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For a while, I used to hang out in a subreddit for people who are learning Spanish to give advice (I'm a Spaniard). You wouldn't believe the amount of times I
by kace91 7y ago
For a while, I used to hang out in a subreddit for people who are learning Spanish to give advice (I'm a Spaniard).
You wouldn't believe the amount of times I was "corrected" with suggestions that were clearly, blatantly wrong if I didn't outright say that I was a native speaker.
I think it was mainly Americans from Spanish speaking immigrant families who were overconfident on their skills, but it was funny nonetheless.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoHow many of those were folks correcting you were Spanish? I wonder if the folks correcting you just learned a different dialect. For those not familiar, American Spanish diverged significantly from "mainland" Spanish. Even then Mexican Spanish is quite distinct in its own "charming" way from nearly every other Spanish speaking American country. It's not just the vocabulary, even the verb tenses are used differently in different countries. Case in point, the only time I've heard vosotros used outside of school was in a La Polla Records song (ya ahora que?). Or looking for the baños in the Barcelona airport…. The differences are significant enough it's possible you're both right. Whenever I've seen language discussed online lots of people come out of the woodwork defending their own niche regional variations. The comments section on Vanity Fair's Slang School series of youtube videos is a particularly obnoxious example. The videos themselves are great IMO. It's not always that bad though. I was trying to figure out how to differentiate between a banana and a plantain in Spanish (yay spanishdict forums) and I didn't realize just how many different ways there are to say banana/plantain. It's like Eskimos and snow.
- kace91 7y agoNah, I am aware of how broad the Spanish language is, but these were basic mistakes that wouldn't be correct in any dialect. Kinda like how Americans might not know British English vocabulary, yet they know at a glance that "me will spoke English afternoon this" is not correct anywhere.
- loeg 7y agoMaybe it is, in New Zealand!
- inferiorhuman 7y agoYikes, that would be pretty grating. And, yeah, folks love to be pedantic on the intertubes. To be properly obnoxious I'll wonder if that's how those folks were taught to speak/write. In my mind the analogous English situation is when British speakers use me in place of my.