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While Spanish is spoken in a very large part of the world and is very well understood from one area to the other, there are many differences that are unique to each region.

There are important variations among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. In countries in Hispanophone America, it is preferable to use the word castellano to distinguish their version of the language from that of Spain[citation needed], thus asserting their autonomy and national identity. In Spain, the Castilian dialect’s pronunciation is commonly regarded as the national standard, although a use of slightly different pronouns called laísmo of this dialect is deprecated. More accurately, for nearly everyone in Spain, “standard Spanish” means, “pronouncing everything exactly as it is written,”[citation needed] an ideal which does not correspond to any real dialect, though the northern dialects are the closest to it. In practice, the standard way of speaking Spanish in the media is “written Spanish” for formal speech, “Madrid dialect” (one of the transitional variants between Castilian and Andalusian) for informal speech.

Voseo

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: tú, usted, and in some parts of Latin America, vos (the use of this pronoun and/or its verb forms is called voseo). In those regions where it is used, generally speaking, tú and vos are informal and used with friends; in other countries, vos is considered an archaic form. Usted is universally regarded as the formal address (derived from vuestra merced, “your grace”), and is used as a mark of respect, as when addressing one’s elders or strangers.
Countries that feature voseo, in blue. The deeper the blue is, the more predominant voseo is. Countries where voseo is a regionalism are in green; countries without voseo are in red.

Vos is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration, in many countries of Latin America, including Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the central mountain region of Ecuador, the State of Chiapas in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, the Paisa region and Caleños of Colombia and the States of Zulia and Trujillo in Venezuela. There are some differences in the verbal endings for vos in each country. In Argentina, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay and some Central American countries, it is also the standard form used in the media, but the media in other countries with voseo generally continue to use usted or tú except in advertisements, for instance. Vos may also be used regionally in other countries. Depending on country or region, usage may be considered standard or (by better educated speakers) to be unrefined. Interpersonal situations in which the use of vos is acceptable may also differ considerably between regions.

Ustedes

Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural for daily use, ustedes (formal or familiar, as the case may be, though vosotros non-formal usage can sometimes appear in poetry and rhetorical or literary style). In Spain there are two forms — ustedes (formal) and vosotros (familiar). The pronoun vosotros is the plural form of tú in most of Spain, but in the Americas (and certain southern Spanish cities such as Cádiz or Seville, and in the Canary Islands) it is replaced with ustedes. It is notable that the use of ustedes for the informal plural “you” in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronoun–verb agreement; e.g., while the formal form for “you go”, ustedes van, uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz or Seville the informal form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun–verb agreement is preserved in most cases.

Vocabulary

Some words can be different, even embarrassingly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognise specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, “butter”, “avocado”, “apricot”) correspond to manteca, palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words coger (to catch, get, or pick up), pisar (to step on) and concha (seashell) are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of coger and pisar is also “to have sex” and concha means “vulva”. The Puerto Rican word for “bobby pin” (pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, and in Nicaragua simply means “stingy”. Other examples include taco, which means “swearword” (among other meanings) in Spain but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish. Pija in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for “penis”, while in Spain the word also signifies “posh girl” or “snobby”. Coche, which means “car” in Spain, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means “baby-stroller”, in Guatemala it means “pig”,[citation needed] while carro means “car” in some Latin American countries and “cart” in others, as well as in Spain.

Real Academia

The Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Due to this influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.

Source: Wikipedia

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