What Type of Spanish Should You Learn? (Part 1) ♫ 42

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Bienvenidos! Welcome to the Learn Spanish Con Salsa Podcast, the show for Spanish learners that love music, travel and culture. Close, your grammar textbooks, shutdown the language apps and open your ears to how Spanish is spoken in the real world. Let us show you how to go from beginner to bilingual. Here is your host certified language coach Tamara Marie.

Hola y bienvenidos al episodio 42. Welcome to episode 42 of the learn Spanish con salsa podcast. In this episode I'm going to talk all about one of the most common questions I get asked and that is"what type of Spanish should I learn?"

Now, many people will tell you that Spanish is just Spanish, that it's a very easy language to learn and you can pick it up fairly quickly and that really there's not much difference in Spanish spoken in different countries. So you should be fine if you learn what they call(quote unquote)"neutral Spanish". Now, Spanish is really a diverse language. It's spoken in countries from Europe to South America and even in the Caribbean. Some people will argue that Spanish is Spanish, no matter where it's spoken. And it really doesn't matter what type of Spanish you learn. Now I have to say I respectfully disagree with this opinion.

When you are learning a language, you are not just learning about grammar and vocabulary. Language is just one component of a broader culture. So that means to truly learn a language, you have to learn about the culture of the people that speak the language. The diversity of the Spanish speaking population makes the language itself just as diverse. And having a basic understanding of these cultural influences is almost just as important as mastering complex grammar concepts. So what do I mean when I say what type of Spanish should you learn? Most people think of this as dialects. While there are several regional differences in the Spanish language, selecting a type of Spanish is a little bit more targeted. So the two most important factors or characteristics to consider when you're identifying a type of Spanish are the country or region in which is spoken and also the context. So, first the country or region. This is the one that we probably most often think about when we think about a type of Spanish. I think people broadly think about it in terms of, you know, should I learn Spanish from Spain, which sometimes is called Castilian Spanish or should I learn Latin American Spanish, right? Which to me is almost a false categorization because Latin America is very large and it includes many different countries and Spain is just one country. So, really comparing this one country to the rest of the entire Spanish speaking world almost is really not a fair comparison. And I don't think it's a real choice. If you are in Europe then it is very clear that you will probably be more exposed to Spanish from Spain. But there are plenty of other countries where Spanish is the official language. And there are some significant differences between those countries. So, the first thing you will want to consider is the region. And I would humbly suggest that you narrow it down a little bit more than just Latin America. So, you can even choose a region, like if you want to choose Mexico(and Mexico is big enough) that you can really choose that as a focus. You can choose the Caribbean, which includes Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,(which we talk about a lot on this podcast). We focus a lot on Spanish spoken in the Caribbean. You have central America and then even in South America I would say regions, further South like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, like those are going to be a little bit different than the Spanish that you might find spoken in the Northern part of South America, such as in Colombia, Venezuela. So give that some thought. Think about the country or region that you want to target. The reason for this is that each Spanish speaking country and region has unique words, vocabulary, culture, and history in all of those things influenced the language that's spoken. Almost every Spanish speaking country, including Spain also has speakers of other languages. So I'm not referring to foreigners that move into a country, but natives of those countries that speak other indigenous languages that have mixed in with the Spanish that is spoken in those places. So that is a huge influence. The other languages that are spoken in that country or region. I'm really do influence the Spanish spoken there, including English, which you'll find a lot of"Spanglish" as I call it, depending on what country you're in and the influence that, either the U.S or Britain has had(most often the U S) on those cultures. So, this is why there are widely different and unrelated words for some things between different countries and regions. So, not being aware of this fact, even if you're a beginner, is really a huge mistake. I would have saved myself and others, so much confusion having understood early on that it's important to focus on a specific type of Spanish. Now the second factor to consider when you're looking at a type of Spanish is the context in which the language is used. Now this includes the environment, circumstances, or conditions that surround your use of the language. So for example, if you're learning Spanish for work and you plan to be attending meetings and giving presentations, then you may need to focus on formal Spanish and Spanish for your particular profession. Now, if you want to communicate with extended family and friends, then you need to learn Spanish in a more informal or a conversational style. So, putting all of that together, to clearly define what type of Spanish you want to learn, you must consider both characteristics, both the region or the country and the context. For example, if you decide you want to learn business Spanish, it's important to identify the countries you'll be working with. And this is because conducting business with someone from Mexico versus Spain or Argentina even can have some different cultural implications that you want to be aware of when you are in a more professional setting. Now even if you decide, Hey, I just want to learn Mexican Spanish, well you still have to pay attention to the context. Do you just want to make new friends in Mexico and visit often for vacation? Or is it a place that you're looking to retire, right? Because those will be different sets of vocabulary and considerations that you may need depending upon what your plans are. Okay? So the answers to these questions will really dictate where to focus your study.

So, here are some examples of types of Spanish: You could learn European Spanish for travelers, and that's if you're planning to take a trip to Spain, for example. You could learn Latin American Spanish for medical professionals. You c ould learn business Spanish for Argentina. You could learn Cuban Spanish for social workers or Caribbean Spanish for salsa dancers or even conversational Dominican Spanish. So as you can see, these are a little bit more specific and more narrowly defined than what you might be used to. And depending on what type of Spanish you're learning, it may be more or less difficult to find the resources that you need to focus on your particular type of Spanish. Now I'll provide some more details on how you can look for study materials a little bit later in the podcast, and I know this might seem a little bit tedious and you still might be thinking, well look, Spanish is still just Spanish. But before you get ready to randomly dig into your next Du olingo l esson, consider the following reasons why you might want to select a type of Spanish and how it can save you and confusion. So, the first reason that I would suggest you pick a type of Spanish to learn is number one, you will understand native speakers better. Now it is true that if you learn the fundamentals or the basics of Spanish, you will be able to get by understanding the language in general. Having that general understanding of how the language is used and having a grasp of a well rounded set of vocabulary can get you pretty far. But there is one big caveat to that. You really do have to be at an intermediate or advanced level for this to be the case and even when you reach the intermediate level listening comprehension may still be a challenging skill to master.

This is because there are differences in speech patterns, accents of vocabulary that may still throw you off even if you've been studying Spanish for years. And a way to really prove that that's true is that even native Spanish speakers have trouble understanding Spanish spoken in different countries. Now again, that depends on how similar the Spanish is to the Spanish they grew up with: someone who is from one country in central America may find it easier to understand someone else from central America, but they may struggle a little bit more when talking to someone who is from Cuba, for example. Just the same as someone who is from Puerto Rico may find it much easier to have a conversation with someone from Dominican Republic because they have some shared words and their accents have some similarities versus if they were to talk to someone from Argentina who has a very different type of Spanish. So again, this is something that can even trip up native Spanish speakers. So you should not expect to be proficient in every type of Spanish. It really just is not a realistic goal. And as a beginner, understanding a regular conversational speed Spanish spoken by native speakers will almost certainly be a challenge no matter what type of Spanish you're learning. So, think about how much easier it would be to improve your listening comprehension if you're only focused on one type of Spanish to learn.

Let's use English as an example. So let's say that you want to learn English and you plan to move to the United States. Now, if that was your goal, would you want to learn English from an Australian? Probably not, right? You probably know that English because from Australia sounds a little bit different than English speakers from the U S so this is just a very simple example, but I hope it illustrates to you that it really doesn't make sense to just blindly learn Spanish as if it's a monolithic language with no real differences.

I was recently having a discussion with a friend who learned English as a second language. Now her native language is Greek, but she learned British English when she was in school. When she was a little bit older, she moved to America with a friend from great Britain who was a native English speaker. But she explained that it took both of them over a year to be comfortable having a conversation with a U S English speaker. She told me that things are just so different here in the United States that it's almost like an entirely different language. And because she didn't have much conversational practice, even learning English since grade school, it was still hard for her as an adult to understand spoken American English. So, think about that for a second. Ask herself, do you have an additional year to waste before you can have a conversation in Spanish? Just because you didn't think it was important to pick which type of Spanish you will learning? Probably not, right?

You probably are listening to this podcast because you want to learn a little bit quicker and you want to get an edge up on other people who may be learning at a much slower pace. So this is one of those hacks that can really improve your progress and help you learn faster if you have this focus from the beginning. The second reason you might want to pick a type of Spanish is you will avoid confusing both yourself and others. So let's say you just start learning Spanish and you don't really pick a type of Spanish learn, you don't pay attention to that and you just sort of go for whatever resources, YouTube channels, apps, whatever it is that you find, right? And you just start learning. You could also get to a point where you start talking to different tutors and Spanish speaking friends and you might be learning new vocabulary and writing that down as you go along.

If you follow that all Spanish is just Spanish theory, then you might talk to them about where they're from and you just assume it's really not a big deal because you're just getting conversation practicing. You're learning new vocabulary. So when you're talking to a conversation partner, you might just ask them for the meanings of words that they use that are new to you. And after a little time passes, you might feel a lot more comfortable with your Spanish conversation skills. So let's say you do that and you strike up a conversation at a friend's house armed with all the vocabulary you've been learning, because Spanish is just Spanish, right? So if you with her without paying any attention to the type of Spanish you're being exposed to, you may end up coming up with a weird sounding sentence like this:"¿Quéonda,mae? no me gusta esa bebida,¿Quées esa vaina?¿Vos podés traerme un vaso de zumo de china? Which, If I translate that, it's like, wow, dude, I don't like this drin k. Wh at is this crap? Can you bring me a glass of orange juice? Okay. Now again, this is a silly sentence, but I'm just using this as an example because it makes sense, right? If you translate it into English, you can kind of figure it out. But if you are tal king to another native Spanish speaker, they would almost definitely not understand at least part of what you said. You'll either sound like an international traveler or a very confused person.

So here's a breakdown of the origin of each of the phrases I use in this example and maybe it'll help you understand why you wouldn't be understood if you were to talk this way. Okay? The first phrase I use, which is very specific to a region is"¿ Quéonda?", Which means wow. Uh, in Mexico specifically. Uh, then I said"mae", which is a way of saying, you know, that guy in Costa Rica. So again, this is not really used outside of Costa Rica. So if you say"mae" to someone else, they might not know what you're talking about. Then I said"no me gusta esta bebida" which is very standard. So it's like"I don't like this drink". So that would be understood by anyone in the Spanish speaking world. And then as"¿ Quées esa vaina?", Which is"what is this crap?", Which"vaina" is a very specific word that's used mainly in Dominican Republic, I've also heard it used in Venezuela. But it's not something that is common to all Spanish speakers. U m, and then I said"¿vos podés traerme un vaso de zumo de China?" Which, sounds really crazy. So" v os podés" is saying,"can you", but I'm using" v os" which if you have listened to our last episode, I talked about the five different ways to say"you" in Spanish and this is one of them.

And if you recall from that episode, I also mentioned that" vos" is very commonly used in Argentina. Maybe some other parts of central and South America, but it is not universal to the Spanish speaking world. And it would sound a little bit odd if you just said,"vos podés". And so I say"¿ vos podés traerme un vaso de zumo de c hina?" Okay, so"vaso" is a glass, right? That's pretty standard, and"zumo" means juice, but it's really only used in Spain. In most of Latin America to say juice, you would say"jugo". And again, some people might be familiar with this, b u t don't assume that everyone that speaks Spanish is an international traveler. So just because there are different ways to say something everyone might not know what all of those ways are. So"zumo" again, is very specific to Spain and not really used anywhere else, And then I said"zu m o de china" in most of the Spanish speaking world,"chi n a" is the country China, but en Puerto Rico, it means"orange".

So, you can see how this one simple sentence"¿Quéonda m ae? No me gusta esta bebida¿Quées esa vaina?¿Vos podés traerme un vaso de Zumo de china?" Yo u can see how that might sound really bizarre if you are a Spanish speaker or even if you've been learning Spanish for a while an d someone wants to speak to you in this way. You would probably get lost as well because there'd be something in here that you would not know. So you can see what this si l ly example why it's important to pay attention to wh a t you're learning, especially with vocabulary and not just vocabulary, right? Cause we talked about words but grammar. So"vos po dés", that's, grammar. There's many ways to say"can you", right? But even, sel e cting the type of grammar you focus on is very much dependent on the type of Spanish you'r e lear ning.

So again, that's a silly example. I hope you kind of get the point. If that still doesn't sound to you in English, that would be like saying,"Hey mate, I don't want to get pop, I want a"half and half" and some candy floss. It's hella hot out here. Right? Which that random sentence I just put together. But you know,"mate" is something that people say in Australia. A"pop" is a way to refer to soda or carbonated beverages, but it's really just used in the Midwest of the United States where I'm from, we say soda. So"pop" would sound a little weird to me then I mentioned you I want a"half and half", which is very, very specific to one city in the U S and it really means half iced tea- half lemonade. I think some people call it an Arnold Palmer after a golfer for some reason, but"half and half" anywhere else besides, u h, where I'm from would mean half and half like cream, right? Cream and milk, I think, that you put in your coffee."Candy floss"(and I didn't know this, I looked this one up) It actually means"cotton candy" in the UK. So, here in the U S we would call it"cotton candy". So if someone wants to ask me for candy floss, I'd have no idea what they were talking about. And then I said,"it's hella hot out here". So like"hella" again, it's like a very colloquial type of way of saying"it's very hot", right? And I've heard it used in California mainly, but I think it spread to some other places, but I, it might even be more of a generational thing. Uh, but yeah, but these are all just very specific things. The only reason I bring up these silly examples, it just to know that when you're a native English speaker and you're learning Spanish and you just ask, Hey! What does that word mean? Now, someone will give you an answer. But if you start to use those words without this awareness of where they're coming from and what type of Spanish you're learning, you can sound very confused and very silly and it might take you a while to figure out why someone doesn't understand you. And you might mistake that for,"Oh my God, my Spanish is really bad. I said this whole thing and no one understands me!". But it might not be that your Spanish is bad. It might be who you're talking to. So not having that awareness can also be very demotivating because it can get you into some situations where you get confused and then you might just give up. Right? Oh they didn't understand this. I practiced the sentence all you know, all day. And they don't know what"zumo de china" Is, right? Cause it doesn't make any sense unless someone was from both Spain, Puerto Rico. But anyway, it can really be demotivating because you just don't have the awareness. So that's why I recommend to really start off with a type of Spanish. And the other reason why you need to be proactive about this is when you're talking to a native Spanish speaker, they may not even be aware that something they shared with you is specific to where they're from. Speaking for myself. You know, where I grew up, like I mentioned"half and half" was something we all said. It wasn't until I left my city and went to ask for a"half and half" in another part of the country that I found out that everyone doesn't know that that's iced tea and lemonade. That's really just cream and milk. But I didn't know that for years. So if you would've asked me when I was younger, I would have just told you that this is a"half and half" and it's a drink and you, if you weren't a native speaker of English and you could have gone somewhere else and asked for half and half and then just gotten confused. Right? So even though you're talking to a native Spanish speaker and you feel that they're the authority, yes, they can tell you exactly what the words mean that they're using, but sometimes they don't even know that that word or phrase is specific to where they're from. If you're not talking to someone that has that level of awareness. So that's just something to also keep in mind. So you have some options. You could just Bumble around and figure these things out when someone looks at you perplexed or you could be intentional about the type of Spanish you are learning. So I hope you are on board with me now and you really are excited about picking a type of Spanish to learn and that you can really see that this will help you focus and accelerate your path to Spanish fluency. So in part two of this conversation, the next episode I am going to get into what are the characteristics of a type of Spanish, what are the different features of a type of Spanish? And then I'll give you some guidance on how to pick which type of Spanish that you should be focusing your time and energy on as you are continuing to improve your Spanish proficiency. So I'll give you some insight into that. Next week we'll talk about the characteristics of a type of Spanish in the next episode"How to pick a type of Spanish" and then once you have picked that type of Spanish, how you can begin to apply it right away to your Spanish learning time, right? Because none of us have an infinite amount of time, although I'm sure we would all love to. We only have a certain amount of time, certain of hours in the day. We want to know how to most effectively and best use that time as we are working on improving our Spanish, Okay? So I will give you all of that in the next episode and part two of this conversation. But for now I hope that something you have heard today is taking you one step closer from being beginner to bilingual. And before I say I, those do not ever get to leave us a rating and review in iTunes. We really do appreciate when we hear from our listeners what you like about the show or what you would like to see more of. So it makes sure you click on the link. If you're listening to this in a podcast app, you can just look into the description and there is a link that you can hit that will open up our rating and review directly in iTunes so you don't have to go scrolling and searching for it or you can just click on that link in the description and leave us a rating and review. We really do appreciate it. I'm only take you a minute. So we really do love to hear from you and also helps other people find the podcast. 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