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Subject: Re: The Spanish language

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 08:46:59 12/15/05

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On December 15, 2005 at 11:15:39, Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz wrote:

>You don't even know what you're talking about (about the Z sound)  :)
>My familiy and friends from Colombia seem to like the "Spain" Spanish accent.
>By the way, what's next? English have too much accent and are scarcely
>understandable in English? Germans have a bad German too?

"Good" and "bad" are too subjective adjectives to use about accents,
dialects and languages, but in general there is a tendency that
emigrants conserve their language better than those who stay at
home.

In the case of the Scandinavian languages, an extreme example is Iceland,
where the language is still almost the same as their ancestors on Norway
spoke 1000 years ago (except that the pronounciation has changed a lot),
while the language spoken in continental Scandinavia have evolved into
something completely different.  A more recent example are the Scandinavians
who emigrated to the USA in the 19th century:  Those Scandinavians in the
USA who have kept their old language speak rather archaic Scandinavian.

I've seen it claimed that this phenomenon is common in other languages
as well.  English as spoken in North America is closer to the British
pronounciation a few centuries ago than modern British English.  The
same is said about the French spoken in Quebec.

You and Fernando probably know more about this than me, but it wouldn't
surprise me if there was a similar difference between European and
Latin American Spanish.

Tord



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