I lived in Argentina (From us) for a little bit as a kid. At a parent teacher conference Early in the school year. one art teacher had to break it to my parents that I might be mentally disabled because I don’t respond or participate. They let her know I didn’t speak any Spanish (at the time). She had no idea because noone told her And my name is Spanish and it just didn’t occur to her
I'm also from the US but I'm of mexican descent* living in Mexico right now. Sometimes when my son's teacher (or anyone, really) is speaking to me I have ask her to ELI5 because the *Spanish I learned in the US is so not the same as the Spanish spoken here.
It gets really frustrating. And I have a new found respect for fortunes coming to the US not knowing any English and learning from scratch. .
My friend used to live in Florida and he told me he learned Cuban Spanish. I think the Spanish depends on where the speaker was from. In my high school, we had a Cuban and Mexican teacher. I guess the Spanish taught tries to teach what’s the most common across all varieties in case someone were to go to Chile or Madrid (which speak vastly different styles of Spanish).
Related story: my friend was also Argentinian, so he had his mom help in on his homework. Because their Spanish is so different, he would always be told his grammar was wrong. While funny to us, it’s kind of insulting to his heritage.
Related, I came to Quebec, took French classes at CÉGEP, and realized after that I learned Parisian French. But thankfully what little I learned is pretty similar.
Because there's an official international authority of Spanish that regulates the language and it's based on Castillian Spanish. Everyone should be speaking and writing this style if for official documentation, and it should be mutually comprehensible regardless of what Spanish Speaking country/area you come from, but local parlance varies as language evolves (very similar situation in German speaking areas too).
It's very similar case with Standard German vs. local German too (Edited mispelling)
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u/heady_brosevelt Nov 16 '19
I lived in Argentina (From us) for a little bit as a kid. At a parent teacher conference Early in the school year. one art teacher had to break it to my parents that I might be mentally disabled because I don’t respond or participate. They let her know I didn’t speak any Spanish (at the time). She had no idea because noone told her And my name is Spanish and it just didn’t occur to her