No soy vs. No estoy

[Luna Azul]

Originally Posted by Caballero

It's very important because I am interested in language variation. It also improves pronunciation of a language more than anything else, to learn about the prosody in varias varieties of a language. At the moment, I can only distinguish a couple accents of Spanish. Being able to understand how the prosody works is key. Prosody is probably my worst aspect of my accent. I don't know when to go up, and when to go down. And anyway, the accent in that video was very interesting. Also I am interested in vocabulary differences in the different dialects of Spanish.

I can understand that, Caballero, but to analize this video thoroughly would be quite a challenge. There have to be easier ways to do it.

If you already distinguish a couple of accents in Spanish, you're doing extremelly well.. that's about what I can do in English: British and American. Well, Southern too, but I could never tell where in the South.

My husband says "he has a New Jersey accent". Really??.. I can only tell he's neither from the South nor British.

Of course, accentwise English is far more complicated than Spanish....

I'm not sure about that video.. sometimes it sounded Spanish but others it didn't. Fake? probably. How can you tell where fake accent comes from?

It seems Rickie tends to hide his Cuban accent. The guy on the phone sounds more Spanish than Lucy even if she tries to imitate it but then she forgets. All I know is, the accent they used for dubbing those programs in the past was very weird.

I wish I could help more, I really do.

[Caballero]

Yeah I guess prosody is very difficult to describe.

Which words did they use that were different than words that you would use?

[Luna Azul]

Originally Posted by Caballero

Yeah I guess prosody is very difficult to describe.

Which words did they use that were different than words that you would use?

I don't know, I'd have to go through the whole video again.

For starters, I wouldn't use the word "añejo" to describe an old glue. I'd just say "viejo"

I'd say "cigarrillo" instead of "cigarro". To me, "cigarro", or "puro",is a "cigar"

I wouldn't use the 'Pretérito Compuesto' in place of the 'Pretérito'. I don't remember the exact sentence, but Rickie says something like "he encontrado una farmacia....". I'd say "encontré una farmacia".

We hardly use the future in normal language- I don't remember the sentence either but I'll give you examples: "iré a buscar....." We usually say "voy a buscar". "Ella va a comprar...." instead of "ella comprará".

**You wanted comparisons with Mexican Spanish. I'm not Mexican, I have no idea how they'd say those things...

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Caballero: Try just listening to many kinds of accents, so you'll start hearing the differences between them. Even if one could make a manual of pronunciation as a Spaniard or as a Mexican, it would be very hard for the reader to have a real clue on what to do to imitate them.
Btw, try listening to the national accents samples that have been posted at "El hilo de acentos"; on page 5 there is a list of politicians from every Spanish speaking country... you might catch some nuances by listening to some of them.

[Caballero]

Oh, ok, will do.

[Luna Azul]

@ Angelica: that "hilo de acentos" was very interesting. There were no comments from our English speaking friends, it would have been interesting to know what they have to say about it.

We heard three different accents from Colombia there because the person interviewing Álvaro Colom is also Colombian, with a different accent.

It's important to clarify that we can't talk about a "Colombian accent", or a "Mexican accent", an "Argentinian accent", etc, because in each country there are many different accents depending on the regions, as it happens with English and I imagine with every other language. So we're talking about lots and lots of accents, actually.

Tema de nunca acabar..

[Caballero]

I just heard someone from Ecuador speak Spanish.
The most noticeable features were:
-final n's sounded like -ng
-LL sounded sometimes like zh as in pleasure, and sometimes like li (e.g. ellas sounded like eleeahs)