Within any language or language group, there may be significant changes in speech, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The term used to describe these changes is called a dialect. Some words or phrases that exist in one dialect may exist or be absent from different Spanish dialects. The most common Spanish dialects in the Spanish language is varied from region to region.
The main Spanish dialects are the Castillian Spanish Dialects and
List of Spanish Dialects
- North and South Castilian Spanish – is considered to be the official dialect of Spanish. Spoken mainly in northern and central Spain.
- Galician Spanish – A dialect of Spanish spoken in the northwestern part of Spain. Is partly influenced by Portuguese.
- Canarian Spanish – Dialect spoken on the Canary Island. Closely related to the Caribbean dialect of Spanish. Influenced partially by Portuguese.
- Aragonese Spanish – Dialect in the Northern part of Spain.
- Catalan Spanish – Official dialect of the Andorra region in northern Spain.
- Basque Spanish – A dialect that is spoken in the Pyrenees.
- Equatoguinean Spanish – Dialect spoken in different parts of Africa. Native Guineans added their own vocabulary and pronunciation patterns.
- Caribbean Spanish – Dialect that is spoken in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and along the Eastern Coast of Mexico and Central America.
- Rioplatense Spanish – Spoken in Argentina and Uruguay. Can close resemble Italian more than Spanish.
- Latin American – Dialect spoken in most Central and South American countries.
- Mexican Spanish – Mexico speaks only one dialect that is determined by the Mexican Academy for Spanish Language. Different regions in Mexico do include their own slang though.
Spanish Dialect Map
Different Spanish dialects of the Spanish language are spoken in many different nations and regions around the world, most commonly throughout the world.
However, the differences in regional dialects may not make one Spanish speaker nearly incomprehensible to another. In most cases, the different Spanish dialects don’t have a specific written form of the language, but there’s usually a certain amount of literature that accompanies each Spanish dialects.
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That’s really SHAMEFUL. Galician, Basque, Catalan and even Aragonese are not dialects of the Spanish language (ie. Castilian, those words are synonyms) at all, they are languages of their own.
I – GALICIAN (galego) isn’t a Spanish dialect. It’s a language that originated in Galicia and spread further southwards as the northern Christian kingdoms conquered the southern Muslim kingdoms all through the Middle Ages. Galician hasn’t been influenced by Portuguese, it’s basically the same language as Portuguese. However, Portuguese independence and later Castilian centralism torn apart Galician and Portuguese.
Galician is the same language as Portuguese (which is historically just Southern Galician), but influenced by Spanish. Not the other way around.
II – BASQUE (euskara) is undoubtedly the most idiotic here. Basque is not in any way a Spanish dialect. Unlike all other languages spoken in Spain, it’s not a Romance language (which means it’s not descended from Latin). It’s not even an Indo-European language! Actually, it’s not even related to any known existing language whatsoever!
Let’s compare the phrase “Who is in the kitchen?” in both languages:
Basque: Nor dago sukaldean?
Spanish: ¿Quién está en la cocina?
Does Basque look like Spanish even remotely?
By the way it’s not only spoken in the Spanish autonomous communities of Euskadi and Navarre (where it’s official) but also a small southwestern corner of France.
III – ARAGONESE (aragonés) is a proper language too, it’s extremely close to both Spanish on one side and Catalan on the other side. It once was spoken in most of Aragon to the western inland parts of the Valencian Country. However, it started to lose ground to Spanish from the 15th century onwards and is now spoken only in the Aragonese Pyrenees.
IV – CATALAN (català) is an actual language too and is not a Ibero-Romance language (like Spanish or Portuguese) but an Occitano-Romance one, closely related to Occitan (a language spoken in most of the south of France and tiny bits of Italy and Spain; and it’s NOT a French dialect: Occitan is closer to Catalan than it is to French and Catalan is closer to Occitan than it is to Spanish).
Besides Andorra is not a region of Spain but a sovereign State, a principality whose co-princes are the Catalan bishop of Urgell and the president of the French Republic.
Catalan is not spoken only in Andorra though, it’s mostly spoken in CATALONIA (hence the name), where the city of Barcelona (come on, you’ve heard of that city at least once) is located, as well as most of the Valencian Country (the eastern coastal areas), the Balearic Islands, a thin eastern strip of Aragon and even in the Northern Catalonia region of France. And I should add the city of L’Alguer in Sardinia.
Jo parlo català molt bé i et puc assegurar que no és un dialecte del castellà/espanyol, com ja ho pots llegir. El català és tan diferent de l’espanyol com el francès o l’italià.
Yo hablo catalán muy bien y puedo asegurarte de que no es un dialecto del castellano/español, como ya lo puedes leer. El catalán es tan diferente al español como el francés o el italiano.
(“I speak Catalan very well and I can assure you that it’s not a dialect of Castilian/Spanish, as you can read. Catalan is as differerent from Spanish than French or Italian are.”)
All of this is extremely concerning. Qualifying these languages as mere “Spanish dialects” along with Spanish as it’s spoken in Mexico, Cuba or Argentina is extremely misleading, utterly false and shows a deep lack of knowledge about the geography, history and cultures of Spain.
It seems like you don’t really know anything about the subject to begin with. It seems like you never considered doing the research (which would have been a very quick one yet!). Come on, even your text is oblivious to the very map you posted!
I’m sorry Sally, but please do the bloody research before posting -and spreading- such idiocies. It makes you lack all credibility as a Spanish teacher and that’s really pathetic.
Now I realize that I may be a little too harsh, but what I say isn’t any less true.
Sally, you got burned. Damn! What an embarrassment for us Americans.
In your haste to criticise, you’ve made yourself look pretty silly. The author refers to Basque Spanish, Catalan Spanish and Galician Spanish – these are all varieties of Spanish – hence their name. Basque, Catalan and Galician are indeed separate languages, but that has nothing to do with this article, which is about varieties of SPANISH.
Basques is different.. oldest. Agur.. Basque Blood from Zamboanga Philippines. Peace
Yikes Sally, the american education system is really shining through with this post.