I wanna get back into writing but when I wanna make my characters speak spanish I realize how limited I am. I speak it fluently but I never bothered to learn writing it, mostly because I refused to learn the spanish taught in schools. There is something that for sure is gonna be lost if not kept, all the euphemisms and idioms I wanna use would give my characters the sauce.
The nice thing about Spanish is everything is spelled exactly how it sounds. AFAIK, accent/dialect differences in Spanish are where they put the stresses in their words, unlike in English where accents are vowel shifts. That means it’s easy to sound things out. Mexicans may stress part of a word differently than Peruvians or speak at a different pace, but both pronounce their A, E, I, O, and U’s the same way.
The most challenging is going to be Peninsular Spanish vs. Spanish spoken in the Americas.
Latin Spanish is is the only one I’ll acknowledge but for it is useful how you could sound it out most of the time. I have looked for one phrase though that my parents have said and I seen in the old DBZ Latin dub and found nothing, calabaza de fortnoce I know what calabaza means but the last part no real clue how to spell or what it means and parents don’t know either
You prob spelled it better than me all I know is you call some one calabaza de fortnoche when you mean dumbass we call our cats this sometimes and I remember piccolo called krillin and Gohan that so I lost my mind when I heard it in the dub
Hmm, I’m curious how you got that impression? In Spanish, the syllabic stress is completely set in stone. Words ending in n, s, or a vowel get a diacritic accent if they have their stress on their final syllable, otherwise they get the accent if they have a stress on the second-to-last syllable. All words with the stress before then get the accent.
Examples:
arroz: ah - RROZ (no accent, ends in z and has stress on final syllable)
atún: ah - TOON (accent because it ends in n and has stress on final syllable)
año: ahn - yuh (no accent, second-to-last ending in vowel)
huésped: WUHS - ped (accent because stress on second-to-last and ends on d)
esdrújula: ess - DROO - who - lah (always accent because stress comes more than 2 syllables away from ending)
I’m not a linguist but afaik the distinction between Spanish accents is really more about slight differences in how letters are pronounced and the flow between syllables, more subtle than stress.
Maybe I’m not using the right terminology? I’ll try and explain with “I have work tomorrow,” as an example. Capital letters are the letters in the accent/dialect that are emphasized/stressed/IDK what it’s called (I think you’re right it’s probably flow).
Mexican Spanish: “tEngo trabAjo mañAna.”
Peruvian Spanish: “tengO trabajO mañanA.”
Cuban Spanksh: “tEngO trAbAjO mAñAnA.”
Compared to English accents:
Received Pronunciation (all letters are spoken, consonants are used clearly): “I have work tomorrow.”
Boston English: “Ahh hev werk tamar-rah.”
Australian English: “Eh half werk tamaroh.”
West coast American: “Ai halve werek tomarow.”
Vowels get shifted into other vowels while entire consonants dissappear. Other examples include “button” (Americans don’t say the O) and “aluminium” (Americans don’t say the second I). Compare that to Spanish, where accents are where pitch in a word changes, but the vowels are still the same. Maybe a long A turns into a short A, but it doesn’t randomly shift into some dumbfuck combination like “ER” (“wash” vs. “worsh”).
I wanna get back into writing but when I wanna make my characters speak spanish I realize how limited I am. I speak it fluently but I never bothered to learn writing it, mostly because I refused to learn the spanish taught in schools. There is something that for sure is gonna be lost if not kept, all the euphemisms and idioms I wanna use would give my characters the sauce.
The nice thing about Spanish is everything is spelled exactly how it sounds. AFAIK, accent/dialect differences in Spanish are where they put the stresses in their words, unlike in English where accents are vowel shifts. That means it’s easy to sound things out. Mexicans may stress part of a word differently than Peruvians or speak at a different pace, but both pronounce their A, E, I, O, and U’s the same way.
The most challenging is going to be Peninsular Spanish vs. Spanish spoken in the Americas.
Latin Spanish is is the only one I’ll acknowledge
but for it is useful how you could sound it out most of the time. I have looked for one phrase though that my parents have said and I seen in the old DBZ Latin dub and found nothing, calabaza de fortnoce I know what calabaza means but the last part no real clue how to spell or what it means and parents don’t know either
Fortnoche? Like fortnight?
You prob spelled it better than me all I know is you call some one calabaza de fortnoche when you mean dumbass we call our cats this sometimes and I remember piccolo called krillin and Gohan that so I lost my mind when I heard it in the dub
Hmm, I’m curious how you got that impression? In Spanish, the syllabic stress is completely set in stone. Words ending in n, s, or a vowel get a diacritic accent if they have their stress on their final syllable, otherwise they get the accent if they have a stress on the second-to-last syllable. All words with the stress before then get the accent.
Examples:
arroz: ah - RROZ (no accent, ends in z and has stress on final syllable)
atún: ah - TOON (accent because it ends in n and has stress on final syllable) año: ahn - yuh (no accent, second-to-last ending in vowel)
huésped: WUHS - ped (accent because stress on second-to-last and ends on d)
esdrújula: ess - DROO - who - lah (always accent because stress comes more than 2 syllables away from ending)
I’m not a linguist but afaik the distinction between Spanish accents is really more about slight differences in how letters are pronounced and the flow between syllables, more subtle than stress.
Maybe I’m not using the right terminology? I’ll try and explain with “I have work tomorrow,” as an example. Capital letters are the letters in the accent/dialect that are emphasized/stressed/IDK what it’s called (I think you’re right it’s probably flow).
Mexican Spanish: “tEngo trabAjo mañAna.”
Peruvian Spanish: “tengO trabajO mañanA.”
Cuban Spanksh: “tEngO trAbAjO mAñAnA.”
Compared to English accents:
Received Pronunciation (all letters are spoken, consonants are used clearly): “I have work tomorrow.”
Boston English: “Ahh hev werk tamar-rah.”
Australian English: “Eh half werk tamaroh.”
West coast American: “Ai halve werek tomarow.”
Vowels get shifted into other vowels while entire consonants dissappear. Other examples include “button” (Americans don’t say the O) and “aluminium” (Americans don’t say the second I). Compare that to Spanish, where accents are where pitch in a word changes, but the vowels are still the same. Maybe a long A turns into a short A, but it doesn’t randomly shift into some dumbfuck combination like “ER” (“wash” vs. “worsh”).
Yeah I get what you mean, it’s a different kind of emphasis that has a bit more to do with flow and the rhythm of speech than stress.