An office colleague is bilingual and has a pronounced lisp in English but I do not hear it when she is speaking Spanish. Would there really be a
difference or am I just not hearing it due to my not being conversant in Spanish? SWMBO says Spanish has a slight 'th' sound in place of a clear 's'
so maybe it really does make a difference.
pauldavidmena - 9-19-2024 at 01:06 PM
This is definitely true of the Castilian Spanish spoken in Spain, where shoes are THapatos and the major Catalonian city is
BarTHelona.AKgringo - 9-20-2024 at 09:35 AM
Coincidently, I was seated next to a group of tourists in Seattle yesterday waiting for my flight to Anchorage to board. They were speaking a
language that at first was unfamiliar to me, but then I noticed that their passports were from Spain.
I could then start picking out words I recognized, but the cadence, inflection and accents didn't sound like anything I have experienced in Mexico!surabi - 9-21-2024 at 07:06 PM
I could then start picking out words I recognized, but the cadence, inflection and accents didn't sound like anything I have experienced in Mexico!
Just as English has different accents depending on the English speaking country, and French in Quebec sounds different from French in France or Haiti
and other French-speaking countries, all Spanish-speaking countries have different accents. They even use some different words for things.
Argentinian Spanish has a very Italian cadence.
Even within a country, regional accents vary greatly. A native Texan sounds quite different from a native New Yorker. My ex grew up in England and
said most Brits can identify what town someone comes from by their accent. I used to have to get him to translate movies in which the characters spoke
c-ckney.
And even when languages share common letters, those speaking a non-native language may have difficulty pronouncing that letter, depending on where it
is placed in the word. For instance, while the letter "m" is certainly common in Spanish, and pronounced the same as in English, some Mexicans will
pronounce it as an "n" if it comes at the end of a word. There was a guy who used to walk around my town selling the New York Times, which he
pronounced "New York Tine".
[Edited on 9-22-2024 by surabi]
[Edited on 9-22-2024 by surabi]AKgringo - 9-21-2024 at 07:42 PM
On a family road trip in 1986, we traveled through an area south of Puerto Vallarta that dropped the last "O" or "A" from many words. For instance, a
banana would be "platan" instead of "plátano".
Gender neutrality ahead of its time!
[Edited on 9-22-2024 by AKgringo]surabi - 9-21-2024 at 09:46 PM
There were some gringoes I knew several years ago who were applying for Mexican citizenship. When they had to take the conversational oral Spanish
test, they had a very difficult time understanding the guy who was administering the test. When they mentioned it to some other people working there,
they said that he had a speech impediment! Why on earth he was given the job of giving a conversational Spanish test is a mystery.
I have never been able to do that vibrating tongue rolled double r sound in Spanish. Some Mexicans have said, Oh that's because you don't have that
sound in English. But while it isn't a sound used in English, little kids in the US and Canada will make that sound when they are playing, to mimic
the sound of a car, and I never could. I have watched videos of how to do it, had people show me where exactly you place your tongue and breathe out
to make your tongue vibrate, but mine just won't do it. I've wondered if there are Spanish speakers who also can't- after all, people can have
unintended lisps or speech impediments in their native language.
It's frustrating, because otherwise, my accent in Spanish is pretty good. I don't sound like a native Spanish speaker, but neither do I have a
pronounced American or Canadian accent. And I I can sort of fake the single r in Spanish, i.e. not a hard r, but no way I can roll that double r.
[Edited on 9-22-2024 by surabi]pauldavidmena - 9-22-2024 at 09:04 AM
I once "taught" a Japanese friend how to roll her "r," and her reaction when she finally succeeded was priceless - like she couldn't believe that
strange sound was coming out of her mouth. There are some tricks that I've forgotten over the years, but at the end of the day there is no "one size
fits all" method. For the life of me I can't duplicate the guttural clicking sound featured in some languages, and it took me years to correctly
pronounce xoloitzcuintle, for example. Besides, it's much easier to say "Red Heeler."AKgringo - 9-22-2024 at 09:46 AM
Sometimes my dog makes a trilling sound. I think it is her way of barking in Spanish!
I have been able to convince a few people that she understands Spanish, because all of the commands she has learned come with a hand signal. I give
her the signal, and a command in Spanish and she does what she is told (usually).surabi - 9-22-2024 at 11:38 AM
Funny, I was just listening to a radio interview yesterday with an animal cognition researcher. Apparently the jury is still out on whether dogs
understand the actual words we say or are simply responding to our body language.
Of course dogs can be easily trained to respond to hand signals, but for things that aren't hand commands we have taught them, for instance "Want a
treat?" or "Go for a walk?", their excited tail wagging may just be an association with us walking towards the cabinet where the treats are kept, or
putting on our outside shoes, or being happy that we are talking to them.
[Edited on 9-22-2024 by surabi]AKgringo - 9-22-2024 at 01:48 PM
My dog definitely knows words, lots of them! Her favorite toy is the red laser beam that she will chase until I get tired of it. If I accidently say
the "L-word" in her presence she jumps up and starts looking for it!surabi - 9-22-2024 at 02:46 PM
I agree that there are dogs who obviously, to their owners, understand specific words, even in the absence of any physical prompts.
But the guy who was interviewed was a scientist, and they work with repeatable outcomes of experiments, rather than anecdotal evidence. He did say
that some dogs seem to understand words, just that they haven't done enough research to draw the conclusion that all dogs are inherently capable of
that. There are smart dogs and dumb ones, just like people.
