Which Spanish dialect should you learn?
Should you learn Latin American Spanish or Spanish from Spain? Where should you learn Spanish: in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Argentina or Spain? If you are learning Spanish, this is not an easy decision. Especially when you discover that there is not really one Latin American Spanish and there is not really one Spanish from Spain.
0:00 Intro
0:41 Vocabulary differences
2:17 Grammar differences
2:36 Accent differences
3:26 Accents don't follow country borders
4:26 Region-specific sound distinctions
5:04 No country speaks "Neutral Spanish"
5:34 There's only one Spanish language
6:02 Advice for beginners
7:14 Movie dubs caveats
7:28 Outro
Each city has its own way of speaking Spanish. Within Spain there are different varieties of Spanish, within Colombia there are also different varieties, and the same goes within Mexico, within Ecuador, and so on. Among the things that vary from one place to another are vocabulary, grammar and accent.
As for grammar, in general, we all use more or less the same grammar, but Chile, Argentina and Spain have some verb conjugations that are only used in these places. And U.S. Spanish has an English-influenced grammar.
Now let's talk about accent variations. Accent has two components: Pronunciation and prosody. Pronunciation, obviously, is how we produce each vowel and each consonant. Prosody is the music of each accent. Each accent has its own song, so to speak. In other words, when we speak, we are singing, even if we don't realize it.
Within each country there are different accents. For example, in Spain, Madrid has one accent, Seville has another and the Canary Islands have another. Another example: Colombia. There is not just one Colombian accent, but Colombia has an incredible variety of accents: Bogota's, Medellin's, the Coast's, Nariño's and more.
The accents do not follow the borders of the countries: For example, the Andean and Amazonian accents together form a continuum that goes from Colombia to Argentina, passing through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
Something similar happens with the equatorial or coastal accents, which are found on the coasts of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. A characteristic of the equatorial or coastal accents is that the S sometimes becomes a soft H. Pescado becomes pehcado. This also occurs in the accent of the Canary Islands, Spain and also in the Caribbean.
Sometimes there are accents from far away places that are very similar. For example, when I saw this video from the Bully Magnets channel I was 100% sure that they were from Quito, Ecuador. But I was wrong. The Bully Magnets channel is actually from Mexico. It's still hard for me to believe that they are not from Quito, and some Mexican accents can be very similar to Andean accents.
Another example of similar but very distant accents is the accent of Puerto Rico, in the United States, which resembles the accent of the Canary Islands, in Spain.
Some people are going to tell you, "Oh, the accent of such-and-such a country or such-and-such a city is neutral, you have to study with people from that country." That's not true. The neutral accent does not exist in the streets. It is only used in movies dubbed for America. Many people think their way of speaking is "neutral," but they are actually fooling themselves. Accent is like body odor: Only other people can perceive it.
Although Spanish has many dialects, they are not really that different from each other. Spanish is one language, and we can usually understand what a person from another country is saying, especially now that the internet exists and we can watch videos of people from all over the world.
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