Bienvenido
Last week after much hard work by the Latin America Centre of AsiaPacific Excellence at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, a new language week joined the ranks of the existing weeks celebrating language diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Welcome ( Bienvenido!) to the first Aotearoa Spanish Language Week (August 15-21).
Spanish is one of the world’s most spoken languages, with more than 570 million speakers globally (7.6% of the world’s population). According to the Instituto Cervantes in Spain, Spanish is also the second most used mother tongue in the world, with over 480m speakers. That puts Spanish second only to Mandarin, and English as a close third.
In New Zealand, the 2013 Census reported that Spanish was spoken by almost 27,000 people. This number has undoubtedly grown over the past nine years, and Spanish-speaking cultures have become more visible throughout the country.
During the opening celebration for Spanish Language Week at Parliament,
MP Ricardo Menendez March emphasised the diversity found within the Spanishspeaking world, both culturally and linguistically, and he encouraged people to learn more about this.
This article looks at some of the linguistic diversity within and between Spanish-speaking regions. Readers may encounter any of these in Aotearoa New Zealand, as our Spanish speakers come from around the globe!
One of the biggest differences between Spanish dialects that people often point to is sound related. In particular, many people are familiar with the ‘‘lisp’’ of Spanish spoken in Spain (such as pronouncing the ‘s’ sound in Spanish hacer with a ‘th’).
While this is often used as a distinguishing feature between Spanish varieties in Spanish versus those in Latin America, this is not so clearcut. This phenomenon (known as ceceo) has also been found in parts of Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile and Puerto Rico.
There are also differences between Spanish dialects in terms of grammar. In Spain, for example, the past tense is most commonly found in the form of the present perfect tense (for example, He ido a la tienda esta man˜ana – ‘‘I have been to the store this morning’’). Comparatively, in Latin America, it is the simple past tense which is more commonly found (for example, Fui a la tienda esta man˜ana – ‘‘I went to the store this morning’’).
Grammatical variation can also be found in terms of reference, such as personal pronouns. In some countries, such as Mexico, the pronoun tu´ is used to refer to ‘‘you’’ informally for a single person, usted is for ‘‘you’’ formally for a single person, and ustedes is for ‘‘you’’ for a group of people whether formal or informal. Meanwhile, in Spain, vosotros is used in place of ustedes. Additionally, some countries such as Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay say vos instead of tu´ for singular informal ‘‘you’’.
Furthermore, vocabulary differences between Spanish-speaking regions abound. For example, the word for ‘‘car’’ in Mexico is carro, while in Spain it is coche, and in Argentina it is auto. Some differences can be quite funny as well! Fresa means ‘‘strawberry’’ universally across dialects of Spanish, but in Mexico fresa is also used to refer to someone who is rather snobbish.
Many words used in Spanish in Mexico are also of Nahuatl origin (an Indigenous language of Mexico) such as aguacate (avocado), chocolate (borrowed into English), coyote (likewise borrowed into English), and ajolote (axolotl). The list is well over 100 words long!
With such rich diversity in language, Spanish Language Week provides an opportunity to explore.
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