Talk:Central American Spanish

Untitled
This article is nowhere near complete. I have stolen the format from the Mexican Spanish Article. Right now it is just a collection of tid-bits, things that I know from my own experience. But hopefully this will get the ball rolling.

Orginally, on the list of local variations of Spanish, each state was listed. However, I figured that since central america is smaller, and possibly less linguistically diverse than Mexico, and since no one had written a single article about any of the coutries, I should change the format to a single article on Central American Spanish. When this article starts to look like something, move this comment to the comments section please. &mdash;preceding unsigned comment by Jackiemenderchuk (talk • contribs) 04:16, December 3, 2005

There is a very small article in spanish on central american spanish. I have translated the parts that I was sure I understood and agreed with. There are a few pieces that I left in Spanish some one else to sort out.

This article is a mess and full of lies, Panama speaks Caribbean Spanish and Costa Rican Spanish is closer to Colombian Spanish than the Central American. Guatemalan Spanish and El Salvador are the only ones with strong mexican influence.

Voseo is strong in Costa Rica and Nicaragua only, Guatemalan use 'vos' like costa ricans use mae or nicaraguans maje. (dude) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.28.110.53 (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Several questions
Note: I'm a native speaker but I've never talked to a gal/guy from one of these countries.

User:Ejrrjs says What? 14:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Why Panama is not included? Is is because it is not a sovereign country ? Or because its dialect are too close to Colombia's?
 * 2) Why Belize is not included? There is a significant population that speaks Spanish, even as their mother tongue.
 * 3) I believe that fragmented is not an adequate word for Arg, Mx or Col. See dialect continuum
 * 4) 'r' as in English...an alveolar approximant, certainly, or, maybe, an alveolar flap or a retroflex flap?
 * 5) Do they spell aborrotería or, perhaps, abarrotería ?
 * 6) Agua is standard Spanish for water, everywhere (just google agua site:.gt). Of course, it may also mean soft drink. In Chile, agüita is any infusion.

I wrote the article originally. So I will answer your questions: Note: I am not a Native speaker. I just lived there for a while. I am not really an expert. I just wanted to kick this thing off because it was missing. And to tell you the truth, I broke the rules not to put original research in wikipedia. This is ALL based on my own observations. I have no sources to back up any of it. And am very happy with most of the changes. Keep up the good work guys.
 * 1) As far as I can tell, the Spanish in Panama is not really related.
 * 2) Yes. This does include the Spanish of Belize then.  But that is complicated.  I guess the Mexican Spanish article can include many people in the USA.
 * 3) good point, diverse maybe a better word
 * 4) The 'r' sounds like an North American English 'R'.
 * 5) You are right. oops
 * 6) I don't know what you are trying to say.

Why Belize is not Included
Belize should be included over 50% of the population speaks spanish as a navtive tounge, and lots of other people as well. I just got back from belize, and while lots of people speak english, it's as a second language in western belize. I don't speak spanish though so I can't comment. The comment below is obviously written by some kind of Guatemalan nationalist, Belize never belonged to Guatemela, although it was technically part of the Central American Federation in the 1820's, Spain never excersised effective control over the area. Anyway Belize has been either a colony of Britian or an independent nation since then, whatever Guatemala says. I do know that Belizans say that thier spanish is significantly different from Guatemalan spanish, but as I don't speak the language myself I will leave that to others to include. Belize defines itself as cultural caribean and central american, and from what i saw it is true there.

Belize was Spanish land, and after the independence it was Guatemalan land, the British asked permission to built a garrison and extract timber from there, but instead ended up making a colony out of the whole place. Guatemala has the right to claim their land. Gtrojan

Belize was given to the british by our then Presiden Justo Rufino Barrios, which the Queen of England tricked, by saying that she was going to send people to make a highway from frontier to the other. of course se didnot committed to it, so she took the land and never built the highways as she had said. and that is the story why Belize does not belong to Guatemala any more

Some miscellanea
I lived in ES for seven years and Guate for three, so that's my source of expertise.

1. In ES, the word "gaseosa" is used for soda. In Guatemala, it's "agua." If you want water, you have to ask for "agua pura."

2. There are nicknames for all of the Central Americans. I'm not sure if these are used throughout the isthmus, and everyone's got a different story as to their origin: Salvadorans: guanacos Guatemalas: chapines Honduras: catrachos Nicaraguans: chochos (I think) Costa Ricans: ticos

3. I see on the CA slang page in Spanish you have the word "coger" for both CA and Spain as "to get," but in Central America it means "to have sexual relations with," so you want to avoid it. As you show for ES, one word for pig is "cuche"; however, in Guatemala, it's "coche," which also means "car." So I met Spaniards who would say, "Voy a coger el coche," meaning they were going to go get the car, but it had a totally different meaning for the chapines who would be rolling on the floor...


 * Just wanted to clear something up, Nicaraguans are not referred to as 'chochos' that is considered an insult, 'chocho' means dog/s. Nicaraguans are know as "Nicas", "Nicoyas" and "Pinoleros". LaNicoya 09:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Guatemala: Abarrotería vs. Tienda
Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert (and would aspire to be a novice) on this topic. I was in Guatemala (Guatemala City, Flores, Antigua, and Santiago Atítlan), and saw many Tiendas, and few (if any) Abarroterías. Is the use of Abarrotería in Guatemala found in speach, while Tienda is used on signs? Srice13 01:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

They have the same meaning, just that for small stores Tienda is used, for medium size stores Abarrotería is used. Gtrojan 22:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Maje or mae
"Mae or maje is used colloquially in Costa Rica and Honduras as second person when addressing someone close". This isnt exactly correct, its more like the UK word mate or just inserted in a sentence but it isnt a replacement for vos, tu or usted, SqueakBox 16:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Its also commonly used in Nicaragua. "Oye maje, como estas?" or "Ideay maje, como estas" is used in nicaragua like "Hey whats up" is used in the U.S. *LaNicoya 09:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

IMHO Costa Rica does't have to be here, it's accent have way more to do with the colombian, and practically 'cero' with any central american. If in some central american countries use mae and diay as the above examples is because they borrowed from Costa Rica after being here illegal working in low wage "jobs".

REALLY!?!? I lived in Costa Rica (that's where I first learned to speak Spanish [including voseo/ no one used tú] before getting my MA in Spanish Lit., and Colombians are some of the toughest for me to understand, along with Hondurans and Spaniards :), this is just my personal experience. We all made regular use of "mae", sometimes every other word, (never heard it pronounced 'maje', but we all knew that's where it came from), and everyone used 'Pura vida' and 'idiay'. My friends almost always called their kids "güilas".Saloli (talk) 23:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC) saloli

Mae is used in Costa Rica pretty much like "mate" or "dude" in English. Maje does have a different meaning in Costa Rica, usually foolish, such as in the phrase "agarrar de maje" meaning to trick or fool someone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.197.172.148 (talk) 03:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm Costa Rican and from what I understand "mae" is definitively a unique Costa Rican thing (neither my Honduran grandfather nor my Mexican, Salvadoran, or Venezuelan friends use it or even knew what it meant). On the other hand accent wise I would say Venezuelans and Colombians have a much more similar Spanish to us than other Central Americans, including nearby countries like Nicaragua. You gotta remember that unlike the other Central American countries that were historically much more closely related to each other, Costa Rica's small population was largely ignored to the point that a Colombian invasion of Bocas del Toro was never noticed by the capital in Guatemala. This plus the fact that our Spanish and aboriginal cutures blended much more uniformly than in other countries led to some completely autochthonous traits, such as our accents and our use of "mae". The user above is right on something though, the tough conditions in the rest of Central America has led to an influx of "low wage" workers from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Colombia and many of them have not only adopted "mae" but also brought it back to their countries. Mardochaios (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I respectfully concur. Costa Ricans end up making the same argument for gallo pinto, that is, that they "made the dish themselves." Although CR has a lexicon similar to Colombian Spanish (I don't agree with the Venezuelan part, given that the S is often cut just as it is in other Latin American countries), a similar Spanish sounding population co-exists in Rivas and the Rio San Juan regions of Nicaragua. I'm not so sure you can apply the "low wage workers" scenario to this, since, in theory, you argue that the vocabulary and dialect are singularly of Costa Rican origin and it would be staying there, wheras it seems to contradict your theory based in the aforementioned example provided. It's like the word valija. Some would argue that it's only found in Argentina or the Rio de Plata region in South America due to the large influx of Italian immigrants to the region and Chile (the word is valigia in Italian). However, the word valija is also present in Nicaraguan Spanish, and there hasn't been a large influx of people coming in from either regions to Nicaragua. I believe its safe to say that the language has its own ways of working out in various countries. IE: You say regio (meaning awesome or really good) in Costa Rica no one understands you; saying Nica in Nicaragua (referring to the people) or saying Nica in El Salvador which is more of an insult. I've used the word Mae around certain Central American groups who have understood, but the opposite occured with my conversation with a Costa Rican friend of mine, who said he had "no idea what the word referred to." But then again, he is Costa Rican American. I guess he wasn't taught it? Who knows. But I'm not completely sure your argument has 100% accuracy overall. Mbhskid520 (talk) 10:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Expert help
This article is in need of expert verification, especially for the Phonetics/phonology section and Syntax, I wish we can get this article to resemble the one in the Spanish version of Wikipedia Gtrojan 03:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I have put on this article the Template:Unreferenced. I'm a native speaker of Spanish, and I reviewed the article in the Spanish Wikipedia (I'm also a Spanish Wikipedia user). Unfortunately, the Spanish article does not cite any references too; by this reason, we can't get any verifiable content from that. If some of you speaks Spanish, I recomend the Diccionario Panhispánico de dudas, articles "Voseo" and "Seseo" as a reference, in order to improve this article. —André Oliva (talk) 00:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not a native speaker but I do have some knowledge of Central American Spanish. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Latest
Dear User:SqueakBox: —André Oliva (talk) 01:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The link you used as a reference (Voces del mundo) is not referred to Spanish in the specific case of Central America. I recomend you the Diccionario Panhispánico de dudas.
 * I think you should add more details in your reference "Lonely Planet Guide to Central America"
 * You need a reference for the text you added: "In Honduras and El Salvador money is called pisto, a term originally used by Maya peoples in Guatemala but considered archaic there."
 * You deleted the Template:citation needed in the begining of the article. Some sources, for example the Spanish Encyclopedia Autodidáctica Interactiva Océano, 2nd book, section "Idioma Español" ("Spanish Language") considers the Spanish spoken in Panama as part of Caribbean Spanish variant.


 * Hi, I'll see what I can do but I didn't understand what the first cite was requesting. We don't need to cite here that Central America is these countries or that these countries speak Spanish so I need to get a handle on what is being requested in this particular case (I had no issue with any of the other cite requests). Thanks, SqueakBox 01:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok (Thankyou for the Template:Welcome!). I understand your point of view, and I agree with you if we put the phrase "...More precisely, the term refers to the Spanish language as spoken in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and (+) the mexican state of Chiapas (- Panama) (+) according to the classification proposed by..." and I will try to give the name of the autor and search other possible classifications by other authors on Spanish variants. Thanks, —André Oliva (talk) 16:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Vos in Costa Rica
I always had the impression that "vos" is the dominate second-person singular pronoun in Costa Rica. Could anyone verify that?70.112.242.125 (talk)Vuestra Merced (5 March, 2011)

Costa Ricans mostly use usted and vos, usted as a respect treatment and vos with close friends and family. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.28.110.53 (talk) 21:20, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The use of vos and usted in Costa Rica has regional variations. While in the urbanized central valley vos is the predominant form and usted is used as a respect treatment, in the rest of the country and particularly in the rural areas usted is the standard form in every situation and vos is not often used. The exception to this is the north pacific region where vos is common. I'm talking from personal experience and from observation. I'm a Costa Rican who grew up in the rural areas and moved to the center of the country as a teenager. I distinctively recall making an effort to train myself to use vos primarily instead of usted and I still switch to the usted form when I visit those areas. Estefan (talk) 15:34, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Colours in the map.
The Dominican Republic and Spain is marked with red, but no explanation is given for what this means. --Oddeivind (talk) 11:04, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It must be a mistake, they should be green. By they way, there are other mistakes in the map, I'll replace it. --Jotamar (talk) 21:55, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

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Honduran shopfront
What specifically is Central American about the Spanish used on the low-res image of the shopfront in Honduras? (If you know the answer, please also mention it at commons:File_talk:Hn1.JPG since the file is hosted over there.) Beorhtwulf (talk) 20:55, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The poster uses pedí, which is a Vos imperative form. --Jotamar (talk) 16:42, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we are looking at different images. I see pedí in File:Pedi Voseo El Salvador.jpg but not File:Hn1.JPG. Beorhtwulf (talk) 12:48, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry. In that image, apparently nothing dialectal. --Jotamar (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2017 (UTC)