Booklady,

I have a question regarding Spanish-speakers of Cuban ancestory. Sadly, I've never been to Cuba nor even Florida, but Its seems to me that there are at least three different types of speakers of Cuban ancestory.

1. Those who came to the US in the 60s, now middle aged or older. This group seems to speak a very easily understood form of Spanish, for a nonnative speaker like myself. I would say they speak a very standard pleasant sounding variation.

2.The children and grandchildren of group 1, which like many groups has incorporated a lot of Spanglish and is more prone for grammatical errors.


3. The final group is the recent Cuban immigrants. This group seems to have a stronger accent, a lot of letters seem to be "eaten", and they don't seem to have the same rich vocabulary as the previous immigrant group.

I am I mistaken? I have not had the pleasure to walk down Calle Ocho to determine if my inital impressions are correct. If I am correct, then the educational system in current Cuba must be a complete failure with its instruction of Spanish.

Thank you, any thoughts would interest me as I am deeply interested in the evolution and changes of spoken Spanish in all parts.

Saludos

Hola Shawn,

I think that Jeremy will chide us, however, if we look deeply into the underlying intent of this thread: does it matter if you learn Spanish from an Argentinian, or for that matter a Cuban, a Puerto Rican, etc. I believe that we all come to the same conclusion that to some degree it does not matter, if you are being taught formal Spanish. But, we can all agree that the Argentinian dialect of Spanish does have its differences from the Spanish spoken in Castilla. For example, your questions about another dialect of Spanish: Cuban Spanish.

In response to your question 1:

quote:

Those who came to the US in the 60s, now middle aged or older. This group seems to speak a very easily understood form of Spanish, for a nonnative speaker like myself. I would say they speak a very standard pleasant sounding variation.

Yes, their Spanish is correct in that the pronunciation of an educated Cuban in no more or less correct than that of an educated person in Spain, Mexico, or Puerto Rico. This group of people represented Cuba’s urban, middle class and they were generally well-educated folks, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, attorneys, business people, etc. They and their children on the whole spoke and speak Spanish in a grammatically correct manner, or in a more formal manner. But, as I mentioned in a previous post Cuban Spanish differs from other dialects of Spanish in the way we pronounce certain letters, in our syntax, and morphology. I believe, that a good part of this is because the majority of Spanish immigrants to Cuba came from Galicia, Asturias and the Canary Islands. This was readily discernible to me when I visited Galicia and heard so many similar pronunciations to words spoken in Cuban Spanish. Nevertheless, as with any other dialect of Spanish there are differences, particular in syntax. For example: Cubans will say (Que tu quieres?) and this is typical of other Caribbean Spanish speakers. Also the aspiration of /s/, or at times barely audible is also common among Cubans.

In response to your second question:

quote:

The children and grandchildren of group 1, which like many groups has incorporated a lot of Spanglish and is more prone for grammatical errors.

Here, you have a different set of circumstances. However, once again it depends on whether the parents themselves speak formal or informal Spanish. In my family, we were not allowed to speak "Spanglish," or any type of slang! :b: Because it was not good for business and our future. Cuban parents encourage their children to speak well in both English and Spanish so they can get ahead in the United States: The attitude is that the U. S. is our homeland now, but we must respect our roots.

However, Shawn, it is not uncommon for these youngsters, particularly those that lacked a formal education in Spanish, or, whose parents originally spoke informal Spanish, to use the "Spanglish" pattern. I could not hazard a guess as to what percentage of Cuban-Americans resort to Spanglish instead of formal Spanish.

In answer to your question 3:

quote:

3. The final group is the recent Cuban immigrants. This group seems to have a stronger accent, a lot of letters seem to be "eaten", and they don't seem to have the same rich vocabulary as the previous immigrant group.

I can speculate that this group speaks a more informal form of Spanish, which is less grammatically correct than the previous group. Many of these refugees have little formal education, unlike group one, and not university trained. In the Cuba of today, if you do not follow the party line, certain privileges are disallowed, like a university education. While there may be more Cubans that can read up to grade 4 level, it does not mean that they can read and write well, or with as much fluency as the former group that came in the early 1960's. There are many more factors that probably influence this phenomenon, such as education, socio-economic status, and age.

If you are interested I can recommend a book by Beatriz Varela called El espanol cubano-americano. Published in 1992 by Senda Nueva Pub. New York.

In regards to Miami today, if you visit little Havana, or the Calle 8, you will find many varieties of Spanish dialects due to the influx of Central and South American immigrants. Cubans are not the Spanish-speaking majority they were in the seventies and eighties. But it is still a really place, and one you would enjoy because of all the wonderful Spanish restaurants with genuine Spanish chefs who tantalize you with
Galician, Basque, and Castilian cuisine. Be prepared to pay for it too!

Hope this helps.

Thanks Booklady,

I plan on getting the recomended book. It has always interested me how we find in Latin America Spanish some vestiges of the Spanish spoken in a specific region of Spain. In the case of Cuba, I guess that it is logical that there is a Glacian influence. In other areas of Latin America we can find other areas of Spain represented, this linguistic development is quite fascinating.

Thank you

Sometimes I think that New Mexico is the Spanglish capital of the world. While there are many people who speak Spanish here, it seems that few of them speak it properly.

Some old Spanish pueblos in northern New Mexico, being so isolated from the rest of the world, speak varieties of Spanish that died out a few centuries ago. I've been meaning to pick up some books on the studies on this.

The movie "Milagro Beanfield War" is based in northern New Mexico. Many of the accents aren't very accurate (hey, the lead actress is Brazilian), but the quality of the Rocky Mountain sunlight at this altitude (7000 feet) as captured on film is very realistic. (I'd probably have to explain this.)

Hi

This is my first post here. I hope you find it useful, Sue.

Argentinian accent is the result of mixing spanish and italian. Thousands of Italians migrated to Argentina in the 19th? century, and, though spanish remained the main spoken language, it was heavily affected by italian.
Also, that�s the reason you get so many italian names.


Fernius


PD. Sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes. My english is a bit rusty.

Fernius, your English isn't THAT rusty, it looks just fine to me!

If only my Spanish was that good.

Shawn--
About the Cubans, you left off the first major group of Cubans to come to the US. These folks came in the early 1900s and lived mostly in Key West and Tampa. They worked mostly in cigar factories. In Tampa, there is an old neighborhood called Ybor City where many of these Cubans (and Spaniards) lived. Many of their descendents still live there. There is still a Centro Asturiano, Circulo Cubano and Union Marti-Maceo. Jose Marti even went to Tampa to raise money for the revolution (the first one against the Spanish!).

My husband's Abuelo still goes to the Centro Asturiano a couple of days a week to play dominoes. Many of the members of the Centro Asturiano are from Cuban families. But they also seem to try to disassociate themselves from the more recent arrivals and many consider themselves to be Spanish despite the fact that their families may have lived in Cuba for hundreds of years (like my husband's abuela--aye mi madre there are some complicated identity issues there!). In reality, much of their culture comes from Cuba. They eat tostones, black beans, lechon, platanos, ropa vieja, cuban toast and coffee, and, of course, the holy grail of sandwiches: the cuban.

Abuelo and Abuela speak a very interesting dialect of Spanish that sounds quite different from Castilian Spanish or contemporary Cuban Spanish. He's actually quite self-conscious about it when speaking to his relatives who still live in Spain. He feels that what he speaks is is "beneath" the pure Spanish dialect--there's so much deep-seated class stuff associated with this--it's crazy. But really it is a beautiful, melodic and colorful dialect called Tampeno. I wish I could learn more about it, but the viejos are a bit secretive and self-conscious about speaking with the younger generations.

P.S. I studied linguistics and wrote my thesis on the Catalan language. I would definitely consider Castilian Spanish to be a dialect. Just as Andalusian Spanish is a dialect. There is even a Catalan Spanish dialect (not to be confused with the Catalan language, which, itself has dialects, like that spoken in Barcelona vs. Lleida vs. Mallorca, etc.).

As far as linguistics are concerned, having the status of a "dialect" does not diminish the beauty or authenticity of the spoken language. Of course some dialects are more appropriate in specific settings, but this is all culturally determined and subject to change. Where one dialect ends and another begins is really impossible to say. Some dialects are roughly geographical. Some are class-based or associated with a subculture. Some are age-based. Or even gender-based.

Honestly, I think most people learning languages get too caught up in worrying about accents and dialects. In my experience, it really takes, at the very minimum, six months of full immersion in a foreign country to do a decent job of picking up an accent and dialect (i.e. losing your American accent, rhythm, tone, etc). If you are studying with a teacher, they are going to speak to you in a standard dialect (no slang). You'll actually be doing very well if you pick up some of their speech patterns.

Of course there are many different expressions in Spain (like all of the crazy uses of the verb echar) and a somewhat different since of the past, subjunctive and reflexivity. And if you want to get some of the good slang, just rent some Almodovar movies and watch them over and over!

Mariposita,

What an informative addition to this thread!

I remember quite clearly during the Elian Gonz�lez episode that his Miami family had in front of their house an American flag and a Spanish flag. At the time I felt it was quite odd, since I had never seen a Mexican in Los Angeles waving a Spanish flag. But, now I more fully understand why so many Cubans view the Mother Country so favourably. It still seems odd to me, that unlike Cubans who recognize so many of the great traditions bestowed by the Spanish in the New World, that Mexicans are still quite bitter toward the Mother Country.

With regards to Catalan, how long did it take you to master the language? Had you studied French and Italian beforehand? Do you have any tips on learning it? I have a good grip on Spanish, and I am progressing fairly well with my Portuguese, so Catalan would be the logical third language for an Iberian studies nut.

Cheers

PS. I would die for a plate of ropa vieja washed down by a few mojitos :cheers: right now.

Shawn2,

I'm a Spanish major and also have studied Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian, in that order. I can tell you that in my experience, Italian is the easiest language of the three to learn for a Spanish speaker, given that it is much more regular/conservative that both Catalan and Portuguese. I would have to say that Catalan is easier to learn than Portuguese. I have found the pronunciation and spelling of Portuguese to be much more difficult than that of Catalan. The pronunciation of Catalan is much more similar to that of Spanish than of Portuguese. Anyway, I could go on about the similarities and differences forever, but the point is, you should have no problem picking up Catalan. A good book I can recommend to start is "Teach Yourself Catalan". Good luck!

Mara

Shawn--
I'm not sure how I dropped off the earth for so many months...

About Catalan: I learned French first by spending a year in France. One of my roommates at the university happened to be Catalana from Barcelona. We really hit it off and she talked me into visiting Barcelona and, of course, my love affair with Spain began.

I vowed to find a way to go back and ended up contriving a thesis topic that enabled that. It's very easy to find good and cheap Catalan classes in Barcelona. I took them daily at the Escola Oficial d'Idiomes. Many of the students were "immigrants" from other parts of Spain who needed to learn Catalan for their job.

At the same time, I took Castellano at a private school. I lived with Catalan and Peruvian roommates, while speaking French with my Catalan friends that I met the year before in France.

Honestly I think I blew out some linguistic brain cells during that time. I was insanely confused and my significant other insists that I may have done irreperable harm to my ability to keep different languages separate at this time.

Around this same time, in a total romance-language-overload moment, I went on a trip to northern Italy and understood almost everything that was being said to me and was able to communicate frightningly well even though I had never studied Italian.

I can't say that I ever really mastered Catalan... I did come to understand it very well. Unfortunately, the opportunities to use it in the US are virtually nil, so my abilities have seriously atrophied over the years--especially as my proficiency in Spanish has gotten better.

I think that a person with proficient Castellano could become proficient in Catalan if they lived in Barcelona and studied the language for about four months. Knowing French, Latin or Italian will just make it easier. Many of the Catalan nouns come from an older form of Latin than Castellano and are closer to French words. Some are just completely different (like "gos" for dog/perro, not sure what the etymology of that one is). I agree that Portuguese seems to be the most "out there" of all the Romance languages.

The trick would be to surround yourself with native-Catalan speakers who wouldn't slip in to Castellano (or French) with you. My experience with my Catalan friends was that they loved that I was learning Catalan, but, deep down, they preferred that I not butcher their beloved language.

I don't think Barcelona is a great place to learn Castellano, unless you are already at a very advanced level.

The Catalan government has a lot of low-cost Catalan textbooks, dictionaries, etc. If you are in Barcelona, check out the bookstore on las Ramblas for the Generalitat (it's near the Placa de Catalunya end). My textbooks were called "Digui, Digui." As I remember, they also had tapes accompanying them.

When I was living in Lloret de Mar over the summer I took Catalan for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week for a month. Cost... NADA. The ajuntament offered free intensive courses. Between my classes, TV and hearing my friends and coworkers speak it, I was understanding extremely well after my 3 months in lloret. I bought the series of books we used in the intensive course and I keep up with it. When I�m home alone I watch TV3 on cable and I still understand a good deal. I don�t have many chances to speak it any more because I�m in Madrid, but I�m going to check out classes at the university here in January when my Italian classes end.

There is a DEFINITE castillano/catalan dialect. I can�t tell you how many times I�ve said, "A que hora plegamos esta noche?" or "Como ha ido la feina?" People just don�t say "acabar" or "trabajo" in Lloret. Or zapatillas. Or even adios. It�s bambas and adeu. Always. No matter what the language.

I picked up Catalan with no problem at all and was helping customers without speaking castillano during my last few weeks there. I agree, though... people are VERY happy that you�re learning the language, ecstatic when you understand them without having to ask anything but HATE when you screw it up haha. When I was too nervous to speak it, people would ask me questions in Catalan, I�d respond in castillano, they�d respond in catalan, me in castillano, etc. But if they spoke to me in catalan and I pushed my way through catalan, they�d almost always respond to me in castillano! Grr.

Melinda

Hola everyone, I'm glad I found this topic because I have a similar question and wasn't sure whether or not to post a new topic/under which thread. I had a few questions regarding Argentine Spanish and different Spanish accents in general. Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

1) Do Madrile�os understand "vos" and its accompanying conjugations? Examples: "vos sos inteligente," "llevate tu perro vos," or "�quer�s que te acompa�e?" Is the "voseo" looked down upon?

2) How is the Argentine accent/inflections (i.e. Italian-sounding intonation) perceived? I get the feeling from previous posts that most people don't like it/find it irritating. Is this the general consensus?

3) What about the Caribbean -in particular Venezuelan (Caracas)- accent? Some have told me that this accent is actually similar to the Spanish spoken in the south of Spain, i.e. the [h] sound for [s] at the end of syllables, [ng] for [n] at the end of words. Is this accent looked down upon?

I first learned Spanish in middle school and continued studying it up to the university level. However, I first learned/practiced my conversational skills in high school with a friend I made who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela; consequently, her Spanish accent rubbed off on me & when I speak Spanish conversationally, I tend to switch into that accent.

However, I prefer the porte�o and Madrid/Castilla accents, and if I consciously think when I speak Spanish, I think I can at least approximate a Castilian accent. The hardest sound for me is the rough, "gargling-like" [j], [ge] and [gi] sound!

When I get to Madrid, should I just give up with practicing the porte�o speech patterns? Will I be given funny/dirty looks when I say "s�, ehtoy aqu� cong esha (=ella) pero loh otroh todav�a no shegarong (=llegaron)"?

Anyways, I have to say again that this board is awesome (jer you're the best for providing this informative service)! Although I'm a new member & haven't posted much, I've been doing searches & reading TONS of posts- I've found out so much more from this board than any travel book/website could have given me.

Saludoh a todoh aqu�,
Vincent

1) Yes. I even have a friend in Madrid who uses it once in awhile.

2) I have no idea... I actually never met anyone from Argentina in Madrid. I think people would be more influenced by your country of origen than the accent you speak Spanish with.

3) The Venezuelan accent isn't perceived as Carribean (people think Cuba, PR and DR) and their accent sounds nothing like an Andalucian accent. At least none of my Venezuelan friends sound like Andalucians... They sound, well, Venezuelan. Que vAina.... que ChEvere. The accents perceived as Carribean are the American accents closest to Andalucian because they were the last countries Spain had control of. (who got an A in history of the spanish language last semester? )

If it's obvious that you're not a native speaker, I think they'll taket that into account before they judge your accent unless you speak flawlessly with no mix of any other country. For example I'm well aware that I intonate my setences like a madrile�a, enunciate like a venezolana, aspirate like an andaluza, pronounce words that end in "oa" like a vasca or cantabra and use a lot of expressions from catalunya. Those traits come out stronger depending on who I'm speaking with. Here people usually think I'm from Spain, there people have no idea. I�ve been asked about my accent and when I say I learned in Andalucia, lived in Madrid, spent a lot of time in the north of Spain and now live in Miami, it makes sense to them. But honestly, if you're foreign people are just glad you can speak the language. If you're really interested in the differences between the accents and why they happen, I would suggest a course in Phonetics. The logic behind their ocurrence is actually quite interesting.

Melinda

Mel, what madrid were you in girl???

smoothoperator, my 2 cents...

1) of course they understand it but they do NOT use it unless they are "taking the piss out" of an argentinian or just joking around :jeje:

2) madrid is chock-full-o-argentinos. i think that people do not like the accent due to the fact that the argentinians here have holier-than-thou attitudes (sorry, but it is true). they say that the argentinians are the catalans of south america :jeje:

saludos,
jer...

Jer,
Maybe your friends don't use it, but my friends Ivan and Javi, born in Madrid, parents, grandparents, etc all madrilenos, use "vos." They're the only people I know who use it, but they are madrilenos and they do use it.

Melinda