''tú'', while others use ''vos'' (a phenomenon known as '' Voseo ''), or use both ''tú'' and ''vos''. There are significant differences in vocabulary between regional varieties of Spanish, particularly within the domains food products, everyday objects, and clothes, and many Latin American varieties show considerable influence form Native American Languages . PRONUNCIATION Distinción vs. seseo/ceceo See Also: Ceceo Within Spain , in sociolinguistic terms, one can roughly distinguish between the standard Castilian and the Andalusian Dialect s of Castilian Spanish , though in purely linguistic terms one should also consider at least one 3rd dialect, for the s-aspirating area between Madrid and Andalusia. 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 European Castilian phoneme IPA as in ''ciento'' ("hundred"), ''caza'' ("hunt") (interdental voiceless fricative, like English ''th'' in ''thin'') does not exist in American Spanish (except in some Andean portions of Peru where exists in words like ''doce'', ''trece''); instead the phoneme has merged with and these example words are, in American Spanish, homophones of ''siento'' ("I feel"), and ''casa'' ("house"). Since some words would become Homophones 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 Homophones , 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 for Mexico , highland Guatemala , Costa Rica , Andean Venezuela , Quito and most of highland Ecuador , highland Bolivia , and Bogotá ) and in the southern half of Spain, 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 Spain and sometimes in South-Central Spain as , but as by the rest. "Ascensión" is pronounced in parts of Spain as , in some other parts as , while in Latin America is pronounced just . In contrast to the speech of Central and Northern Spain, the pronunciation of /s/ in Andalusia and throughout most of Latin America is lamino-alveolar or dental. Nowadays these variants of Spanish, and other too, are also characterized by a highly relaxed pronunciation, which tends to aspiration and elision of many consonants, not just final ''s''. This is not related to the elision of ''k'' in the pronunciation of ''x'', which is general in most dialects of Spanish, except in formal speech. However, ''s'' is reinforced because of its dental, stressed realization, in some kind of assimilating phenomenon. Something similar occurs with other sibilant groups, like -sc-, -sz- or -xc- in Seseo areas. Thus words like ''examen'' ("exam") or ''próximo'' ("nearby", "next") are pronounced as and , respectively, and words like ''descenso'' or ''excelencia'' in seseo areas become or . Due to this tendency, it is not unusual to find similar cases of ''s'' assimilation and reinforcement even in cases where two ''s'' letters are added through prefixation into a single word, producing only a single ''s'' in Standard Spanish, and Northern or Latin American Speech: for example in ''digámoselo'' ("let's tell it to them"), formed from the verbal form ''digamos'' and clitic pronouns ''se'' and ''lo'', a typically Andalusian pronunciation would be , or in ''desaborido'' ("untasteful" or "boring", "pessimistic"), from the prefix ''des'' ("un-") plus adjective ''saborido'' ("tasteful"), an Andalusian pronunciation would be . phenomenon in Ladino, the two kinds of old Spanish ''zetas'', the voiced ''z'' and the voiceless ''ç'' [ts , have also been treated in a similar way. ''Fazer'' ("to make") becoming instead of the medieval and ''plaza'' ("square") becoming instead of medieval . Yeísmo See Also: Yeísmo Traditionally Spanish had a phoneme , a palatal lateral, written ''ll''. This phoneme has been lost in most of the Americas, with the exception of bilingual areas where Quechua , Guaraní and other indigenous languages that have this sound in their inventories are spoken (this is the case of Peru, Bolivia and, especially, Paraguay), 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 ''kordilyera'' (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 , or even . 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, Latin American Spanish pronunciation can be grouped in five sets of variants. The first group, the '' Caribbean '', is spoken in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panamá, the Colombian Caribbean, and the Caribbean parts of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico. The second one is the ''South American Pacific'', which comprises Perú, Chile and Guayaquil, Ecuador. The third is the '' Central America n'', spoken in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The fourth is the ''Argentine-Uruguayan-Paraguayan'' variant, which probably includes Eastern Bolivia (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando). The fifth, which probably is not a group but a cluster of places that resisted changes in the pronunciation of the s sound at 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, the Peruvian Sierra and Bolivia (except in Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando). Spanish sound library GRAMMAR Second person singular Related article: Voseo . 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 '''ustādh'', "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 to 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 (parts of Central America and, especially, in Colombia). Many Colombians and some Chileans, for instance, employ ''usted'' not only for a child to address a parent, but also for a parent to address a child. Some countries, like Cuba and the Dominican Republic, prefer the use of ''tú'' even in very formal circumstances, and ''usted'' thus is seldom used. Meanwhile, in other countries, the use of formal rather than informal second-person pronouns denotes 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 cultured/educated speakers and writers, in television, advertisements, 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 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 complicate things more, 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 of Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, and a small part of Peru as well, but in these places it is reproached as substandard 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 were ''vosotros''). It appears as a formal or disrespectfully familiar use in the works of the Spanish Golden Century /Golden Age 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''. On 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 are the new social relevance of youth and the 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 . By contrast, 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. They would then want to raise their social status from what it was in Spain and would demand to be addressed as ''vos''. Everyone thus became ''vos'' in the Americas, and the pronoun was transformed into an indicator of low status not only 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 on the social ladder. The pronoun ''usted'' had not been introduced to this dialect of Spanish when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, hence ''vos'' is still used in Ladino much as ''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 señoría. 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 and Chile, school children are taught the conjugation of ''vosotros'' and are not taught to use ''usted'' at all. However, it is only a formality, as they rarely if ever use ''vosotros'' in real-life situations. The only vestiges of ''vosotros'' in America are ''boso''/''bosonan'' in Papiamento and the use of ''vuestro/a'' in place of ''sus (de ustedes)'' as second person plural possessive in the Cusco region of Peru. Joan Corominas supposes that the ''vos'' forms in the Caribbean were perceived as slave-talk, and disrespectful for whites initially, and later for everybody. The plural of the Colombian ''sumercé'' is ''sumercés/susmercedes'', from ''Sus Mercedes'' ("Your Mercies"). In some parts of Andalusia (the lands around the Guadalquivir river and Western 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 person 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 replace the corresponding verb forms with other forms related to 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 ).
:Iberian Castilian - ''tú hablas'' (Andalusian Spanish pronounced ''tú hablah'' (the second a of hablah is opened)/''tú habla''' :Argentina and Central America - ''vos hablás'' :Uruguay - ''vos hablás, tú hablás'' :Chile - ''tú hablas, tú hablái, vos hablái'' :Colombia - ''usted habla, tú hablas, sumercé habla, vos hablas'' :Mexico - ''tú hablas'' :Venezuela (Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular - ''vos habláis'' :Ecuador - ''tú hablas, usted habla, vos hablas'' :Ladino formal - ''vos favláis''
:Iberian Castilian - ''vosotros habláis'' :Andalusian Spanish - ''ustedes habláis'', pronounced ''uhtedeh habláih/uttede' hablai''' :Canarian Spanish - ''ustedes hablan'' :Latin American Spanish - ''ustedes hablan'' :Ladino formal and informal - ''vosotros favláis'' pronounced '' vozotros favlash''
:Iberian Castilian singular - ''que tú pierdas'' :Central America - ''que vos perdás'' :Argentina - ''que vos pierdas'' :Ecuador - ''que tú pierdas'', ''que vos pierdas'' :Uruguay - ''que vos pierdas, que tú pierdas'' :Chile - ''que tú pierdas, que tú p'''e'''rdái, que vos p'''e'''rdái'' :Colombia - ''que usted pierda, que tú pierdas, que sumercé pierda, que vos p'''e'''rdás'' :Mexico - ''que usted pierda, que tú pierdas'' :Venezuela (Maracaibo) and archaic Spanish formal singular: ''que vos perdáis'' :Ladino formal singular - ''que vos perdáis'' pronounced perdásh :Iberian Castilian 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
:Iberian Castilian singular- ''ven tú'' :Argentina, Central America, Uruguay, Venezuela (Maracaibo) - ''vení vos'' :Ecuador - ''ven tú, venga usted, ven vos'' :Ladino formal singular - ''vení/d vos'' :Chile - ''ven tú, ven vos'' :Colombia - ''venga usted, ven tú, venga sumercé, vení vos'' :Mexico - ''venga usted, ven tú'' :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 a few areas of Spain and some other places, the compound tense is preferred in most cases:
However, most Spanish speakers follow the oposite tendency to use the simple past tense in most cases:
Indeed, in Latin America, 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. In fact, most Latin Americans would consider Spaniards uneducated by their excessive use of the compound tense. This tendency in Spain is regional though (mostly Galicia), and is not prevalent in the rest of Spain. Both French and Italian languages tend to use the compound tense when the simple past would be more suitable. 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"). In Latin America one could say "He viajado a España varias veces", "I have travelled to Spain several times", to express frequency or tendency like in English. It would be utterly incorrect to say " Ayer, he viajado a España" or " Yesterday, I have travelled to Spain" since it was a definite past stressed by the word yesterday. In Spain, people use the "haber + verb" to express things done in the past when the period of time considered hasn't ended, like "he comprado un coche este año" "I have bought a car this year". A Latin American would correct the individual by saying "Compré un coche este año" meaning "I bought a car this year". More examples of the way in which the 2 tenses are used in most of Spain :
EVOLUTION The Swedish Hispanist Bertil Malmberg heldBertil Malmberg, ''Det spanska Amerika i språkets spegel'', Stockholm, 1966 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 did not exist in the past but has recently appeared due to the influence of southern dialects (Andalusia, Madrid, La Mancha, etc.). However, Malmberg and others have pointed out that in Mexican Spanish, it is vowels that lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced. It has been 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. 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. SEE ALSO List of dialects and varieties Spain
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