In New Mexico we learned Mexican spanish
Do you mean New Mexican Spanish?
If they would only do the same with their “English”.
We learned American Spanish when I was in school, no vosotros, no soft S, because we learned it from Cuban teachers. My kids got a mix but mostly, as you are saying, Spain Spanish. I think part of the reason is that Spain Spanish is one thing - canonical Spanish, yes? But in the Americas it’s varied, different in the US from Mexico, from Colombia, from Argentina, Costa Rica. Dialects.
I think it’s silly to say that Spain Spanish is canonical, though. Like, says who? Spanish people? Spanish in Spain is a dialect just like any other Spanish-speaking country. Imo it makes sense to teach the dialect that learners are most likely to encounter based on their geographic location, with context about the other dialects.
- Who says it, Spanish people?
Well, yes? It is the European colonizers that brought it here, I think Spain Spanish is “the Spanish” just like I think England English is “the English” and American English is an offshoot though it’s what I know.
We have several dialects in Spain that talk different. We all write proper neutral Spanish though, determined by the Royal Spanish Academy, RAE.
Same thing with Basque, in the tiny territory we occupy there’s a dialect per fucking town almost with distinct differences. Textbooks teach the official neutral Basque though. We would literally not be able to communicate if there was no neutral dialect everyone also knows…
Saying “country dialect” sounds very USA American tbh…
Dialect was probably the wrong word, because of course there’s many different dialects in many countries. (In fact, your aside about “sounds very US American” is funny, since I guarantee the US has more dialects than Spain. Plenty to hate on the US for, but that ain’t it.)
Anyway idk if there’s a word for this but like, the intermediary level between a language and a dialect. There is a wide gulf between Spanish spoken in Spain vs Latin America the same way as English in the UK vs USA. That macro-level distinction breaks down into trees of further distinction in regions, cities, towns of course.
TIL there are two versions of spanish.
There’s far more than two, just like there’s plenty of dialects of english jaja
A lot more than two. Even within Latin America, there are some fairly interesting differences in grammar, vocab, and pronunciation.
There’s uh, lots more than 2. It’s similar to how there’s English English and Nigerian English, just dialectical differences - some more major than others.
Or American English and maybe southern American English? Not sure thats different enough to count.
Depending on how diverged they are people can communicate between them with various words or phrases that are different.
Ex. Americans use the word toilet, England uses loo (which might also refer to the whole bathroom? I’m sure someone from England will correct me)
Toilet can mean the whole room if separate (i.e. no shower or bath) or just the appliance, depending on context. Can use loo to mean what Americans would refer to as ‘bsthroom’/‘restroom’.
Oh it’s absolutely different enough to count.
Dosen’t Mexico speak Spanish?
In the same way that Americans speak English.
Sure, their language is mutual intelligible with English, but if an Englishman comes over here and asks for some chips, they’re going to get a bag of crisps. They’ll mess up verb conjunction on a bunch of collective nouns.
And bless the souls of my Australian mates who come here and call everyone a cunt.
Mine taught Mexico Spanish, but with a brief reminder every once in a while about the vosotros conjugations.
Do they? Duolingo, meanwhile, teaches a Latin American dialect (possibly Mexican), with “ustedes” as the second-person plural. (IIRC, their Portuguese is also Brazilian, which is a greater leap.)
Does it? My partner has learned some very strange words I have never heard used in mexico. But I guess the rest of Latin America also uses different dialects.
From what I recall, it does, especially for new words (items like “backpack” and “T-shirt” seem to have almost a different word in each country). Maybe Duolingo’s Spanish is from former south (Argentina or Chile perhaps?)
Here in Canada we learn Parisian French in school despite Quebecois French being one of our national languages.
It’s probably because, like BBC/Oxford English, those are the places that have an “official” version of the language they try to preserve. Same thing happens with Portugese, despite Brazilian Portugese being more commonly spoken than Portugal Portugese.
I don’t know what we you’re referring to, but in the part of central Ontario where my nephew attends school, the French immersion schools are most definitely teaching Quebecois French.
I tried speaking real French with my nephew and he reacted as if I was a space alien.
I remember this, after I was told I was learning France French I was a bit confused. Why wouldn’t we be learning Quebecois?
To be fair, I was a bad student so I wasn’t actually learning either…
When I was in school in the 1970s it was because they couldn’t get French teachers from Quebec. The youth wanted to stay and build a sovereign Quebec. So they imported French teachers from France and I speak like a French Duke.
And in Switzerland we have to learn quebeccan French. And so the circle closes.
(we train it at the end when we train understanding non-standard pronounciations)
Well yeah, but you also learn Swiss German and Swiss French and Parisian French, and Italian is an option isn’t it?
Maybe it’s because I’m from California, but we learned Mexico-Spanish. The books included Spain-Spanish (i.e. vos conjugations), but my teachers never included it in our lessons.
Vos-conjugations are not a thing in spain though? You mean tu-conjugations?
I meant vosotros, yes, thank you! Sorry, it’s been over two decades since I was in Spanish class; I mixed vos and vosotros up.
Vos is something only reserved to royalty and nobility outside of Argentina, I felt kinda offended lol.
Kinda the same here in Nevada. Our Spanish teacher explained them briefly but told us we didn’t need to learn them, didn’t test us on them, so on.
I had a teacher from Spain for three years, then for the next four years they were from various countries: Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and the US. It was great to get used to each accent.
Because it’s the same language. I grew up in Argentina, and the “Spanish” (the name of the language is actually Castilian because there are multiple languages in Spain) we learn at school is the “Spain” one. In reality it’s the language as defined by the Real Academia Española so the language is the same (yes it includes the vosotros conjugation, no, no one outside Spain actually uses that but we learn it in school).
The differences between Mexican, Argentinian or Spanish Castilian is more in the pronunciation and the use of some words, but the language we learn at school is all the same, and I imagine it’s the same one that you learn too.
That being said, using vosotros to us sounds similar to how using thy might sound in English. A good teacher would explain that outside of Spain we use ustedes which uses the plural third person conjugation (i.e. the same one as ellos), but the correct plural second person is vosotros.
Thy is the super formal form of the conjugation, vosotros is the colloquial form of ustedes.
Tu-vosotros. Usted-ustedes. You-yall. Thou-thy.
You have it backwards, it’s the Latin countries which sound super formal and awkward to us spaniards.
because the school system is controlled by old people and they don’t know the difference. in my high school we had Spanish teachers that were actually from Mexico and south America and they taught us useful Spanish.
I think there is a European bias and maybe a (perceived?) prestige bias to Castilian as well.
yeah, especially with the older generation (who should not legally be allowed to be administrators, if you are old enough that your brain doesn’t work anymore you can’t be trusted with authority) on top of their lack of understanding about the difference.
Why learn the language of a second world country when you can learn the language of a first world country?
Kidding/not kidding
We learned Mexican Spanish in my redneck school.
I’ve never heard of that in the states. What region are you referring to? Sounds like an eastern seaboard thing to me.
I think it depends more on your instructor rather than the region you’re in. When I was in HS I took two years of Spanish and our teacher was from Spain, so her instruction was in line with that.
I don’t know about OP. I went to a public school on the eastern seaboard and we certainly weren’t taught “Spain Spanish.” The pronunciations and pronouns we were taught would’ve been very different if that were the case.
If any specific dialect was taught in those classrooms, it would’ve been because a teacher spoke that dialect natively. All of our teachers were either non-native Spanish speakers, or from somewhere in Central or South America. Maybe OP had teachers from Europe?
If there were regional differences for vocabulary, we were told about them. For example, for the English word “bus,” we were taught that “autobus,” “guagua,” and “camion” all work but in different countries/regions. To be clear, we weren’t expected to remember all the variations, but we were informed that they exist.
I took 2 years of Spanish & didn’t learn either
