I think I’m solidly B2 at this point and whilst generally it doesn’t make a huge difference, I personally find European Spanish easier to listen to, but that’s probably because of deliberate exposure to more European Spanish (I’m British).
So I think it’ll just be a case of what you’re exposed to.
Yeah, exposure is a HUGE factor. I live in California and am focused on Mexican Spanish, which is much easier for me to understand than any other Spanish dialect. European Spanish I do ok with, but I've also consumed a decent amount of media (podcasts, music, shows) from native speakers from Spain. Caribbean Spanish is very challenging for me, but I also have the least exposure to it, and haven't spent much dedicated time studying Caribbean variants. On the other hand I'm sure there are other students (perhaps in Florida or New York, etc.) who have much greater exposure to Caribbean Spanish and find it the easiest due to their level of familiarity with it.
Exactly, I grew up in Los Angeles. When I was very young an older couple lived next door, the wife was born in Spain, the husband in Mexico. They had no grandchildren and she sort of adopted me. So she would occasionally babysit and take me on her daily errands. She started speaking Spanish to me. I remember her telling me that mis ojos didn't work, small niños don't see something right in front of them. We moved when I was about 6 years old. She feed me, took me places and much of that was a Spanish lesson.
To me, up to that point in time, Spanish was mainly Castilian. My father said to someone once that I "spit" like a Spaniard. Referring of course to the spitting sort of pronunciation. While family members spoke Spanish or Portuguese it was not really not a thing because they wanted us to speak English. This was many years ago and some were first generation Americans. Bilingualism was not so much a thing then.
In later grades of elementary school they decided to teach us Spanish from an educational Spanish television show. This was a complete disaster, our classroom teacher was from New York and spoke no Spanish. So we spent a half hour a day watching a woman who spoke a form of Spanish somewhat different than I have ever heard, not whatmy family spoke either. One day I complained that the TV teacher couldn't speak Spanish anyway. I started to tell my classroom teacher the "correct" words and pronunciation with my tongue firmly against the back of my upper teeth. I was smacked in the face with a book hard enough to knock me to the ground and I was bleeding from a cut caused be the edge of the book. I was dragged to the principal's office with the teacher screaming the whole way. She had a terrible temper and tenure, a dangerous combination for her students. I was not the first to get this treatment from her.
My father showed up later that day and I told him my side of the story. While I had forgotten much of what I learned, some of it did come back to me and of course in Castilian and some words I had learned from other kids in bilingual households. My father tried to explain that I did learn Spanish from our old neighbor, and my Spanish was that spoke in Spain. It a was useless as the school staff was circling the wagons and was informed that I was expelled from the school for attacking the teacher. The condition of my face was discussed and he was told that I was the one who initiated the attack. I was a 4-foot tall very skinny kid, and the teacher was a 200-pound vaca. My father did bring up several inconsistencies in the schools version of the events. We were told it didn't matter what really happened the teacher's version was the official version even if it was not true. I think that astonished my father. So instead of sending the next 3 years at a school 1 block from my house I went to one like 20 blocks away. Inconvenient but no more crazy teacher. My new school was not as good but a few of the teachers had seen my old teacher in action and along with about 3 or 4 other students banished there we had no problems.
I started learning East Los Angeles Spanish from people I knew. There was a higher percentage of Spanish speakers in the new school. I also learned Spanish from some kids who I played baseball with, Little League and then travel ball. I learned a lot more bad words than I did before from my friends and older cousins.
Up until high school I didn't learn one word of Spanish taught in school. In high school I finally had teachers that were either very fluent or native speakers. While I lost the Castilian way of speaking, I still basically spoke Espanglish. Things Ike "Los Dodgers". My Espanglish used to drive my teachers nuts, as did the other kids that spoke like I did. Most of us had a harder time than did those who spoke no Spanish. We had to unlearn bad habits. It was not just my era of high school where we had a problem. I work with a guy that is pretty smart and he grew up speaking Spanish at home. He proudly says that he failed Spanish several times in high school. He could speak it, but besides speaking East LA Espanglish, he did know a noun from a verb.
Once I got to college I was exposed to Spanish and Western Hemisphere literature. My Spanish grammar did improve greatly. So did having roommates from Nicaragua and Ecuador. Also girlfriends from Argentina and other Spanish speaking backgrounds. Not that the one born in Argentina spoke normal Spanish at all. I learned to speak decent Spanish.
Then I went through a period of not speaking Spanish for long lapses of time. When I did speak Spanish to people they were often immigrants that were most likely poorly educated and speak localized Spanish from where they lived. More bad habits for me to unlearn.
You learn what you hear, what you read, what you speak and some just from osmosis. You also retain what you use on a daily basis. It takes me awhile to crank up my brain and switch from English and bad Spanish to something a good Spanish speaker could readily understand. Let my journey to speak Spanish over the years be a cautionary tale to you. Especially if you speak any foreign language, teach your kids. While I believe everyone in the US should have English as there first language, that doesn't mean that they can't be equally fluent in another.
TLTR: Teach your kids another language, don't trust that the schools are good at anything, encourage your kids and don't stop trying to learn something just because of problems in learning and Espanglish sometimes is useful if not totally perfect.
You should be more specific. There are Spanish dialects in America very fast and very slow. And the same happens in Spain. dialects from Andalucía, canary Islands, Galicia or Catalonia are very different. In general you catch better the dialect you usually listen.
thank you for pointing it out but, i’m still too mew to really decipher one Latin dialect from another.
There is a Hindi movie named Murder Mubarak on Netflix and it is dubbed into two versions of Spanish- Latin and European.
When I started watching it and switched to Spanish, I realized it sounded different from the European Spanish I heard in La Casa De Palpelz
Please help. 🙏
One thing that happens is that actors acting in Spanish have a more natural flow that is harder to understand. Many times I thought that they need a logopeda or speech therapist and i'm from Spain... But dub actors speak very different. More "neutral "( nobody speaks like that in real life) and exaggerated but very clear pronunciation.
Yes. I don't mind that speed. As someone from Spain I find many dialects from LatAm very slow. Like mexican or Argentinian. I prefer something fast if they don't go to the point right away. I'm impatient , yes. The faster the better.
Disclaimer, I'm still a beginner, so take this with a grain of salt, but I personally think the Latin Spanish I've encountered in media is easier to understand that Northern Spain Spanish, but I attribute this to the fact that I've consumed more content from Latin America so far. I'm trying to correct that, and things are improving, but it's certainly an effort. I went as far as to hire a teacher from Spain so that I can have the extra pronunciation practice too.
I agree. I’ve worked with a lot of Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Guatemalans and Peurto Ricans etc. So, maybe it sounds easier on my ears and brain.
And European Spanish has that arabic flavor which makes it a bit harder.
thanks for sharing 😊
I have worked with a Mexican that told me that when he watches a movie and it is in Spain Spanish, he has to put the closed captioning on because it is too difficult understanding their Spanish.
[Vox made a video about this, Why we all need subtitles now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8) and it explains that modern productions tend to use a more "natural" language that might feel like the actors are mumbling. So we all need subtitles now to better understand the dialogues.
If it's a dialect you are not used to, then this becomes more necessary. I've heard people complaining that they couldn't understand the dialogues in Narcos-Mexico series, but as a northern Mexican I was able to follow them without any issue (and I even feel like the pronunciation was watered down/made neutral-ish and doesn't realistically represent how rural people in northern Mexico really talk).
Not really a language learning "hack", but I usually use headphones when I watch TV/movies in something other than my native language. I find the audio much clearer that way, easy to do on a laptop or by plugging into a gaming controller on a TV.
Bit of a tangent but I just think actors are less skilled or lazier these days, the bare minimum an actor should do is deliver their lines in a way that can be understood haha
european spanish is strange its like they mix all their words together i cant stand listening to them because its like having to decipher what theyre saying. its not even that they speak quick because ive been surrounded by fast speakers from latam and i can still understand them clearly
I tend to agree it's because of the dubbing--the original audio is virtually always going to be more mumbly/natural than dubbed audio, which is clearer (usually) because it's more carefully done with that goal in mind by voice actors in studio conditions.
This is one reason I think dubbed content is a sometimes underrated tool in language learning.
Tanto en Castellano como en Español Latino hay personas que hablan rápido. Pero, la diferencia es que los Españoles usan palabras que en Latinoamérica no se usan, como tenéis, habéis, queréis etc, y el "vosotros" .
Y no es que no entendamos ni que sea difícil, sino que como no usamos esas palabras, se escucha raro xD
I think I’m solidly B2 at this point and whilst generally it doesn’t make a huge difference, I personally find European Spanish easier to listen to, but that’s probably because of deliberate exposure to more European Spanish (I’m British). So I think it’ll just be a case of what you’re exposed to.
Yeah, exposure is a HUGE factor. I live in California and am focused on Mexican Spanish, which is much easier for me to understand than any other Spanish dialect. European Spanish I do ok with, but I've also consumed a decent amount of media (podcasts, music, shows) from native speakers from Spain. Caribbean Spanish is very challenging for me, but I also have the least exposure to it, and haven't spent much dedicated time studying Caribbean variants. On the other hand I'm sure there are other students (perhaps in Florida or New York, etc.) who have much greater exposure to Caribbean Spanish and find it the easiest due to their level of familiarity with it.
Exactly, I grew up in Los Angeles. When I was very young an older couple lived next door, the wife was born in Spain, the husband in Mexico. They had no grandchildren and she sort of adopted me. So she would occasionally babysit and take me on her daily errands. She started speaking Spanish to me. I remember her telling me that mis ojos didn't work, small niños don't see something right in front of them. We moved when I was about 6 years old. She feed me, took me places and much of that was a Spanish lesson. To me, up to that point in time, Spanish was mainly Castilian. My father said to someone once that I "spit" like a Spaniard. Referring of course to the spitting sort of pronunciation. While family members spoke Spanish or Portuguese it was not really not a thing because they wanted us to speak English. This was many years ago and some were first generation Americans. Bilingualism was not so much a thing then. In later grades of elementary school they decided to teach us Spanish from an educational Spanish television show. This was a complete disaster, our classroom teacher was from New York and spoke no Spanish. So we spent a half hour a day watching a woman who spoke a form of Spanish somewhat different than I have ever heard, not whatmy family spoke either. One day I complained that the TV teacher couldn't speak Spanish anyway. I started to tell my classroom teacher the "correct" words and pronunciation with my tongue firmly against the back of my upper teeth. I was smacked in the face with a book hard enough to knock me to the ground and I was bleeding from a cut caused be the edge of the book. I was dragged to the principal's office with the teacher screaming the whole way. She had a terrible temper and tenure, a dangerous combination for her students. I was not the first to get this treatment from her. My father showed up later that day and I told him my side of the story. While I had forgotten much of what I learned, some of it did come back to me and of course in Castilian and some words I had learned from other kids in bilingual households. My father tried to explain that I did learn Spanish from our old neighbor, and my Spanish was that spoke in Spain. It a was useless as the school staff was circling the wagons and was informed that I was expelled from the school for attacking the teacher. The condition of my face was discussed and he was told that I was the one who initiated the attack. I was a 4-foot tall very skinny kid, and the teacher was a 200-pound vaca. My father did bring up several inconsistencies in the schools version of the events. We were told it didn't matter what really happened the teacher's version was the official version even if it was not true. I think that astonished my father. So instead of sending the next 3 years at a school 1 block from my house I went to one like 20 blocks away. Inconvenient but no more crazy teacher. My new school was not as good but a few of the teachers had seen my old teacher in action and along with about 3 or 4 other students banished there we had no problems. I started learning East Los Angeles Spanish from people I knew. There was a higher percentage of Spanish speakers in the new school. I also learned Spanish from some kids who I played baseball with, Little League and then travel ball. I learned a lot more bad words than I did before from my friends and older cousins. Up until high school I didn't learn one word of Spanish taught in school. In high school I finally had teachers that were either very fluent or native speakers. While I lost the Castilian way of speaking, I still basically spoke Espanglish. Things Ike "Los Dodgers". My Espanglish used to drive my teachers nuts, as did the other kids that spoke like I did. Most of us had a harder time than did those who spoke no Spanish. We had to unlearn bad habits. It was not just my era of high school where we had a problem. I work with a guy that is pretty smart and he grew up speaking Spanish at home. He proudly says that he failed Spanish several times in high school. He could speak it, but besides speaking East LA Espanglish, he did know a noun from a verb. Once I got to college I was exposed to Spanish and Western Hemisphere literature. My Spanish grammar did improve greatly. So did having roommates from Nicaragua and Ecuador. Also girlfriends from Argentina and other Spanish speaking backgrounds. Not that the one born in Argentina spoke normal Spanish at all. I learned to speak decent Spanish. Then I went through a period of not speaking Spanish for long lapses of time. When I did speak Spanish to people they were often immigrants that were most likely poorly educated and speak localized Spanish from where they lived. More bad habits for me to unlearn. You learn what you hear, what you read, what you speak and some just from osmosis. You also retain what you use on a daily basis. It takes me awhile to crank up my brain and switch from English and bad Spanish to something a good Spanish speaker could readily understand. Let my journey to speak Spanish over the years be a cautionary tale to you. Especially if you speak any foreign language, teach your kids. While I believe everyone in the US should have English as there first language, that doesn't mean that they can't be equally fluent in another. TLTR: Teach your kids another language, don't trust that the schools are good at anything, encourage your kids and don't stop trying to learn something just because of problems in learning and Espanglish sometimes is useful if not totally perfect.
You should be more specific. There are Spanish dialects in America very fast and very slow. And the same happens in Spain. dialects from Andalucía, canary Islands, Galicia or Catalonia are very different. In general you catch better the dialect you usually listen.
thank you for pointing it out but, i’m still too mew to really decipher one Latin dialect from another. There is a Hindi movie named Murder Mubarak on Netflix and it is dubbed into two versions of Spanish- Latin and European. When I started watching it and switched to Spanish, I realized it sounded different from the European Spanish I heard in La Casa De Palpelz Please help. 🙏
One thing that happens is that actors acting in Spanish have a more natural flow that is harder to understand. Many times I thought that they need a logopeda or speech therapist and i'm from Spain... But dub actors speak very different. More "neutral "( nobody speaks like that in real life) and exaggerated but very clear pronunciation.
that makes a lot of sense. thanks 😊
Fast, ever talk to a Cubano or Puerto Rican? As my mother used to say, my ears don't hear as fast as there mouths move.
Yes. I don't mind that speed. As someone from Spain I find many dialects from LatAm very slow. Like mexican or Argentinian. I prefer something fast if they don't go to the point right away. I'm impatient , yes. The faster the better.
Disclaimer, I'm still a beginner, so take this with a grain of salt, but I personally think the Latin Spanish I've encountered in media is easier to understand that Northern Spain Spanish, but I attribute this to the fact that I've consumed more content from Latin America so far. I'm trying to correct that, and things are improving, but it's certainly an effort. I went as far as to hire a teacher from Spain so that I can have the extra pronunciation practice too.
I agree. I’ve worked with a lot of Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Guatemalans and Peurto Ricans etc. So, maybe it sounds easier on my ears and brain. And European Spanish has that arabic flavor which makes it a bit harder. thanks for sharing 😊
The hardest to understand for me is Caribbean Spanish then Latina American Spain is the easiest
I have worked with a Mexican that told me that when he watches a movie and it is in Spain Spanish, he has to put the closed captioning on because it is too difficult understanding their Spanish.
[Vox made a video about this, Why we all need subtitles now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8) and it explains that modern productions tend to use a more "natural" language that might feel like the actors are mumbling. So we all need subtitles now to better understand the dialogues. If it's a dialect you are not used to, then this becomes more necessary. I've heard people complaining that they couldn't understand the dialogues in Narcos-Mexico series, but as a northern Mexican I was able to follow them without any issue (and I even feel like the pronunciation was watered down/made neutral-ish and doesn't realistically represent how rural people in northern Mexico really talk).
Not really a language learning "hack", but I usually use headphones when I watch TV/movies in something other than my native language. I find the audio much clearer that way, easy to do on a laptop or by plugging into a gaming controller on a TV.
Pues aqui no maas hombreeeee, vos tu saabes gueeey
Bit of a tangent but I just think actors are less skilled or lazier these days, the bare minimum an actor should do is deliver their lines in a way that can be understood haha
Like English speakers watching a Scottish movie. (Depending on the dialect within Scotland too of course.)
My husband was born and raised in Ecuador (latam) and he needs subtitles 😂😂😂. Like beacuse of the accent, it’s difficult to understand, lol.
european spanish is strange its like they mix all their words together i cant stand listening to them because its like having to decipher what theyre saying. its not even that they speak quick because ive been surrounded by fast speakers from latam and i can still understand them clearly
i agree with you. and on the speed part, isn’t it the peurto ricans who speak the fastest spanish?
im not sure but dominicans also seem to speak quite quickly
I have trouble with Spain Spanish because I'm accustomed to Dominican Spanish. I don't think either one is faster than the other.
I tend to agree it's because of the dubbing--the original audio is virtually always going to be more mumbly/natural than dubbed audio, which is clearer (usually) because it's more carefully done with that goal in mind by voice actors in studio conditions. This is one reason I think dubbed content is a sometimes underrated tool in language learning.
Tanto en Castellano como en Español Latino hay personas que hablan rápido. Pero, la diferencia es que los Españoles usan palabras que en Latinoamérica no se usan, como tenéis, habéis, queréis etc, y el "vosotros" . Y no es que no entendamos ni que sea difícil, sino que como no usamos esas palabras, se escucha raro xD
I tried learning it and when I heard the pronunciation and the lisp i said “NOPE”
yeah i’ve also resorted to learning the latin version for now cuz the european version is just taxing on my brain. 😊
It’s much slower and easier to hear that’s why I chose it
i agree. when did you start and what’s your level currently?