Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

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piotr
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby piotr » Mon Dec 19, 2022 5:30 pm

Paul_Moechner2022 wrote:Oh that is so cool! That's exactly how it is in the United States. I spent most of my life moving around and lived as far west as Colorado and as far east as Georgia. I can tell you that when I moved from Colorado to northern Georgia, the northern Georgian southern accents were so thick it took a month for me to start understand what people were saying even though they were speaking english. it's even worse in Southern Louisiana. Most Americans don't understand a word that they are saying even though it's english haha.

I don't want to make an off-topic here but I'd love to here more about your experience... As I told you, Spanish dialects are simply like English dialects. You will mostly understand it in the writing although certain words vary from country to country. The case of the spoken language is far more complex due to the variety of "accents" or even colloquialisms.

You, Paul, being American, have experienced difficulties moving around the US. Now, think: if you ask a non-native speaker of English (e.g., someone from Poland), that person is very likely to swear he can understand all types of English, from the USA, New Zealand, England, just everywhere on the planet no matter what!!! Here, on the Internet, you'll easily meet non-natives of Spanish, with very limited Spanish skills, swearing they can "understand" any dialect of Spanish... But it isn't the same to understand a television presenter or an Uruguayan Spanish teacher thoroughly (and somewhat oddly) pronouncing every single word and to use Spanish in real life. :roll:

Paul_Moechner2022 wrote:I too am living in southern part of Mexico. I'm about 20 miles from the Guadalajara international airport in a town either called Zapopan or Jalisco or both, I'm still figuring that out lol. In about a year I will be moving to a place called Orizaba which is in a state I think is called Veracruz if I'm spelling that correctly and that's where my permanent home in Mexico will be hopefully.

As my Spanish is Colombian, I'm not an expert on Mexican Spanish. I can only tell you that in Mexico the coastal dialects (e.g., Veracruz) typically differ quite much from what most people have in mind talking about the "Mexican Spanish" and the type of accent you can most often hear in television which is typically more inland.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:55 pm

For different Mexican accents and for different Spanish accents in general, Youtube is your friend. Search for, say, Mexican accents.
Pronunciation of some letters differs throughout the Hispanic world, too. Again, see Youtube.
Slang perhaps varies most of all and can make Spanish of one region incomprehensible to other Spanish speaking regions. I hear that movies about drugs use lots of slang, but I don't watch them so I can't confirm that.
Your task I suppose will be to learn and get used to the pronunciation, accent and slang of where you live, and if they talk in a different way in Madrid or Buenos Aires or Lima or Chihuahua, it will be irrelevant, no?
Finally, in my few and brief travels to northern and central Mexico and to central and southern Spain, nothing seemed especially incomprehensible to me. But, everyone's experience may differ.
Que lo pase bien!
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby dgc1970 » Mon Dec 19, 2022 7:21 pm

[quote="Paul_Moechner2022"][/quote]

This site can be tricky to sign into. Sometimes you have to enter your name and password and a message pops up saying that you have exceeded the max amount of login attempts. Just log in again (even after being told you have exceeded the maximum amount of attempts) and enter your name and password again but this time you must answer a question designed to thwart bots. I hope this works for you.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby piotr » Mon Dec 19, 2022 9:02 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Finally, in my few and brief travels to northern and central Mexico and to central and southern Spain, nothing seemed especially incomprehensible to me. But, everyone's experience may differ.
Que lo pase bien!

"que LO pases bien" is the Spanish of Spain; "que LA pases bien" is the Spanish of Mexico:
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads ... en.603906/
Of course, you will understand both versions but small differences of this kind can be quite numerous... ;)

@MorkTheFiddle, I suppose that either (a) your Spanish is rather advanced or else (b) for whatever reason you had a limited contact with the "real" Spanish of southern Spain during your brief travels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bhRfT1ISlA
Just notice how different the girl and the boy vs. the TV presenter sound! They sound like speaking a different Spanish from that of the TV presenter but they're all from the same place.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby piotr » Mon Dec 19, 2022 10:04 pm

By the way... According to my computer program (v1.7.0):

lngcnv --ipa --spa "¡Qué la pases bien!"

Bogotá, CO:

kɛ lɐ pɐɬ̻e̞l͡ʒ bje̞n

Leticia, CO:

kɛ̝ læ̈ pæ̈ɬ̻e̽l͡ʒ bjẽ̞ŋ

Medellín, CO:

kʰe̞ˑ lɐ pɐz̺ez̺ bjẽŋ

Pasto, CO:

kɛ̈ː læ̈ pæ̈ɬ̻ɜl͡ʒ βjɜn

Quibdó, CO:

kɛ̈ˑ lɐ pɐs̻ɜz̥ βʲɜ̃ŋ

Santa Marta, CO:

k̬ɜ læ̈ pæ̈s̻ɜ̝h̥ βjɜ̝̃ŋ

Bilbao, ES:

kɛ̈ lɐ̝ pɐ̝s̺ə̟s̬ βʲə̟̃ŋ

Cádiz, ES:

k̬ɜ̟ lɐ̝ pɐ̝s̻ɜ βjɜ̃ŋ

Madrid, ES:

kɛ lɐ pɐs̺ɛ̝s̬ βjɛ̝n

Ciudad de México, MX:

kɛ̈ l̠ʌ pʌɬ̻ɛ̽ɬ̬ βʲɛ̽n

In the forthcoming v1.8.0 there will be 14 dialects of Spanish and lots of technical and linguistic enhancements! :D
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby Kullman » Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:10 am

Living in a spanish country, the only things you need to learn spanish are:

1 - Some knowledge about the general language grammar, and some vocabulary. It really doesn't matter if it's uruguayan, mexican, or spaniard variants, as we generally understand each other just fine.

2 - Going in the wild and trying to use your basics in stores, bars and cafes... You will find than we, spanish natives, really love when people try to learn our language, and most mexicans will correct your mistakes gladly when you speak with them, sometimes with a giggle (there are some really funny mistakes), but always with the utmost respect for your interest of learning spanish.

3 - Keep trying to improve your knowledge with books, TV shows, and courses. Don't stop when you can understand and be understood... Or you will be the "gringo" all your life...

If the uruguayan course works for you, keep going... the professor have a mild accent, for a uruguayan, so It would be fine.

Let me stress this. There are uruguayans working in every spanish country, and we all understand them perfectly.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:53 pm

piotr wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Finally, in my few and brief travels to northern and central Mexico and to central and southern Spain, nothing seemed especially incomprehensible to me. But, everyone's experience may differ.
Que lo pase bien!

"que LO pases bien" is the Spanish of Spain; "que LA pases bien" is the Spanish of Mexico:
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads ... en.603906/
Of course, you will understand both versions but small differences of this kind can be quite numerous... ;)

@MorkTheFiddle, I suppose that either (a) your Spanish is rather advanced or else (b) for whatever reason you had a limited contact with the "real" Spanish of southern Spain during your brief travels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bhRfT1ISlA
Just notice how different the girl and the boy vs. the TV presenter sound! They sound like speaking a different Spanish from that of the TV presenter but they're all from the same place.


First, I learned the expression as 'Que lo pase bien,' probably from a learning text that came with dialogues and tapes (!) in a box that had a blue cardboard case. Before writing it here, I confirmed it on the internet, which only confused me by the various ways it can be said. So I went with what I knew.

Second, my Spanish is not advanced and my travels to southern Spain were confined to a brief time in Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada. In one of those towns I remember a clerk in a cafe greeting a customer by saying 'adiós' when he walked into the cafe. The rest of my interactions was turisty stuff.

Third, it has been established that my ears cannot distinguish French accents, so I guess they can't distinguish Spanish accents either, except for the differences between peninsular Spanish and Latin American Spanish 'c's' and 'z's' I guess. Barthelona, and most recently, by Alba of Alba Learning (I wonder who she is), Julio Cortáthar.

But to note, I can tell the difference between spoken modern Greek and reconstructed ancient Greek, spoken classical and church Latin, and as to be expected among modern English dialects (a few of which are completely incomprehensible to me).

To sum up, the woman in the video sings very well, but the Spanish of the three is just Spanish to me. ;)

And to add to the OP, IMHO discussions about the various differences of Spanish are more confusing than the actual differences themselves.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby piotr » Tue Dec 20, 2022 9:45 pm

This is perhaps my last post in this thread as my posts are already quite numerous, controversial (every time I post on the forum :| ), and this discussion can only lead to nowhere. As I wrote in my first post, it all "depends" on what we me by "to understand" and the type of speech we have in mind. Also, a detailed explanation of my personal viewpoint would costs me a lot of time and effort (especially writing this in English).

But, I just must respond to this:
Kullman wrote:Let me stress this. There are uruguayans working in every spanish country, and we all understand them perfectly.

Yes, you are right and yes, quite obviously you're telling us the truth. ;) HOWEVER, your argument is weak and misleading. :?

I've met several native speakers of Spanish (mostly Colombians) living abroad... And this is my experience:

I met a Colombian girl who had lived 10 years in Mexico, and had just recently came back Colombia. (1) Her speech was strikingly clear--it may be really, really hard to meet a Colombian speaking a so amazingly clear way unless he/she is some kind of a TV presenter. (2) BUT, neither her pronunciation, nor the vocabulary she used were Colombian. She abundantly used Mexican words, and her pronunciation was Mexican for the most part. More interestingly, she was completely UNAWARE of speaking Mexican Spanish. We were arguing (rather hard) as after having spent 10 years in Mexico she so firmly believed that her accent was "Colombian and neutral". Finally, I made a phonetic transcription of a piece of her speech based on a recording and showed her, sound by sound, consonant by consonant, vowel by vowel, how her speech compares to that typical of her original town in Colombia and that of Mexico City. For the most part, her pronunciation was neither "Colombian" nor "neutral" or anything like that but simply Mexican... :roll: And she was amazed to discover that! :mrgreen:

I met another Colombian girl, who had lived for about 6 years or so in Uruguay, studying at the university. Once again, her speech was anormally clear and clearly non-Colombian. And once again, for whatever reason, she firmly believed she spoke Colombian. I think either (a) she was so proud of being Colombian that she couldn't admit her accent was no longer Colombian or (b) she was seriously unaware of the sounds coming out from her mouth. That girl had a strong character so that there was little to no place for discussion about whether or not her accent was Colombian... ;) Despite I can distinguish between twenty or more regional accents from different parts of Colombia, I would never ever identify her speech as Colombian. Her speech was very clear, but so odd, I'd be unable to guess was continent she was from... :shock:

I met another Colombian... Living in Poland. I don't remember how many years she had spent in Poland when I met her, but she was living with a Cuban and working for Spaniards in some kind of a Spanish restaurant. In contrast to the first two girls from this story, that one was perfectly aware of no longer speaking Colombian. :D I remember she had fun talking with me because, as she said, "I was using words from her childhood"--Colombian words she no longer uses, words which are not understood by Cubans and Spaniards. I've never talked to her boss but I can easily imagine her boss saying "We are working with Colombians and Cubans, here in Poland, and we perfectly understand each other." :lol:

These three Colombians LEARNT to speak a clear, unnatural way non-Colombians can understand without effort. If you say "Let me stress this. There are uruguayans working in every spanish country, and we all understand them perfectly.", what does it really prove :?:

On the contrary, in at least several occasions, I talked with native speakers of Spanish complaining about their inability to understand the spoken language from other regions. Mexicans having problems in Chile or a Venezuelan having lots of problems in Spain during the first several months--some of the examples coming to my mind.

The reality about Spain is not that an average Spaniard perfectly understands the speech of Uruguay. The reality is that an average Spaniard cannot even distinguish between Uruguayans, Paraguayans, etc., and has virtually no linguistic knowledge of any kind. Even worse, in Spain, many (most?) people call Mexicans "South Americans". :lol:

But the linguistic situation is more complex. I once worked in a scientific project in a Uruguayan-Brazilian team; I was the only team member coming from Europe (Poland). We communicated generally via e-mail without the use of English--everyone was writing in his/her own language: Brazilians in Portuguese, Uruguayans and me in Spanish. We were discussing scientific things and the like and believe me or not, that multilingual communication was perfect. 8-)

I'd even say I can understand a spoken Portuguese without much effort as long as the speech is "clear".

This may look contradictory but one hand I can defend the thesis that distant dialects of Spanish may be hardly understood and on the other had I can understand Portuguese and Italian, which are considered separated languages :!: Because everything just DEPENDS, depends on the definitions, depends on the kind of speech, etc.
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby rdearman » Tue Dec 20, 2022 10:36 pm

piotr wrote:without the use of English--everyone was writing in his/her own language: Brazilians in Portuguese, Uruguayans and me in Spanish

Shouldn't you have been using Polish?
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Re: Moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. Need advice.

Postby piotr » Tue Dec 20, 2022 10:43 pm

rdearman wrote:
piotr wrote:without the use of English--everyone was writing in his/her own language: Brazilians in Portuguese, Uruguayans and me in Spanish

Shouldn't you have been using Polish?

I should! :D
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