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 form the south. The hardest one to understand is the southern dialect.
Item
issuer
Quora
Language
English
Date Accepted
9/28/20
Title
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 form the south. The hardest one to understand is the southern dialect.
content
This is my perspective as someone born in Ecuador. I usually have little to no problems understanding most other Spanish speakers. Caribbean speakers from Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are very easy for me to understand, contrary to what many people say about them being incomprehensible. I guess because I am used to their dialects. Mexicans pose no problem for me at all, even if they speak with their own regional slang. I honestly think every one in Latin America has a passive understanding of Mexican Spanish because we've been watching their TV shows and films for many decades. Sometimes I think I have a harder time understanding my fellow countrymen than these first three nationalities. Here is a list of those countries who give me a bit of a hard time.
1. Argentina: If they speak neutral Spanish I understand them perfectly. Even if they slip in a few words from their lexicon I understand them fine. It is when they speak fast that I become totally lost. In the past I used to watch the Argentine channel Telefe, specifically a nightly comedy show that would air on their network. Whenever the cast would speak fast or do their usual comedy sketches, I was lost half of the time. It literally almost sounded like another language to me. My cousins for some reason had no trouble whatsoever understanding them and would laugh while I had a blank face on me 80 percent of the time. It could be that they were more used to that variety of Spanish than I was.
2. Chile: I can understand them better than Argentines but they are still tricky. They speak really fast and many do not enunciate their words really well. Plus, they have a lot of colorful slang on their speech which leaves me scratching my head from time to time.
3. Cuba: The ones that have some education and who enunciate and speak a bit slow I can understand with no problem even if they use slang. It's the ones that are less educated and possibly from rural Cuba that I have a hard time with. To me they sound like they speak with cotton balls in their mouth, plus they speak super fast.
4. Spain: Spanish accents usually give me no problem, even if they use their slang. I do, however, have a really hard time with the Andalusian accent. It sounds like a more extreme, European version of Chilean Spanish. I can hardly make out 2 out of every five words coming out of their mouth. I honestly have an easier time understanding the Galician language.
1. Argentina: If they speak neutral Spanish I understand them perfectly. Even if they slip in a few words from their lexicon I understand them fine. It is when they speak fast that I become totally lost. In the past I used to watch the Argentine channel Telefe, specifically a nightly comedy show that would air on their network. Whenever the cast would speak fast or do their usual comedy sketches, I was lost half of the time. It literally almost sounded like another language to me. My cousins for some reason had no trouble whatsoever understanding them and would laugh while I had a blank face on me 80 percent of the time. It could be that they were more used to that variety of Spanish than I was.
2. Chile: I can understand them better than Argentines but they are still tricky. They speak really fast and many do not enunciate their words really well. Plus, they have a lot of colorful slang on their speech which leaves me scratching my head from time to time.
3. Cuba: The ones that have some education and who enunciate and speak a bit slow I can understand with no problem even if they use slang. It's the ones that are less educated and possibly from rural Cuba that I have a hard time with. To me they sound like they speak with cotton balls in their mouth, plus they speak super fast.
4. Spain: Spanish accents usually give me no problem, even if they use their slang. I do, however, have a really hard time with the Andalusian accent. It sounds like a more extreme, European version of Chilean Spanish. I can hardly make out 2 out of every five words coming out of their mouth. I honestly have an easier time understanding the Galician language.
list of contributors
Juan Sarmiento