English and Spanish, Europe and America

Coming home from school, for no apparent reason, I started to wonder whether the difference between Spanish spoken in Spain and Spanish spoken in Mexico is comparable to the difference between English spoken in Britain and English spoken in the U.S.A.

My initial thought was that they are not the same. But then, I couldn't really explain to myself why. It was just a personal, subjective, probably emotional reaction.

It may be because the difference between Spain and Mexico seems to be more regular and systematic than the difference between England and USA. The pronunciation for "c/z" or the use of "vosotros/usted," for example. But then, my exposure to Spain Spanish is very limited, and once I hear more, I may give in and say they are just as chaotic as the British (j/k).

It could also be about the fact that Mexico is only one of the many Spanish speaking countries whereas.. well, I guess there is also Canada and Australia and New Zealand and other places that speak English.. hm...

And then even within Mexico, you have a variety of accents... just as the U.S.A. does. And in the USA, you even have the two languages fused into Spanglish. Some Hispanic people in the States speak a kind of Spanish that is a direct translation of English. They use expressions like "me volví atras" to mean "I went back," for example.

I guess I don't know where I was going with this. Just thought that it is interesting that a language can vary so much over places and still be somewhat communicable. Yeah, I laughed the first time I heard a Spanish person say "tienes razón" because it sounded like "ratón" to me, but hey, I'm sure my Spanish (which has a generic mexican accent) sounds funny to a Spaniard just as well.

My brother hung out with friends from South America like Chile and Argentina when he was in college. When he came home (in Mexico) for the breaks, his Spanish had been contaminated with his friends' accents. My Dad would give him a hard time for "speaking funny," and he would not even realize that he was speaking with a different accent until we pointed it out to him. I guess if you are doing it, you don't notice it yourself.

Sad thing is, while I do somewhat ok in detecting accents in English and Spanish, I don't know much about Korean accents. Don't know which accent is from Chonlado and which accent is Gyeongsangdo. I can only tell whether it is Seoul accent or not. My Korean itself is deteriorating, too, which is also rather sad. Ah well. At least I can still read and (somewhat) write.


I guess there is no reason to really compare the two languages any way. They are all different. There is history and localization and culture and all that stuff..