tomcat

That's why it would be good to know. As I said, the time I got "scolded" was because I mentioned not to use drugs from India or China because their safety and efficacy are always suspect and can be dangerous if you are depending upon them for cure. This response came about because the poster was talking about the level of health care in this country and I mentioned that the drug sources are a more serious problem than the socialized medicine plan proposed. Insurance and health-care for all is useless if the drugs are not working and patients are dying from cheap, imported generics.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

In related news ... Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

While living in a little town in Guatemala many years ago they got a new Spanish priest in. As in from Spain. There were complaints that many people - especially the Mayans for whom Spanish (if they spoke it) was a second language - could not understand him. In Guatemalan Spanish they also generally do not use the personal tu verb sense. With my lack of language skills I would have liked subtitles!

berchman Loc: South Central PA

Just short of graduating college, I spent the summer at the University of Mexico in Mexico City to make up the few credits I lacked for graduation. At the first session of my Mexican folk dance class (I wasn't using this for credit.) a non English speaking girl chose me as her partner. We became friends to the point that I was invited to dinner with her family. Her father engaged me in conversation about politics and other serious subjects that I really had to struggle to understand and reply. This was after two years of Spanish in high school and a summer course in Spanish conversation and talking to my Mexican friend.

When it was time to return home to NYC I took a flight that allowed an overnight stop in Havana. Castro had taken over a few months before and he was still being celebrated as a hero in the U.S. Anyway, I tried to ask about a bus from the airport to the city and I used what I thought was the Spanish word for bus, "camión." I couldn't make myself understood. In Cuba the word was "gaugua." Cuban Spanish was more staccato than Mexican Spanish and dropped final vowels. I really couldn't understand much at all.

Cookie223 Loc: New Jersey

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Now that kind of comment can get you banned! A bit touchy, are we?

Stan

tomcat

Their criteria for politics is baffling to me. This is not a political forum, but comments from posters are allowed through

Abo

An old flame from Madrid often pronouced "S" as if she had a lisp...
"Siesta" was "Thiethta".

However, when she spoke English "S" was always pronounced "S".

whatdat Loc: Del Valle, Tx.

I grew up in South Texas about 7 miles from the border with Mexico. Took two years of Spanish in high school & was in the Spanish National Honor Society. Could read it fine;could not converse it worth a hoot. Reasons: it was taught in Castilian Spanish while people there spoke colloquial Spanish (TexMex); plus, most teachers did not speak Spanish so did not allow anyone to speak in Spanish as they didn’t know if you might be talking about them.

Quim

In Castillian, C is pronounced as a sharp TH when placed in front of a E or I.
When C is placed in front of an A, O or U is pronounced as a K
Z is pronounced always as a sharp TH in front of any vowel or at the end of any word.

In Mexican pronunciation the sharp TH sound is always substituted for an S
I do not know the origin of this, but in some areas of Spain, like the Canary islands, this difference also occurs.
In Spain there are several languages -(Catalan, Gallego, Castillian) that are directly derived from Latin. They are not dialects of each other and have different grammars, pronunciations, etc.

Julian Loc: Sarasota, FL

Simply Castilian Spanish. Surprised you asked. Not Mexican but standard Spanish from Castile.

htbrown Loc: San Francisco Bay Area

The Spanish lisp originated once upon a time when a prince had a lisp. The courtiers, not wanting to embarrass him, all affected a lisp too. The lisp became a status symbol because all the courtiers were doing it, so everyone else started doing it too. Add a few hundred years and everyone in Madrid does it. It's prevalent in other parts of Spain too, but most noticeable in Madrid.

Caveat: I lived in Spain for about three months in 1987. This was the tale I was told by the people I worked with. I have not done the research to verify it.

bertloomis Loc: Fort Worth, Texas

I once heard a story that there was a king of Spain who had a lisp. And since the king was not wrong...

Lyn Buchanan Loc: Alamogordo, New Mexico

There are probably more dialects to Spanish than there are to English - hence, many different ways to say, use, or pronounce the same words. When I was teaching German in college, I was in the admin office one day and one of the Spanish teachers came up to me and, with his very strong accent, said, "Leen! (my name is Lyn) I chus got some watermelon coffee. You must taste it! It's very good!"

I said, "Watermelon coffee?" I could just see the idea of ground up watermelon seeds being brewed into a drink.

He answered, "Chess! My seester chust sent it to me - straight from my home in Watamala!"

I love the Spanish language and the people, the cultures, the food, "the whole enchalada."

nikon_jon Loc: Northeast Arkansas

When I took Spanish in high school the teacher said the 'official' Castilian Spanish pronounces the esses with a lisp. The story was, and I have no idea how to prove this, that some member of the royal family in times past pronounced the ess with a lisp, so everyone imitated and it became part of the official language. To some that might seem silly, but consider this. Ever heard the word normalcy? The proper English word is normality, but in a speech Warren Gamaliel Harding, one of our presidents from past history use the word normalcy instead of normality, so it became part of official American English.