Ch 47 · Lesson 25Spanish · Chapter 47 · Lesson 25 · Themed review
El español en el mundo
Twenty countries and , one language: the main accents, the everyday words that change from country to country, and which Spanish to learn.
Practise this lesson
20-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Twenty countries, one language, and no single right accent
Spanish is the official language of twenty countries, plus Puerto Rico, and the mother tongue of close to five hundred million people. Mexico alone has more than twice as many speakers as Spain. There is no that is the real one and the rest dialects: educated speakers from Madrid, Bogotá and Buenos Aires understand each other without effort, and each thinks the others have the accent.
The main varieties
| Variety | Where | What you will notice |
|---|---|---|
| Peninsular | Spain | c and z said like English th in most of the country |
| Mexican and Central American | Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, , Nicaragua, | |
| Caribbean | Cuba, the Dominican Republic, , Panama, coastal Venezuela and Colombia's Caribbean coast | fast, with the s at the end of a syllable softened or dropped |
| Andean | highland Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia | slower and very clear; |
| Rioplatense | , Uruguay | ll and y said like the s in English pleasure, or even like sh |
| Chilean | quick, and a large vocabulary of its own |
Paraguay, Venezuela's interior and Equatorial Guinea, the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa, have their own colour too.
Same thing, different word
| English | Spain | Mexico | Argentina |
|---|---|---|---|
| car | | | |
| mobile phone | | | |
| computer | | | |
| juice | | | |
| potato | | papa | papa |
None of these causes real confusion: everyone knows the other words from films and television. Chapter 48 goes into the pattern.
Which Spanish should you learn?
The one you will use. If you are going to Mexico, listen to Mexicans; if you live in Spain, learn properly. The core grammar is the same everywhere; the big differences are , , and how often the perfect tense is used. The course audio uses voices from Spain, and word pages show the Latin American pronunciation alongside wherever the two differ.