Which Spanish accent do you prefer? - Page 2

My wife's father was extremeño and the poor chap went to his grave without me understanding hardly a word he said in spite of spending his last fifty years in Barcelona. My wife just said it was just because I'm English, I didn't agree.

Anyway one day we were all in a Barcelona taxi and father-in-law was chatting away nineteen to the dozen to the taxista and when he paused for breath the taxista said "¡Perdone señor, es usted extremeño?", he replied "Pues sí ¿porqué?".

"¡Porque no entiendo ni siquiera una palabra que usted dice!".

I was sitting in the back almost choking to death trying not to laugh out loud. ¡Mi señora estuvo furiosa!

I suppose this ought to be in "Which Spanish Accent Do You Prefer?" - perhaps somebody might move it?

Forgive my Britiish pedantry but "Which Spanish accent do you prefer?" is more elegant English. I don't wish to be picky, but this is a language learning forum.

Thank you Angelica.

One day, i hope to tell the difference between all those accents.

I don't know how to multi-quote, so i'm going to do it like this.

@Sancho Panther

Thank you. :)

Don't worry about identifying all kinds of accents... that's an impossible task even for a native Spanish speaker. ;)
However, understanding people despite some of their accents (not talking about every colloquialism and regionalism), will prove that your communication skills are strong. :)

This reminds me of something. Years ago I was taking an Italian course at a local community college aqui in California. I told a friend from Argentina I was taking an Italian class. He laughed and said something like oh, but why don't you take a foreign language like French or some thing else that is more difficult. Italian is too easy. He didn't speak Italian per se but said he could understand just about anything in Italian because he was from Argentina. 3/4 of the people in Argentina are from Italy or of Italian origin. Sure there are people from Germany, Spain and other countries but most are Italian. Add to this that Italy and Spain are so similar any way. In 2007 I went to school in Italy with some people from Argentina who were not of Italian origin but they said they still felt like they were Italian from being Argentinian.

This is right, indeed.
In Argentina, 24 millions are of Italian origin which is like 60% of the population.

I always tell people that Argentina is after all is said and done the country most like Italy outside of Italy. There are 21 countries that speak Spanish but just one that speaks Italian. Namely Italy. Sure there is an Italian speaking part of Switzerland but no other country outside of Italy speaks Italian making Argentina the country most like Italy.

@Villa, true, but not accurate :thinking: (I guess I say "yes but no...") :rolleyes:
Don't forget Libya and Eritrea... Somalia,
(Albania, Croatia, Slovenia...) They also speak and use Italian...

See what wiki has to say...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language

Che/Qué cosa? True J.P. Libya is a former colony of Italy but their
culture doesn't have much of Italy oggi. "Although Italian was the primary language since colonial rule
Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole languare of the country." Italians have never been expelled out of Argentina. Libya is an Arab country while
Argentina is a Catholic country like Italy. Albania is a Muslem country. Well 70% Muslem. Only 10% Catholic. You forgot to mention Ethiopia which was under Italian rule also. I met a girl who spoken fluent Italian from Ethiopia. Her mother was Ethiopian and her father Italian. Actually she grew up in Italy not Ethiopia.
Any way J.P. you do make some good points but after living in Italy and being around people from Argentina all my life I can tell you people from Argentina are very culturally Italian in their speech and the way they behave. Uruguay by the way is 42% of Italian origin. The people of Uruguay sound very much like the people from Argentina.

Eh, Villa, Villa, pillín, pillín... ;)

No intention to open a big discussion or debate here, but keep reading right after that statement:

Nevertheless, Italian remains an important language in the education and economic sectors in Libya. In Eritrea, Italian is a principal language in commerce and the capital city Asmara still has an Italian-language school.[17] Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but declined after government, educational and economic infrastructure was destroyed in the Somali Civil War. Italian remains spoken as a second language by the elderly and educated and is also used in the new Federal Government of Somalia.[18][19] Italian was also used in administration in Ethiopia when the country was briefly occupied by Italy from 1936 to 1941; nowadays, the language is spoken only by older people, because it is no longer taught in schools.

J.Pablo, I'm glad you brought this up about the Libya Italian connection. Years ago and I do mean many years ago I met two brothers who were born and raised in Libya when Libya was an Italian colony. They were sons of Italian immigrants to Libya of Italian origin. They had never been to Italy yet spoke fluent Italian. Both of them spoke Spanish too. One of them was more fluent in Spanish because he had married a native Spanish speaker. They said that Spanish was easy for them to learn.

The other part to this story is that there is a very interesting movie called "Lion of the Desert"(1981) that tells the story of an Italian invasion of Libya in 1929. The movie stars one of my favorite actors Mexican/American Anthony Quinn who is half Irish. Ironically Libyan leader Moummar Quaddafi financed this desert epic with a buget of $35 million which must have been a lot of money then. General Rodolfo Graziana is played by Oliver Reed, who is trying to gain a foothold on Libyan soil under direct orders from the Italian facist dictator Mussolini (Rod Steiger). This gets even more interesting since the country of Italy actully banned this movie in Italy and Anthony Quinn was living in Italy at the time married to an Italian citizen and had Italian children there. Wonder how that all played out since Anthony Quinn was so big on living in Italy and had played in several Italian movies including the very very classical Italian movie called La Strada.

My wife's father was extremeño.

It just occured to me that most hispanophones on here are not actually Spanish so I should clarify that extremeño is the name given to residents of the western Spanish region called Extremadura. All my wife's family are from there.

About the only bit of extremeño I learned was from an elderly aunt - "¿Keeez, quieref un gui-qui?" (¿Keith, quieres un whisky?). I learned that very quickly, and the and the answer was always "¡Sí por favor!".

"Sky" satellite tv used to transmit Spanish national tv in Britain until a couple of years ago, so we were able to watch Spanish and Latin American films. One I remember was set in Buenos Aires and to my ignorant ears it sounded like Brazilian people speaking Spanish. The lilt and rhythm of the accent were so similar.

The Latin American film I most enjoyed was "Bombon el Perro", I loved that - a cinematic classic, a real feel-good ending!

Those are myths and fantasies coming from stretching facts like having been of Italian origin 45% or immigrants arrived from 1870 to 1960 and having a noticeable lesser participation of people from Spanish and Amerindian descent in mid-class urban neighbourhoods.

The simple fact is that in spite of immigration there was a local existing population and Italians (together with British, Scandinavian, French, and Hungarians and the Slavonic peoples of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire) have the lowest natality rates so their contribution to the Argentine population is decreasing or at best stagnant.

If you could make a genetic profile of the Argentine population today, you might extract a 20 or 22% of "pure Italians" from it, with some 45 to 50% of the total population having some Italian ancestry, including Maradona and D'Elía.

Low natality, even with multi ethnic ancestry, has almost wipe out here groups, strong long time ago. For instance, before 1914 some 15% of immigrants had Austro-Hungarian passport. If you exclude some Italians from Veneto prior to 1870, you can imagine the important contribution to the population make-up. Well, today it's a minimum. During my lifetime a have seen whole families of friends and neighbours of those origins become extinct or being reduced to one or two members.

Just wondering ale if you have ever tratado/hablando con argentinos.

I lived in Italy for two years many years ago and learned to speak Italian of course. Then in 2007 was so fortunate to get a scholarship and go back to Italy to study more the beautiful Italian language. Went back in 2009 to and lived in an all Italian neighborhood where only Italian was spoken. When I would walk down the street many times I had to listen close to see if people were speaking Italian or Spanish. Italian and Spanish are so similar after all is said and done. When I go to any Spanish speaking country and even France they remind me of Italy. Spain after all was a Roman colony for 640 years plus other historical connections. How different can Spain and Italy really be after all. Rather in Spain, Italy, Mexico or Argentina I feel right at home. Now add to the fact that many Italians immigrated to Argentina and now it just magnifies this Italian/Spanish connection.

It's worth to be noted that when Italy became a fascist country in the 20s, US banned immigration from Italy and many Italians went to South America instead, favoring Argentina because the weather there is pretty similar to Italy's weather. Many people from Argentina of Italian origin have gone back to Italy too and then go back to Argentina with more Italian influence than ever.

:rolleyes::D

Another wrong piece of information. Italian and non-Italian immigration into the United States were equally restricted by the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, not by political reasons but because of economical -too much people- and racial -the "wrong" races- motivations.

Italian immigration into Argentina was specially strong in the period 1861 to 1914, when the country's population grew from 1 to 8 million people (and Buenos Aires jumped from 160,000 to 1,400,000 inhabitants). From 1914 on Italian immigration felt to a distant second place behind that coming from Spain. From 1935 to 1950 there were just a couple pulses of Italian immigration -pre and post war- and from 1950 on millions of immigrants (more than 5 millions) have arrived into Argentina but among them Italian were just a few.

So, that fancy theory of yours of the US closing their doors and Argentina getting the leftovers is just a fantasy, as that situation could have just some bearing with the pre and post war immigration pulses coming from Italy into Argentina, which were not dealt better than they were treated in the States, even by Italian nationals, as that immigration came mostly from "Bassa Caldaia" as they liked to say.

I understand what you were writing, but I have taken the liberty of correcting your English, at least to my liking. Amerindian is an OK word I suppose, but currently Native American is the preferred term. Likewise the term natality sounds like English, but birthrate is the term commonly used

Villa,
Argentina isn't the only Latin American country with a sizable Italian population. I have read that Sao Paolo has a big Italian population. In New York, Ecudorian restaurants sometimes have linguine frutta di mare on their menus, and it can be better than similar offerings in Italian restaurants. That leads me to believe that Ecuador also had a role in the Italian diaspora.

Well guess what amigo poli hablando de Ecuador when I was in the city of Perugia, Umbria, Italia for a month in 2007 the town was full of people from Ecuador. A few from Argentina, some from Colombia and even Bolivia and many from Peru but above all most from Ecuador. A friend of mine's sister from Ecuador married an Italian citizen and I stayed with them in 2009 farther north of Perugia. She speaks fluent Italian having lived there for 12 years. She even spoke the dialect. Her Ecuadorian kids are also fluent in Italian.

Actually Brazil has the most Italians but Argentina has the most Italians for percentage of the population. Brazil has some 25 million Italians but Brazil has a total population of some 165 million while Argentina only has 36 million with 24 million people of Italian origin. That is the difference. This is why the people from Argentina speak Spanish with an Italian accent. I know because my ex-girlfriend is from Argentina. I could speak like her because I speak Italian and Spanish. Also my boss and neighbors are from Argentina. Oh and my compadre is from Argentina. Funny thing is he married a Cuban and within a short time she started to speak with the accent of Argentina. And she's black making it all the more interesting.

Why do you insist in spreading false information? I've only participated in this thread because you were posting bull, but I looks like you'll never learn.

No, it's not wrong.
In Brazil, +25 million are of Italian descent, which is the largest population of Italian background outside Italy itself. It doesn't mean they are all linked to Italian society, though.

Anyway, this goes off topic.

Es importante saber que todo la Argentina no habla como porteños. Es un gran pais con acentos variables--algunos no tan comprensibles. ¿Han oido una person de Rosario hablar? Personalmente, tuve que concentrar mucho entender dos profesores de escuela primaria de allí--dos pedagogas educadas. En este modo se puede comparar Argentina con EEUU. No todos los estadoundenses hablan como si fuera de Chicago.

"No, it's not wrong.
In Brazil, +25 million are of Italian descent, which is the largest population of Italian background outside Italy itself."

No te sientas mal ale, todos hacemos errores. Just kidding. jajajajajajajaja...