How come in most school in the USA (at least mine) they teach Spain Spanish instead of Mexico Spanish? Would not Mexico Spanish be an obvious choice to teach?
How come in most school in the USA (at least mine) they teach Spain Spanish instead of Mexico Spanish? Would not Mexico Spanish be an obvious choice to teach?
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We learned American Spanish when I was in school, no vosotros, no soft S, because we learned it from Cuban teachers. My kids got a mix but mostly, as you are saying, Spain Spanish. I think part of the reason is that Spain Spanish is one thing - canonical Spanish, yes? But in the Americas it's varied, different in the US from Mexico, from Colombia, from Argentina, Costa Rica. Dialects.
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I think it's silly to say that Spain Spanish is canonical, though. Like, says who? Spanish people? Spanish in Spain is a dialect just like any other Spanish-speaking country. Imo it makes sense to teach the dialect that learners are most likely to encounter based on their geographic location, with context about the other dialects.
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We have several dialects in Spain that talk different. We all write proper neutral Spanish though, determined by the Royal Spanish Academy, RAE.
Same thing with Basque, in the tiny territory we occupy there's a dialect per fucking town almost with distinct differences. Textbooks teach the official neutral Basque though. We would literally not be able to communicate if there was no neutral dialect everyone also knows...
Saying "country dialect" sounds very USA American tbh...
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Dialect was probably the wrong word, because of course there's many different dialects in many countries. (In fact, your aside about "sounds very US American" is funny, since I guarantee the US has more dialects than Spain. Plenty to hate on the US for, but that ain't it.)
Anyway idk if there's a word for this but like, the intermediary level between a language and a dialect. There is a wide gulf between Spanish spoken in Spain vs Latin America the same way as English in the UK vs USA. That macro-level distinction breaks down into trees of further distinction in regions, cities, towns of course.
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- Who says it, Spanish people?
Well, yes? It is the European colonizers that brought it here, I think Spain Spanish is "the Spanish" just like I think England English is "the English" and American English is an offshoot though it's what I know.
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