OK, my comments.. First, I think you'll naturally start to pick up specific local/regional terms that you're starting to hear a lot. As your Spanish improves, you'll notice "hey, I don't think that word I keep hearing is part of standard Spanish". The only thing I can compare it to is when I, a native Minnesotan, moved to Boston and star…
OK, my comments.. First, I think you'll naturally start to pick up specific local/regional terms that you're starting to hear a lot. As your Spanish improves, you'll notice "hey, I don't think that word I keep hearing is part of standard Spanish". The only thing I can compare it to is when I, a native Minnesotan, moved to Boston and started hearing words like "tonic" for soda pop instead of the typical Midwestern "pop", or "grinder" instead of "hoagie" for that kind of sandwich. It felt natural to start to use the local terminology, and was kinda fun. But in five years of living there, I never (as far as I know) started to pick up the local dialect such as "pahk the cah by hahvahd yahd". Over decades, that could start to creep in. We have a friend who moved from Minnesota to London decades ago. Now when we see her she'll say British things like "having things sorted", "that's brilliant", and even says "tom-ah-toes" as if she were a native Brit. Linguistically, she's now more British than Minnesotan for sure. I've never asked her, though, if she purposely worked on that or it just happened naturally over decades. Certainly your personality will gradually emerge in your Spanish. The thing I'm curious about is swear words. I think when you start swearing in Spanish, Melisse will definitely get a big kick out of it! (and even she is on a linguistic journey, from growing up in P.R. to now living in Valencia)
It's definitely fun comparing all of the Spanish ways of speaking. Melisse can tell where somebody is from instantly. Like I can do for people from the United States. Basically refinforcing your point. I can tell you if someone is Canadian in a less than a minute. Same with being from different parts of the US.
OK, my comments.. First, I think you'll naturally start to pick up specific local/regional terms that you're starting to hear a lot. As your Spanish improves, you'll notice "hey, I don't think that word I keep hearing is part of standard Spanish". The only thing I can compare it to is when I, a native Minnesotan, moved to Boston and started hearing words like "tonic" for soda pop instead of the typical Midwestern "pop", or "grinder" instead of "hoagie" for that kind of sandwich. It felt natural to start to use the local terminology, and was kinda fun. But in five years of living there, I never (as far as I know) started to pick up the local dialect such as "pahk the cah by hahvahd yahd". Over decades, that could start to creep in. We have a friend who moved from Minnesota to London decades ago. Now when we see her she'll say British things like "having things sorted", "that's brilliant", and even says "tom-ah-toes" as if she were a native Brit. Linguistically, she's now more British than Minnesotan for sure. I've never asked her, though, if she purposely worked on that or it just happened naturally over decades. Certainly your personality will gradually emerge in your Spanish. The thing I'm curious about is swear words. I think when you start swearing in Spanish, Melisse will definitely get a big kick out of it! (and even she is on a linguistic journey, from growing up in P.R. to now living in Valencia)
It's definitely fun comparing all of the Spanish ways of speaking. Melisse can tell where somebody is from instantly. Like I can do for people from the United States. Basically refinforcing your point. I can tell you if someone is Canadian in a less than a minute. Same with being from different parts of the US.