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Copyright © 2008 The Official Spanish L2 Blog | Proudly powered by WordPress
May 6th, 2008 by Lyda
Yes, there are some differences between Spanish from Spain and Spanish from South America, but the essence is the same. The base is the same. The grammar is the same. One is not better than the other. Spanish from Spanish is not ‘the real Spanish’ just because Spain brought Spanish to the new world. We can’t think in that way because we are forgetting that languages are products of evolution, use, and languages are always growing and changing. New vocabulary, new expressions, and new uses are always adding life to a language.
I know that people from Europe want to learn Spanish from Spain and people from the States want to learn Spanish from South American countries. They find one or the other useful. I also know that a lot of people think people from South America can’t understand Spanish from Spain, or people from Spain can’t understand Spanish from Mexico, Colombia, Chile, or Argentina. This is not true.
When we believe in the existence of communicative problems between Spaniards and Colombians, Mexicans, Ecuadorians or Chileans we are denying the essence of Spanish. Spanish is one language. We are going to find different expressions, uses and vocabulary, but in the base we are going to find the same structure.
Have you heard about the ‘RAE’? Don’t worry. It’s not a disease that people get from studying Spanish. The ‘RAE’ (Real Academia de la lengua española) is the academy in charge of maintaining “the correct usage” of Spanish. I’m from Colombia and the ‘RAE’ website is one of the tools that I use every day. I use their dictionary. I use their rules and I follow their suggestions. The ‘RAE’ is based in Spain but there are subsidiaries in every country in South America. Why do we follow the ‘RAE’? Because Spanish is one language. A language following the same rules and the same grammar, in Spain, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela. Yes, Spaniards use ‘Vosotros’, while we use Usted’ in South America. But it’s also true that in a country like Colombia we learn to conjugate ‘Vosotros’ in school. South America is not a box. We have Spanish TV channels. We watch movies from Spain. Mexican and Colombian actors are huge in Spain. Why? Because we speak the same language: Spanish.
Depending on the region where they are from, Spaniards have pronounce some words differently with /s,c,z/. But this is not a general rule for Spain. These are differences inside the same country. Are there differences (thinking about pronunciation and vocabulary) within your country? My guess is ‘yes’!
Of course, thinking about informal language we are going to have bigger differences when communicating. In each and every Spanish speaking country, there are different informal expressions, but this happens everywhere. Have you had problems understanding your kid’s text messages? Informal language changes rapidly and that doesn’t matter where you are. But when we talk about the ‘basics’ of Spanish, you’ll find that all Spanish speaking countries speak Spanish. If you speak Spanish, you’ll be able to communicate with people in Madrid, Mexico City, Bogotá, and all the way to Patagonia. Let’s forget crazy ideas, and let’s learn one Spanish, one language, one great tool!
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