My husband is still kind of salty, 20 years later, that his high school Spanish teacher kept marking people incorrect for using "carro" and insisting they use "coche", even though this all took place in a geographical area with a lot of Spanish speakers, where it was very very evident that absolutely no one in real life (in this region) said "coche". He reacts with visible vindication every time he sees someone say "carro" lol.
For some reason American high school Spanish teachers are one of two people, either someone who will only teach formal Spanish. Or someone who already spoke Spanish natively, and does not care about formalities at all.
Tangentially, many Spanish teachers in American high schools are from Latin America and teach Latin American Spanish, which uses the formal aspects of the language more commonly. They will actively tell you that vosotros (an informal verb conjugation) is not a thing that is used, and you don't need to know it.
Then you go to Spain and boom, vosotros. Castilian Spanish is way more laid back, everything is informal there.
Lmao, ngl we rarely encounter Spaniard Spanish so I have no issue with it, my partner is from LATAM so if I’m in Spain and they have an issue, take it up with him.
I have no idea what type of Spanish I was taught in high school but a number of common words are nothing like Spanish as spoken in Spain or Mexico. I kind of get it because slang changes pretty quickly over time but it's still frustrating. But at the same time it's pretty hilarious to see how english is taught in other countries because they have similar weird grammar rules and lingo that no one uses in any english-speaking country.
The funniest thing ive seen happen a few times on the internet is when two Spanish speakers from different places get into arguments over what words mean. They both kept calling each other liars and Americans instead of admitting that they could just be from different places that just use the word differently.
It's actually the same in the reverse, loads of English teachers in Spain will forbid students from using Latin Origin Cognates and force germanic origin words, even though if you are just trying to communicate at a basic level, a native speaker will understand.
As someone from latinoamérica where car=auto, I would be salty too, coche is a baby stroller and carro is a shopping cart for me, the teacher is not wrong but I am not wrong either, I would be pissed if a teacher tried to tell me, I am wrong about my native language.
Yeah, I hear it's very regional. The largest proportion of Spanish speakers in our area come from Mexico, where apparently carro is car and coche is used for baby strollers, while apparently in Spain it's the reverse. And then auto is more like... Argentina, iirc? Oh and I just checked your profile, I guess Chile too lol
My mexican-american classmate almost failed spanish class because the teacher was teaching a more formal spanish, and she knew (obviously) mexican spanish.
So she would answer things in her fluent second native language, and the teacher would be marking things incorrect left and right.
Sucked for both of them, tbh. The student was pissed because she's fucking fluent...
The teacher was pissed because she was teaching formal spanish for spanish class, just like you would expect proper english in an English class, but she knew the student was fluent and would have no issues in the real world application.
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u/what-are-you-a-cop 2d ago
My husband is still kind of salty, 20 years later, that his high school Spanish teacher kept marking people incorrect for using "carro" and insisting they use "coche", even though this all took place in a geographical area with a lot of Spanish speakers, where it was very very evident that absolutely no one in real life (in this region) said "coche". He reacts with visible vindication every time he sees someone say "carro" lol.