Canadian French and European French, American Spanish and Castilian Spanish

France and Spain have practiced colonization in the Americas to make more money. This caused the languages to grow apart.

I know this is very similar to how the English language grew apart from the UK since English in the former colonies don't always strictly follow the typical vowel pronunciation (ah, eh, ii, oh, uu). That's the only difference. I'm sure English speakers from the UK, Canada, US, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand can understand each other just fine, it's just slang terms.

I'm a very curious guy, what are the differences between Canadian French and European French, and American Spanish and Castilian Spanish? I've heard that sometimes, speakers from both sides can't understand other on certain vocab. In the case of Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, I've heard they can understand each other.

 

I worked with a guy from Galicia. He told me that Pendejo is a Mexican word. "I don't what it fuck mean in English" He also said there are quite a few words that are different in Mexican Spanish and Castilian. Like I guess "Car" is different between the two. Also there are four different languages in Spain. The more you know, I guess.

 

My family comes from Puerto Rico

My mother says she can understand Spanish from Spain, but there are some words that she can't. I've also noticed the accent is very different, of course.

To me, Spain Spanish (Castilian Spanish) sounds much more pleasant.

But there are many other dialects of Spanish. Puerto Rican Spanish accent is different from Mexican, for example.

 

Well, I speak American Spanish and it is not Castilian. I could understand a person from Spain as they would to me, but I guess the difference is in certain regional terms and phrases that are unique to each region. Also, Mexican Spanish uses Nauhtl, a native Aztec language, for certain things and therefore has a different vocabulary terms for the same thing. For example, "turkey" in Spanish can either be "pavo" (of Castilian origin) or "guajolote" (of Nauatl origin).

When I speak Spanish, I tend to use "proper" Spanish (i.e. Speak it unadultured, unlike many Texans and Americans who tend to mix up English and Spanish words). If I am speaking proper Spanish, I find it easier to communicate with native Spanish speakers than Americanized Spanish speakers. There is also the issue of class/education. I tend to have trouble communicating effectively with people who are of the lower socioeconomic/ educational rungs.

Slang is also an issue where I am lacking in formal education, not that you can really be formally educated in slang (ok, I guess you can, but I haven't :lol. I will have trouble speaking and understanding a person who uses non-standard Spanish. I can deal with slang in English because most of my education and experience have been in English but my Spanish education has been through reading and my mother. Accent the wise, for some reason many people say that I have a somewhat nasal and/or Argentinian accent when I speak in Spanish. I think it's just because I am unlocked when it comes to my accents (some people will say I have a "gringo" accent, even though I am completely fluent in Spanish :lol.

 

My girlfriend is Quebecois, her native language being Canadian French, though she learned English at a young age through school and an English-speaking mother. I'm currently learning French, and she's emphasised the differences in terms of accent, and vocabulary (notably lexically specific terms and grammatical differences in said terms). When I practice my French with her, there are sometimes words that come about that she's not even familiar with, though both are quite similar. Even in the French-speaking provinces, slang and the use of French, as well as accents, differ. Personally, I find Quebec French much thicker than (Parisian) French, and Belgian French is kind of between the two in terms of pronunciation, and I find Quebec slang to be rather wacky compared to the informal uses of French for other regions.

As for Spanish, my father emigrated from Chile. He has a very prominent, thick Chilean Spanish accent that's completely distinguishable from other Latin American dialects... Unfortunately I haven't been exposed to enough Spanish (especially various accents/dialect) so most accents are indistinguishable to me although I can usually hear the difference in Castilian Spanish compared to, say, Argentinean or Puerto Rican Spanish. It's also worth keeping in mind that there's quite some variation in the Spanish spoken by different social classes, too, even within the same population between slang, pronunciation, so forth.

 

I've heard that they cannot easily understand each other. The pronunciation and usage of words is very different.

I could list some differences between the various forms of Spanish, but I think that Wikipedia is more accurate than me. :lol:

 

I guess I am quintessentially North American if one goes by my languages.

I speak the Quebecois French fluently, and the Mexican Spanish reasonably well.

For the French part, there has been an interesting disconnect between the "international" French spoken in some of the French-speaking media here and the Quebecois French that everyone else speaks; it is a strange situation where it seems our own Quebecois French is not considered "good" enough for general media consumption (this has changed dramatically in recent years).

What are the differences? There are many words here that don't exist in France, plus a strong influence from the Catholic Church. The more significant differences are in the way the letters t and d are spoken when they are the first letters in a word. In addition, the pronunciation of the vowels o and i are also different, the French from France really pronounce them acutely (so to speak), we don't.

I am not as fluent in Spanish, but I find the Mexican variety to be objectively (as far as it is possible to be objective about these things) more intelligible. The pronunciation of z is bizarre in the Spanish variety, almost a lisp. The Spaniards also tend to talk very fast; usually a torrent of words in very little time, Mexican Spanish just seems to go a little slower, and the letters are more distinct, but this is probably my own bias toward the language that I know...

 

As a spanish and spanish language and literature student let me answer you about our language.

I don't know if you know Spain had several kingdoms, sometimes they mixed because king and queens marriages but the territories remained separated although "citizens" moved. Well, originally we had 2 main areas which configurated the language, which is called ancient spanish root (navarro-aragón and asturias-leon (which were counties/kingdoms), but somehow the castillian which was a minor county gained power until the main kingdom was castilla (which conquered America) and aragon which had lands in the mediterranean sea (Italy, France...).
That said, we are taught a standard spanish in all schools, the spanish from Spain, but we have our local slangs (like happens in every other language), some have to do with a certain generation, other with the ancient crafts and so on.
Now we have the other co-official languages in Catalunya (català), Basque Country (euskera) and Galiza (galego, which land had a king long ago and is similar in a way to Portuguese). The people from those areas have a particular accent when speaking, aswell as people from the south which was the last land to be conquered from the Islam invasion (we were told that, I'm just using the same vocabulary we were told).
Arabic influenced in many words of spanish from Spain, specially in the southern and east area and in works related with building and farming, giving name to jobs and places like albañil (bricklayer) or acequia (a pool of water to be used in a farm).
Spanish from America had a different development and influences, depending on the original civilizations and other european countries which had contact with, that's why they sound different, like for instance, argentinian have the sound they have, many galizian people moved there (galego has a more musical sounding than spanish), and also italians, so argentinian sound more musical than spanish from Spain which sounds let's say less lively and more dry because we have no intonation in our words like english does.

That said, south america has some old expressions we no longer use, like refer to one's parents as "usted" (formal you), which in Spain we don't do.
We are like more direct, like less formal sometimes, and we use old structures, we are not keen to create new words, we tend to steal words and not create an equivalent or spell it as we pronounce it, which south america does, they create more than spanish from spain does in general.

That said, in Spain we have different accents when we pronounce and it depends on our area,the central area is very formal, well pronounced, southern and east area are more relaxed in different ways.
east tends to not pronounce the final -s of plurals (in my area we pronounce casa(a) to say casas (houses), we understand each other by prolonging the final vowel instead of adding a -s to refer a plural), in other areas of the east they tend to use diminutives like -ico. say book (libro) they tend to use librico (little book).
in other areas of the south they even pronounce the h which is suppoused to be silent, say hueso (bone) spanish would pronounce ueso, but some southern area pronounce the h as a j or g, gueso, or jueso, which sometimes cause they make mistakes when writing because they would write it as it sound in their area which isn't the correct way to write it. They also tend to pronounce the -s as -z so to say casa (house) they'll sound like caza (hunt).

Another matter are some words that mean different things in different areas, like in spanish we say cuero to mean leather but in mexico they also mean someone cute, but we even have that in spanish from Spain. Some areas would refer a flower vase as "jarro" but in other areas jarro means also a chamber pot (?).

I lived in Portugal and they have the impresison that Brazilian pronounce and structure their sentences more like spanish do, in fact some verbs tenses are conjuged differently and Portuguese people don't like some changes that were accepted recently by their language academy because they say they'll be forced to sound like spanish do instead of portuguese.

Both can understand each other but sometimes some vocabulary is confusing.

Sorry if I've been too long or boring but since you said you are curious I guess you wanted a clear explanation, if you have any doubt you can ask me more.

 

I'd say I'm not bizarre, but compared to Mexicans, my Spanish accent (ceceo "lisp" and rapidfire speech), can be rather odd for non-Spaniards/Peninsular-Spanish speakers, and it amuses my South American classmates. I'd say that one difference is that Spain has a disproportionate (for its geographic and population size) amount of dialects and accents (and languages), unlike the relative conformity within Latin countries.

 

The pronunciation of the z is that of th in English. In Puerto Rico, we speak very similar to the Spanish in Spain, excpept not quite as fast and without z lisp and we do not use vosotros. I don't know if this is because the natives there were exterminated faster than in other places or if there were a lot of colonists from Spain. Maybe both. But Puerto Rico and Cuba were Spain's last American colonies so they influenced them for longer than Mexico and South America.

 

I've heard a lot of immigrants to Cuba were from the Canary Islands, so there's also that to consider.

 

For the French, us Quebecers use a different vocabulary. People from Quebec have no problem understanding an european French speaker, but the reverse is not true. We talk faster than they do and with way more intonation. Some of the words we use have been removed from the vocabulary in France, thus they don't understand it anymore. Also, we both put english words in our language, but we use different ones. In Quebec, we create verbs with english verbs, but we modify it to fit the language. For example, the verb ''to park'' would be ''stationner'' in French, but here, we say ''parker''. (Note that this is only orally, our written French is more international). Also, sometimes words here mean something else over there. ''Gosse'' (testicle in Quebec, kid in France), ''Carton'' (sheet of solid cardboard in Quebec, Box in France), ''Soda'' (cleaning product in Quebec, Soda pop in France) are only some examples. We do know those differences here but most French people don't when they come visit us. There's also our bad words that are all linked to religion while in France, it's basically the same words that in English, but translated.

 

I speak Colombian Spanish, and to be honest, Castilian Spanish sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Russell Peters was right, they do speak with a lisp over there :lol:

Living in Canada, I'm also learning French in school. Here in Canada, we use a lot of "frenglish" slang and we also have different accents. I hear that Europeans don't generally like our French.

I hope I don't offend anyone with this post, I didn't intend to.

 

I grew up around central American Spanish.

I'm trying to learn castellona. I have to stop using zh with my double L's

 

This is my thread!! *sets up shop*

I'm half Quebecois, so I can try to answer this to the best of my ability. I speak French and Spanish very fluently, and I have no trouble understand any accent, along with the fact that I love discussing linguistics :lol:

Imagine that Paris= London and that Montreal= Dallas, Texas.

I have a slight Quebecois accent when I speak French, meaning that it has sort of a twang to it, akin to a Texan or Southern U.S. accent. We use a sound that's like a schwa or like you're shushing someone. More contractions.

Je suis heureux que tu es mon ami (I'm happy that you're my friend).
J'suis (chuis) heureux que t'es mon ami.

Quebec was founded by Samuel Champlain in the 17th century, and the way that they spoke back then (originating from Brittany, northwestern France) is pretty much the same way they speak still, in terms of accent. A Parisian would say that we're very old-fashioned. Due to conflicts with the British and that Quebec is surrounded by anglophones, they try very VERY hard to preserve and protect their language. Loi (Law) 101 states that French must be posted in larger fonts and above English in Quebec, for example. If a new word from an outside source, like English, enters Quebecois lexicon, then they try to "frenchify" it, unlike what France usually does.

A hot dog: (QC) un chien chaud (FR) hot dog (chien chaud is the literal translation)
E-mail: (QC) un courreil electrionique (FR) e-mail
Parking (QC) le stationnement (FR) le parking.

See how France just adopts English words into its language? At the same time, Quebec kinda does as well, although they won't admit it. Montreal is only 45 minutes from the U.S., so you have to imagine that there is a lot of influence from English, and thus explains why everyone is practically bilingual. Instead of "travai" we use "job", not "ordinateur" but "computer"

I brought my computer to my job today.
Aujourd'hui j'ai apporté mon ordinateur à mon travail.
Aujourd'hui, j'ai apporté mon computer à mon job.

That looks like fun (c'est amusant (France) but they say "c'est le fun!)

I would say that if you really really want to master French, you must know Canadian French too. Trying to be unbiased here, but it's a really cool and pretty dialect.

Last thing that trips people up is the word difference!

Une sucette in Quebec is a lollipop (un suçon in France), but it's a hickey in France

Due to the time differences, the names of meals are different

petit-dejeune (breakfast in France), dejeune (lunch in France, breakfast in Quebec), dîner (lunch in Quebec, dinner in France) souper (dinner in France).

les gosses (kids in France, testicles in Quebec. AVOID using this word)
blueberries (des myrtilles in France, des bluets, Quebec)
cellphone (mobile, France, telephonique celluaire, Quebec)
It's cold (fait froid, France, fret froid, Quebec)

_______________________

Enough of French. Onto Spanish.

Spain Spanish uses the ceceo while L.A. Spanish uses the seseo. They don't pronounce the z,c, like a th. You must realize that there are dozens of accents throughout South America and Spain. Generally, I find that Colombians speak the clearest Spanish (they use them in L.A. Spanish dubbings and the Disney studios are located in Bogota). Chileans, due to geographic isolation, probably speak the fastest and are ridden with a LOT of slang. So they're notoriously hard to understand. Argentinians, due to their Italian heritage, have a certain accent that is reminiscent of Italian. They pronounce the ll in Spanish like "sh" Me llamo Lloyd= Me shamo Shoyd

Venezuelans speak a little faster than Colombians, but are pretty clear when they speak and have cool slang terms like chévere (cool), pana (friend), and their notorious chamo (dude). They use it a LOT.

Mexicans speak a lot slower than most, and have their own slang terms: padre/guay/chido (cool), no mames! (no s**t!), etc. etc.

Puerto Ricans speak a lot faster, like their Caribbean Spanish neighbors, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Puerto Ricans switch the l and r and drop the s and d.

So "Quiero el helado ahorita/I want ice cream right now" becomes "quielo er hera'o aholita". Cubans, in my opinion, speak way too fast and muddle a lot, but I have to really concentrate in order to understand them, along with Dominicans.

Spain Spanish, a lot faster than say, Mexican Spanish, along with their own cool accents and slang terms (rayos!=whoa/dang!, mola/guay= cool!, tio=dude)

So there you have it. Please ask if you want more info on French and Spanish :lol:


By the way, coger in Latin American Spanish means to "screw someone" but to get a taxi in Spain. Don't use it!

 

I actually did not now until recently that "coger" could mean "to fuck." If I were "to get a taxi," I would say, "voy a coger un taxi."

I do have a somewhat sheltered Spanish education :lol:.

 

Yes, so many of my Hispanic friends, like my Venezuelan friend who has family in the Canary Islands just says "quiero alquilar un taxi (I want to rent a taxi)" just to avoid that situation

 

Speaking as a Franco-Ontarian, I'm so used to hearing the regional accent from where I live that when I hear French in any other accent it takes a moment for me to register that they're speaking the same language as me. I've tried listening to podcasts and such from France but sometimes they just talk way too fast with such a different vocabulary/range of expressions that I miss a lot of what they're saying. It has to do with accent but also slang and word choice. Like RainbowGreen said, actual written Canadian French is a lot closer to international French than spoken CF. We abbreviate words a lot in spoken French, it just feels more natural than pronouncing every syllable "properly". Written out it just looks like a bunch of letters and apostrophes, but that's restricted to really informal communication like texting. My girlfriend and I are the worst offenders I know, half our text conversations are made up of words that aren't actually words with a bit of Frenglish thrown in. For example, I texted her this on Thursday:
"chpense qu'on est technically a ottawa asteur"
Which would actually be written as:
"Je pense que on est techniquement à Ottawa à cette heure."
But that looks kind of silly because nobody actually says it that way.

Anyway, sometimes it does feel very foreign and as if you're speaking completely different languages, but I'm sure for francophones who are more well travelled the difference becomes less obvious. My school is organizing a trip to Europe next year where we get to visit Italy and the south of France, I'm really excited to try to talk to European French people first-hand.

This post on Tumblr is a pretty cool comparison of some regional accents in Europe, and there's an Ontario clip in there if you're interested in hearing the difference yourself.

 

I also noticed that Puerto Ricans tend to pronounce their R's with a sound similar to French, a guttural sound, sometimes

Though of course they mostly trill their R's like other Spanish dialects

 

Those crazy Spanish taxi fuckers

I don't have much else to add to the thread, other than the fact that I learnt Hexagon French and Castilian Spanish at school, and I am not very familiar with other varieties of French or Spanish at all.

Actually I did notice, when I visited the Canary Islands this spring, that Canary Islanders tend not to pronounce /s/ at the ends of words. So they'd pronounce 'uno, dos, tres' as 'uno, do, tre.' Apparently this is quite common in Spanish. Is anyone else familiar with a Spanish dialect that does this?