Do Hispanic Latin Americans understand Spanish from Spain?
Item
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issuer
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Quora
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Language
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English
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Date Accepted
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11/29/19
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Title
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Do Hispanic Latin Americans understand Spanish from Spain?
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list of contributors
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Alvaro Fernandez
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content
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Yes, they do, provided the Spaniard does not have too thick an accent. Some accents and intonations in Spain that I find particularly annoying and my grandparents are from Spain for the most part are those were the Spaniard speaks very softly and very quickly. Combined with a slightly different emphasis on syllables this makes understanding somebody rather difficult.
in a similar vein a friend of mine from grad school is African American and from the countryside of Arkansas. I had difficulty understanding him at first. His wife was also from Arkansas , but she was more from the city and there was really no trouble understanding her at all.
The problem was the accent of my African-American friend ate up consonants and overemphasized parts of words that I was not used to.
Same thing happens when somebody from for example Madrid goes to Latin America and speaks in a soft clipped and extremely fast voice.
