Quote: (07-16-2016 04:03 PM)britchard Wrote:
Can anyone give me a quick rundown on the differences between European Spanish and the Spanish spoken in the rest of the world? I'd find it easier as a beginner just to use usted and ustedes and ignore 'vosotros', would this be fine even in Spain?
I'm spanish, so I can comment on this. There's several accent and pronunciation differences within Spain (a bit like in England - South vs North, Scouse accent is also different etc). For the most part, we speak standard castillian spanish with distinción instead of seseo (e.g Cinco pronounced as "zinco" more or less, as opposed to "sinco"). The exception is most of Andalucía and specially in the Canary Islands, where they speak a lot more like in Latin America (because so many Andalucians and Canarians emigrated to Lat. America). In addition to the accent and pronunciation, we also use vosotros a lot more than ustedes. Other than that, I think there's only occasional differences with certain words, including a lot of slang of course. Even common phrases can also change, for example, "to drive the car" would be:
In Mexican Spanish - manejar el carro
In Castillian Spanish - conducir el coche
Personally, I find colombian and venezuelan Spanish to be quite nice and rather "standard". They both sound good and easy to understand. Peruvian Spanish is also quite similar. Cuban Spanish is not too bad if you hear someone educated but most cuban boxers usually speak in a very slangy way and they're a bit harder to understand. The worst spanish IMO is domincan, which is very slangy and unique. Almost like Jamaican English perhaps. Argentinian and Uruguayan Spanish sound a bit like speaking Spanish with a slight italian accent, plus the unique "vos" form and with "sheismo" e.g "el chico
se calló" (the boy fell down) would be pronounced as "se cashó" more or less.
Overall, if you're unsure of what variety of Spanish to focus on, I'd recommend to start with Colombian/Venezuelan/Peruvian and then gradually expand to accommodate any interests (e.g mexican slang, castillian pronunciation...etc). The only advantage of learning castillian Spanish is that its easier to remember the spelling of words. Uneducated latin americans make many mistakes when spelling and get confused with z/c/s more easily than Spaniards.
