{"id":9446,"date":"2016-02-19T11:10:29","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/?p=9446"},"modified":"2016-03-02T15:36:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T20:36:06","slug":"european-and-latin-american-spanish-with-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/european-and-latin-american-spanish-with-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"European and Latin American Spanish (with videos!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning!<\/p>\n

Today we would like to talk about European Spanish (basically, from Spain) and Latin American Spanish <\/a>(including 20 countries from North and South America:\u00a0Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay\u00a0and\u00a0Venezuela, in alphabetical order).<\/p>\n

\"Green:<\/a>

Green: Spanish; Orange: Brazilian Portuguese; Blue: French; Grey: other languages<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course, differences in vocabulary between a speaker from Mexico and one from Chile may actually make a conversation impossible, as we already saw in this video Qu\u00e9 dif\u00edcil es hablar en espa\u00f1ol<\/a>, but for commercial purposes mainly, Latin American Spanish is an accepted variant of the Spanish language. The language learning, the audiovisual and the localization industries actually try as hard as they can to fit the 22 language variants in one of these two categories (European or Latin America).<\/p>\n

The main and most obvious difference is in pronunciation: European Spanish retains the zeta<\/em> \/\u03b8\/ sound while America uses plain ese<\/em>\u00a0\/s\/ sounds. Another important difference lies in verb conjugations. European Spanish uses vosotros <\/em>for second person plural (Vosotros estudi\u00e1is espa\u00f1ol<\/em>), while in America we use ustedes <\/em>(Ustedes estudian espa\u00f1ol<\/em>). This is a huge difference, anyone will guess where you studied Spanish<\/a> if you use one in the context of the other.<\/p>\n

The last difference we will mention today is in the use of verb tenses. In Latin America, we can use the simple past [pret\u00e9rito perfecto simple in Spanish] to refer to an event that has actually just happened, even two seconds ago. In Spain, they refer to this kind of events (in the recent past) with a\u00a0past perfect tense [pret\u00e9rito perfecto compuesto in Spanish]. Some examples could be:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Latin American Spanish\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\nEuropean Spanish\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00a0 Hoy fui<\/span> a comprar chicles y luego pas\u00e9<\/span> por el parque.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\nHoy he ido<\/span> a comprar chicles y luego he pasado<\/span> por el parque.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00a0-Te llam\u00f3<\/span> Pedro por tel\u00e9fono.
\n– \u00bfY qu\u00e9 dijo<\/span>?
\n– Dijo<\/span> que no vendr\u00eda\u00a0a cenar.<\/td>\n		\n

– Te ha llamado<\/span> Pedro por tel\u00e9fono.
\n– \u00bfY qu\u00e9 ha dicho<\/span>?
\n– Ha dicho<\/span> que no vendr\u00e1 a cenar.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Translation and dubbing of The Simpsons<\/em> is done for two markets: Latin American and Spanish.\u00a0You may remember an episode where Bart Simpson becomes famous with a punch line: “I didn’t do it”. Here you have the two versions. Compare and decide which sounds better in Spanish!<\/p>\n

Here’s\u00a0the original<\/strong>:<\/p>\n