Geografía lingüística: a brief insight into the variety of the Spanish language across Latin America

Margarita Feizaka

doi:10.22364/fg.18.6

Abstract

While there are studies on differences between traditional Spanish and Latin American Spanish, they tend to either compare Castilian Spanish to one national variation in Latin America (e.g. Mexican Spanish) or assume that the whole region of Latin America is rather linguistically homogenous. This research aims to provide a brief insight into differences between variations of the Spanish language spoken in different countries in Latin America, comparing three local dialects: Mexican, Venezuelan and Chilean. Qualitative content analysis and the comparative method were applied to conduct the research. The findings suggest that there are differences in grammar usage and lexicon between different countries. While phenomena like anglicisms and changing prepositions were detected in all local dialects, Mexican Spanish stood out in terms of grammar, and Mexican and Venezuelan Spanish vocabulary showed specific local expressions.

Highlights

While language geography, a branch of human geography, has been around for a while, most research into Spanish geolinguistics has had an emphasis on linguistic rather than geographical aspects (Yakubova et al 2016; De la Mota et al 2010; Llamazares et al 2017)
While Castilian Spanish speakers use the verb encontrarse to describe an intended meeting, and toparse is used to describe an unintended meeting, in Mexican Spanish toparse carries the meaning of an intended meeting
The phrase bien feliz shows another phenomenon of Mexican Spanish, where the word muy is often replaced by the word bien

Summary

Introduction

A branch of human geography, has been around for a while, most research into Spanish geolinguistics has had an emphasis on linguistic rather than geographical aspects (Yakubova et al 2016; De la Mota et al 2010; Llamazares et al 2017). The presence of the Spanish language is an undeniable colonial legacy in hispanophone Central and South American countries. Brought to the continent in the 15th century, it has developed and changed in accordance with local culture, history and traditions, resulting in differences from traditional Spanish. Speaking, existing studies on varieties of Spanish dialects can be categorised into two groups: the first group usually focuses on differences between traditional Spanish (Castilian) and Spanish in one particular country in Latin America. The second group, tends to assume that the whole region of Latin America is rather linguistically homogenous. The aim of this paper is to give a brief insight into the differences in the Spanish language between three Latin American states – Chile, Mexico and Venezuela – and to show that there are notable differences in grammar and vocabulary usage across the whole region

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