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On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects": > It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence
by rob74 2y ago
On the difference of Chilean Spanish to other "dialects":
> It’s the farthest region from Spain, so the least communicated to the rest of the empire, and hence the one that drifted the most from the homeland.
Er... if you look at the table (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F856b5618-ae2c-4e01-a24a-085144fd9ab5_1456x1009.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_...), Chile has quite a lot of red, but actually its Spanish is closer to the Spanish from Spain than that of other South American countries. So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much?
- alephnerd 2y agoChilean Spanish is heavily influenced by Spanish, German, Italian, and Croat immigrants from a pronunciation and colloquialism standpoint because those were the 4 main immigrant communities to Chile. Also, Spain Spanish is not necessarily "Standard" (Castilian) Spanish.
- rob74 2y agoThat's why I put it in quotes :)
- alephnerd 2y agoSpain Spanish isn't "Standard" Spanish though. The closest thing to "Standard" Spanish is what the RAE prescribes, but no one listens to them. Insurgencies and protests were fought over this fact in Spain during the Francoist and Post-Francoist era (eg. Andalusian, Murcian, Canarian, Leonese)
- melenaboija 2y agoMy opinion as Spaniard and having a chilean close, is that Chilean Spanish is the closest to mine in terms of pronunciation. And to me what makes the biggest difference is not European migration but native words.
- Phrodo_00 2y agoMore than any of that, it's influenced by Mapuzungun in a way other countries just aren't exposed - Argentina's Conquest of the Dessert was more brutal, and is the only other modern country where Mapuche land was.
- colimbarna 2y agoDesert, n, stress on the first syllable, means a place without much rain, but it comes from the notion of being deserted so sometimes it just means an unpopulated area. To desert, v, stress on the second syllable, means to leave/abandon something. Desert, n, stress on the second syllable, is what you deserve "he got his just deserts" Dessert, n, stress on the second syllable, is a sweet course of a meal that follows the main course. It has an extra s because of its etymology not its pronunciation. I'm quite sure this mess was designed to be as confusing as possible.
- Phrodo_00 2y agoThanks, I don't normally make this kind of phonetic mistake. Didn't even notice.
- ivm 2y agoThe main influences are Mapudungun and the Andalusian accent due to many early immigrants coming from that region. Neither German nor others were numerous enough to influence the Chilean dialect, especially in the capital (Germans and Croats mostly got lands in the south).
- flobosg 2y ago> Neither German nor others were numerous enough to influence the Chilean dialect I’ll just say: kuchen, cachái.
- ivm 2y agoBut cachái doesn't come from English-speaking immigrants. It's just one of the many English loanwords present in modern languages. And despite living in Valdivia –a city that once had street signs in German– I can't recall any other German loanwords aside from kuchen.
- flobosg 2y ago> It's just one of the many English loanwords present in modern languages. Which other modern language uses cachái, with the same spelling, in the same context as Chile? > I can't recall any other German loanwords aside from kuchen. Still influenced the dialect, didn’t it?
- ivm 2y agoI was trying to say that loanwords are generally present in languages. Modern German itself has many weirdly used English words without any immigrants to bring them in the first place. > Still influenced the dialect, didn’t it? A few food names do not qualify as "influenced the dialect" for me. Mapudungun did influence the Chilean dialect, but German did not. I generally find the "German influence in the south" very exaggarated and a cover-up for the fact that the primary influences in the south have always come from Mapuche culture. But there's a broad veneration of Germans and other Europeans, combined with a disdain towards indigenous peoples and their cultures, so the "German South" myth withstands, along with that one photo of Puerto Varas taken from the right angle to make it look like a German town.
- wageslave99 2y agoPlease note that there is no "standard" Spanish. In the Spain there are multitude of dialects and different variants. Even in the same region (e.g. Andalusia) you can find a ton of different variants. All of them are valid, as the RAE and the AAL make it clear.
- alephnerd 2y agoRAE is supposed to be the prescriptive source for Spanish, but no one cares about it outside of a subset of Academics in Spain.
- santiagobasulto 2y agoThanks god we don't care. Spain wanting to dictate what's real "spanish" is like the King of England telling a jamaican that their english is wrong.
- walthamstow 2y agoYes, we leave that kind of thing to the French
- jowea 2y agoFrom what I heard the French can also have a laugh at the AF's attempts at language standardization.
- alephnerd 2y agoAgreed! Prescriptive language bodies are dumb and prevent languages from organically evolving.
- wageslave99 2y agoI don't agree on that. Having a common language that you can use to communicate with a large number of people is a godsend.
- mechanicalpulse 2y ago> So it looks like those have drifted further from "standard" Spanish, while Chile hasn't as much? I think the chart is saying less about differences relative to Spanish Spanish and more about each regional dialect relative to the others. In the table, the countries appear to be ordered (horizontally as well as vertically) by distance relative to Spain. Assuming there's nothing (like an ocean) to prevent the diffusion and evolution of language, given any cross-location in the grid, the cells nearest should theoretically have little to no gradient. That's clearly not the case with Chile and isolation due to the Andes seems like a reasonable cause. Colombia and Costa Rica also exhibit this effect, though, and I'm not sure why. FARC? They are separated by Panama and the PCZ; has the canal had an effect of preserving Panama's cultural ties relative to other countries at the expense of those of CO/CR? Edit: s/Columbia/Colombia/; s/expensive/expense/
- woodson 2y agoThese differences go back much further in the past, so FARC has nothing to do with it in Colombia (it’s spelled with an “o”). There’s a large linguistic diversity within these countries, which that table doesn’t reflect or account for.
- mynameisvlad 2y ago> There’s a large linguistic diversity within these countries, which that table doesn’t reflect or account for. I’m pretty sure that’s the case for every country in the world.
- woodson 2y agoOf course, all I said was that the table doesn’t account for it. Aside from that, judge for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_Spanish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_Spanish
- tomjakubowski 2y ago"Standard" Spanish is modern, and, like Chilean, has itself drifted from dialects which were spoken in the era of Spanish colonization.
- prpl 2y agoNew Mexican Spanish is similarly isolated, but the number of speakers is tiny.
- gaudystead 2y agoOrale! Was not expecting to see us New Mexicans get called out here on Hacker News, but you're not wrong. It's surprising how much variation there is despite NM being so close to Mexico.
- aeyes 2y agoSomething that wasn't mentioned here before is that Chile is quite close in terms of grammar. Other South American countries supposedly have deviated more. It's hard to understand some Chilean speakers but that's because they don't modulate their voice and cut or join words. But grammatically they are "correct". There is a lot of Chilean slang and it's almost universally understood from north to south. But people are aware of it, it's usually not used at work. And then there are a lot of words which are just different, just about every fruit has a different name.