Which dialects of Spanish are generally hardest to understand? Chilean speech changes a lot when you are speaking to a person of middle class, low class, or from the south. The hardest one to understand is the southern dialect.
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11/25/19 See all items with this value
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Which dialects of Spanish are generally hardest to understand? Chilean speech changes a lot when you are speaking to a person of middle class, low class, or from the south. The hardest one to understand is the southern dialect. See all items with this value
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Justin VandenBosch See all items with this value
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I just got back from a two week tour of Spain, and overall communication was very frustrating, which really surprised me. In school in the U.S. we were taught Mexican/Latin American Spanish, which I find generally has fairly crisp enunciation and a moderate speed. Even in Madrid, supposedly the center of “Castillan” Spanish it was often difficult to understand people due to the speed and how they compress words together so they are not so much pronounced individually. Yes, Andalucia was a challenge, due to the same issues as Madrid, but maybe more to an extreme, but it really varied person to person. What I think is really frustrating is how it seemed in general those working in the tourist sector rarely tempered their speech for non-native speakers. If I am speaking English to a non-native speaker I slow down and enunciate very clearly. There were a few who did this in Spain (Sevilla!) but overall it was rare. Take the guy at the Alhambra, apparently he wanted me to put my bag on his scanner the second I came in the room, and it sounded likesffghjkkkjhhhjjjhhjjh bolsa, but then his colleague thankfully was a little better communicating with a non-native speaker and spoke more slowly and clearly. Many have said that Spanish speakers can always understand other Spanish speakers but I definitely disagree with that, as Spain people told me they cannot understand Latin American speakers and vice versa, and a lot of people tend to have problems with the Argentinians/Chileans. In fact, I encountered that quite a bit in Spain when I was enunciating my words very clearly, they are just not used to that, and they would be the ones saying “que? Como?” and not me. When I would slightly attempt to smoosh the words more like they do, it would be more what they expect and it would get a touch better. I also found it curious in Valencia that their Spanish (there they speak their own dialect of Catalan language first) tends to mimic Argentinian or similar because I heard a lot of “Sha” sound like bolsha instead of bolsa.
As others have said, Cuban and Dominican can be very challenging. I remember the first time hearing Cubans speak when a group of doctors were visiting out clinic in Honduras and I was floored. They took the award for fastest speech for sure! The problem with them too is their English was very funky too so overall it was difficult to communicate. Yes, the Hondurans could barely understand them, so it is definitely true that Spanish speakers from various countries can have difficulty understanding each other. Dominican Spanish is challenging to me because of the speed and overall pronunciation...it’s hard to explain but they definitely have their own flavor with how they say most words. Puerto Rican is kind of hit or miss for me, generally I’d say I get 80% but it depends on the speaker of course.
This is not singular to Spanish--my husband tells me he has great difficulty understanding Swiss German, as well as dialects of Baden and Bayerische (southern Germany) in which maybe he gets one in 20 words. That is how I felt much of the time in Andalucia, like listening to a guy at a restaurant I was lucky if I got one in 20 words.
I did find in my conversations with Spaniards they have a superiority complex--they say Castillan IS Spanish and the other countries just speak funny. I did find it interesting that most of the time they called it Castellano versus Espanol, I guess to delineate from Catalan, Basque, etc. See all items with this value
As others have said, Cuban and Dominican can be very challenging. I remember the first time hearing Cubans speak when a group of doctors were visiting out clinic in Honduras and I was floored. They took the award for fastest speech for sure! The problem with them too is their English was very funky too so overall it was difficult to communicate. Yes, the Hondurans could barely understand them, so it is definitely true that Spanish speakers from various countries can have difficulty understanding each other. Dominican Spanish is challenging to me because of the speed and overall pronunciation...it’s hard to explain but they definitely have their own flavor with how they say most words. Puerto Rican is kind of hit or miss for me, generally I’d say I get 80% but it depends on the speaker of course.
This is not singular to Spanish--my husband tells me he has great difficulty understanding Swiss German, as well as dialects of Baden and Bayerische (southern Germany) in which maybe he gets one in 20 words. That is how I felt much of the time in Andalucia, like listening to a guy at a restaurant I was lucky if I got one in 20 words.
I did find in my conversations with Spaniards they have a superiority complex--they say Castillan IS Spanish and the other countries just speak funny. I did find it interesting that most of the time they called it Castellano versus Espanol, I guess to delineate from Catalan, Basque, etc. See all items with this value