Thursday, February 22, 2007

Exceptions to the Rule

Did you know that Uruguayan Spanish is full of exceptions to the usual rules of Spanish? For the most part, at least what I understand right now, Spanish in any country has some general rules. Like English it has it's dialects, be it regionally, in the States for example, the North (Boston) and the South (Georgia), or in another country such as Canada or England. Uruguayan Spanish is defintely a dialect.

More than once our teacher has said, "Well, that's correct, but in the Rio region (Uruguay and Argentina) it is said like this ____" For example, except for the fact that it is found in the Bible, Vosotros is not used here. Instead, it is replaced by Ustedes. And if that's not confusing enough there is a dialect of Spanish/Portuguese along the border shared with Brazil.

The people here speak so quickly that even when they slow down they are still faster than what I can understand. Plus they tend to inhale all of their S sounds, Gracias sounds like Gracia and they often say only the ending of esta and hasta. So what you would hear is, "Mucho Gracia, ta bien, ta luego, chau." Archie on the otherhand is very clear in his speech and I can typically make a differentiation between his words. We are told that is because he is from Mexico. Of course there could be a little bit of national pride in that statement. :-)

Flashcards have been a great help in memorizing the multitude of vocabulary words, verbs and their basic conjugations (Yo, Tu, El/Ella, Usted, Nosotros, Ellos/Ellas, Ustedes). Even so I have a hard time remembering which ending goes with which person. And we haven't even tackled sentence structure. So with that said, I guess I better quit taking a break and hit the flashcards. Or I'm going to be speaking like a two year old robot for awhile.

And maybe one of these days Scott will make this truly "our" blog by writing a post! One can hope!

1 comment:

Aficionado de Uruguay said...

I can totally relate and understand to these feelings!

:)

Sandy