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"Are they similar or different?" Can somebody help me with an example?

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closed as too broad by Emilio Gort, rsanchez, Alexis Pigeon, itziki, SysDragon Jul 18 '14 at 10:01


Every country have their own pronuncation, see es.wikipedia.org/wiki/… and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsular_Spanish –  Emilio Gort Jul 17 '14 at 18:14
And even inside one country, there are multiple pronunciations. –  rodrigo Jul 17 '14 at 19:15

2 Answers 2

up vote 1 down vote accepted

It's almost like comparing apples and oranges. There are many different types of apples, and many different types of oranges. Generalizations can be made, but specific differences will be far easier to give you if you could specify a specific version (for example: Galician or Andalusian for European, Northern Mexico or Cuban for American).

The primary difference is the pronunciation of z and c followed by e or i where in most (but not all) Spain it is realized as /θ/ and in America as /s/. Other letters such as ch, j, ll, rr, s and y may have different pronunciations but they can generally be found on both sides of the Atlantic and not necessarily in cleanly overlapping areas.

Also, in some regions, e and i can be reduced to a single vowel, ditto for o and u. I'm pretty sure that's exclusive to only some parts of American Spanish (because some indigenous languages have only three main vowels) but maybe it happens in African Spanish too due to Arabic also only having three vowels.

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IMO, Latin American Spanish doesn't exist, actually. There are a lot of differences between countries and within countries, including Spain.

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