The dialect in Barcelona
 

I am going to Barcelona for 4 months to study. I am a Spanish minor and heard that the dialect there is quite different from the rest of Spain. Is it a bad idea to study the language in Barcelona if I plan on using what I learn there in the States?
Gracias

I think it is a separate language - Catalan.

It probably would have been better to choose an area outside Catalonia if improving Spanish is your aim. I am sure that you can get Spanish classes in Barcelona, but once you step into the street, you are as likely to hear Catalan as Castilian (sp?), which is what we call Spanish. All things being equal, it would be better to hear the same language in the classroom and in the street.

Catalans speak excellent Castillan. Although I have not seen it recenetly, Catalans when encountering a Madrileno, would try and speak a better Castillan. I do not know if the younger Catalans engage in such one upmanship.

Many believe that Catalan has its origin in Provencal.

IMHO studying in Barcelona would broaden your experience as a linguist rather than harm it.

Are you going to study at a univeristy in Barcelona? I would inquire as to what they use and teach. They are very proud of the Catalan language, and they do NOT view it as a "dialect" of Spanish, they feel it is it's own language. I know (from friends who live their, and one is a "native") that they now teach school children in Catalan, and most often what you will hear in the streets in Catalan (my friend who is fluent in Spanish and just now encountering Catalan says that there are a number of words that are very different, so sometimes she has to ask shopkeepers to repeat, etc.)

To answer your question, I think it depends on what you are hoping to learn.

The dialect is in fact a language. Catalan is actually one of the three co-official languages spoken in Spain, besides Castilian.

Catalunya is a bi-lingual region, with street signs in both Castilian and Catalan, and a multitude of newspapers, or radio and TV stations in Catalan.

Of course, everybody will be able to communicate in Castilian, and Barcelona is the home of many language schools (for Castilian).

But it's not as if you were 100% immersed in the Castilian language like e.g. in Madrid, since most or many locals communicate in Catalan, so what you will hear on the streets is lots of Catalan and Castilian -- and English and German, of course ;-)

My daughter just returned from a semester in Barcelona. She had a wonderful experience, but said her one disappointment was that she didn't get the opportunity to practice speaking the Spanish language nearly as much as she expected because Catalan was more prevalent.

Her classes were in Spanish so she says she can understand the language much better, but can't speak it a whole lot better than when she went over.

She was in an apartment with other study abroad kids, so it may have been better if she'd done a home stay.

depends on your priority and level of spoken language already.

however, being in barcleona is enticing in itself.. so unless your other options excite you as much.. i wouldn´t worry about it since, frankly, the majority of students end up seeking out english speaking foreign friends to whittle the time away with anyway.

only the really serious linguists would worry about this and might find it a plus, as mentioned by aduchamp.

( i have met very few serious linguists on these trips. people think they are serious and have good intentions, but do not approach these lessons with the same fervor and willpower as someone on a mission).

you only need one castillian speaker in your neighborhood to practice your spanish with, and barcelona has the biggest immigration of sevillanos and other castillian-speaking spaniards of any province.

enjoy!

Cowboy1968 writes: "The dialect is in fact a language. Catalan is actually one of the three co-official languages spoken in Spain, besides Castilian."
Two others are Euskera and Galego. You can probably get along with Catalan and Galego; you may find alien Euskera, language of Basque (Euskadi) people. Its syntax doesn't seem to be that of a Romance language.
A dialect of Catalan is spoken down the Coast in Valencia and as far as Alicante.
I speak Castellano in Barcelona and have never had a problem, probably thanks to the Franco Regime (Uno, Grande y Libre).

you have all been so helpful. Since my main focus is to learn a Spanish that I am going to be able use here in the States (which would not be Catalan and so on) I think I will look at other cities. Perhaps Seville or Madrid. But Barcelona is still an option for excursions! Thanks a lot!

You might want to rent the video Auberge Espagnole, a movie about a French student who comes to Barcelona to study and shares an apartment with students from all over Europe. One of the issues in the film is the difficulty of attending university classes in Catalan (although these were students taking regular university classes, not classes specifically for people hoping to learn Spanish). The film is also very entertaining and full of Barcelona scenery.

In Barcelona, people say Castellano (Castilian) when referring to the language that we outside of Spain think of as Spanish. I was corrected by people when I talked about the language as Espanol. I think the idea is that there are several languages known as Spanish, including Castellano, Catalan, and the others mentioned in this thread.

Try Salamanca :) In Seville you will learn spanish with andalusian accent..which I suppose is not what you are crossing the pond for (it's more similar to the south american accents). Madrid it's ok if you want to be in a big city, if you prefer a smallest one, Salamanca would be my first choice, their Spanish courses are top quality.

ditto kenderina´s suggestion. i studied in salamanca. they speak very pure castillian.

valladolid is also good, but salamanca holds a special place in my heart as well as being a world heritage site.

but don´t miss barcelona!

The pronunciation in Southern Spain (Andalucia) is the closest I have come across to Latin American Spanish (as commonly used in the US). Catalan won't help you a lot as it is pretty different to Castilian Spanish. Bon dia, for example, is good day in Catalan - about half way between French (Bon jour) and Castilian (Buenos dias). Seville sounds a good bet.

Carolina-

I humbly beg to differ with you. I found the Spanish in the south, difficult to understand. If someone is going to learn a language they should learn the purist form because the rest of the world will chip away.

Idioms vary substantially throughout the Spanish speaking world, so start out with the fundamentally correct form.

Another example would be Galicia. I love Santiago and the university there is exceptional as well but most of the the people in the region speak Gallego. Thus what is learned in class would be put to limited use outside the class.
If Salamanca or Madrid are alternatives, I would choose one.

I think Salamanca is a good choice. My daughter studied in Madrid (chemical engineering taught in Spanish not Spanish) and she really improved her language skills.She has native speakers tell her she has a very good accent. We had traveled to Barcelona a year earlier and she was disappointed that so few people were speaking Spanish and she didn't get to practice.

My daughter's high school AP Spanish teacher always took a group of students to Salamanca in the summer. She used www.enforex.es and thought it was a good program.

I agree with Carolina in that I found the pronunciation in Andalucia to be closest to the Spanish I'm used to hearing, i.e. Latin American Spanish.

And Aduchamp, just out of interest, could you explain what you mean by "idioms vary substantially" and "start out with the fundementally correct form"? Just curious...

Kenderina has it right, it requires a little of common sense : to learn or practice Castillian, the best place would be
Castille,..... Salamanca, Valladolid...., it seems a little obvious I would think....

I agree that Barcelona might not be the best choice under the circumstances. However, I studied Spanish for several months in Granada and don't really agree that one should only study in a city where there is no discernable accent.
For a start, your classes are not going to be taught in the local dialect or with a broad accent, and outside of the classroom, I think it's a great thing for a language student to be thrown out of their comfort zone and start dealing with new accents and vocabulary. That's the beauty of learning a new language.

It's a bit like saying that students learning English shouldn't go to Edinburgh or the south-west of England, but should only learn the language in, say, Oxford, or that students of French should only go to Tours.

So I don't think that BoarderBabe should rule out Andalusia - if that's what appeals - simply on the basis of the accent.

If you learn Spanish in Spain it will be slightly different (in vocabulary and pronounciation) to that spoken in the US (assuming that most speak Latin/South American Spanish), understandable but a little different.

it is not only an accent in andalucia. many of the consonants are not even pronounced, or are pronounced in an incorrect way.

if you want to duplicate what is most spoken in the USA you should be looking at S. America/mexico for your language improvement classes.

i think she should study where she wants to, but if she is looking to perfect her language skills in a short time, being surrounded by people who use castillian in the purest form is a benefit. This all rests on the level /priority this person has and her goal.

she will learn whereever she goes if she isolates herself from the other english speakers ( which will be the majority of her classmates)

once you have perfected or somewhat mastered a language, THEN you can move on to understand the various accents, which, of course, at an interpreter´s level is absolutely necessary.

As Lincasnova noted the prnounciation in the south is not always correct.

Both slang and idioms vary from coutry to country and region to region. Accordingly the slang and idioms in Andalucia, might not be what is spoken in the southern, eatern, western US.

My father-in-law was born in Galicia and a sister-in-law was born in Puerto Rico and they would look around the room for a translator when they spoke directly to one another.

Hanl...Granada is not Sevilla :) I mean, Granada University has also great spanish courses and it is reknown also for them. Sevilla is more on the private academies side and then the quality of the teaching would vary a lot more (there can be wonderful ones and others not so much) which is something you don't get to know till you are there and cannot do anything to avoid it.
It's the same in English, when we began to learn it..we are taught BBC accent(kind of neutral one), unless you are interested on American English. Then, when you have an advanced level (to say, university level) then you get to know the different accents : Scottish, Wales,
Estuary English... Many Spanish learners go to Ireland to join English courses because they say they have no particular accent when speaking English (which I don't think it is actually true but in any case it's not a difficult one to understand).

During our first trip to Spain a thousand years ago, we were befriended by Spanish students in Barcelona. To the confusion of all, we would speak Spanish and they would speak English (we are Americans.)

One night of the Catalan students said, "I am taking the tub home."

My wife and I scratched our heads until we discerned the tub was the tube.

LOL , Aduchamp ! I'm not at all impressed...foreign languages teaching in Spain at the schools has always been pretty bad. I remember when I was on the last year of elementary school (then I was 13 years old) my english teacher at school didn't know to speak english..she wasn't able to pronounce correctly not even a single word...so she didn't want to do any speaking activity because most of us (the pupils) were learning english in private lessons outside the school so most of us speak better english than her !!

Kenderina, I wasn't passing judgment so much on the quality of schools in Andalucia as the idea that Spanish learners shouldn't go to the south in case they learn "incorrect" Spanish or are unable to understand anybody... I was trying to use my experience to reassure the OP that regional accents needn't be a big problem for learners of Spanish, as they weren't for me - not after a couple of days to "acclimatise", anyway :)

My personal view is that it's important for language students to be exposed to all aspects of a language, not just the "received pronunciation" that one hears from the teacher or from language tapes or CDs. Of course, it's a shock when you arrive in a city and discover that nobody talks like you were told they did, but I think that's an integral part of the learning process.

And I honestly don't think there's any harm in being exposed to different accents fairly early on in the learning process. I learned French first in the south-west of France (in les Landes, where there is a very strong accent), then Toulouse (ditto), then Tours (supposed to have no accent), and the variety of accents I encountered helped to enrich my knowledge of the French language. Same with Spanish - 6 months in Granada and 6 weeks in Costa Rica gave me a great insight into a couple of the variants of the Spanish language!!

On the other hand, I'm a linguist by profession and I've alway been fascinated by languages, so perhaps my positive experiences are atypical... But just wanted to put a different spin on things.

You named it...you are a linguist :)
I understood your statement, I just was adding that Granada is also a very good place for learning Spanish for the quality of teaching (and Sevilla is not known for that).
If I were to spend a good amount of money on such a thing, I would like to make sure I'm going to have the best teaching and learning experience that my money can pay :)
Then, outside the language classes..yes, it's ok to go wherever. Though it won't be my first choice, I'm not the one who has to choose :)

Am I right or are there 4 languages in Spain and an extra dialect (Mallorca)

While Barcelona is a good place to learn Castillian from say a 40 year old I doubt it would be from a 20 year old as Castillian is no longer mandatory at school.

Pebble...pond...pond....pebble

Castilian (Spanish)
Gallego (Combination of Portugese and Castilian)
Catalan
Basque-non-arayan language of undetermined origin

And then udner the Spanish Constitution:

The Statute of the Principality of Asturias, set up as an Autonomous Community in 1981, reads: "The Bable shall be protected. Its use will be promoted by the media and the teaching institutions, respecting in any case all the local differences and the willfulness in its learning".

The Statute of the Autonomous Community of Aragón, set up in 1982, read: "The several linguistic variations of Aragón shall be protected, being considered as elements of its cultural and historic heritage".

The Article 7.1 of the Statute of the Comunidad Valenciana, which includes the provinces of Alicante, Castellón and Valencia, reads: "The two official languages of the Autonomous Community are the Valencian and the Castillian. Everyone has the right to know and use them.". The old Kingdom of Valencia was set up as an Autonomous Community in 1982, and the Law for the linguistic normalization of the Valencian language was approved on 23 November, 1983 (B.O.E. 20, of 20 January, 1984).

Bilboburglar, there are apparently several dialects of Catalan, including different ones spoken on Mallorca and Ibiza.

Well, I think there is no problem to study Spanish in Barcelona; it's true that in Barcelona people speak two languages Spanish and Catalan, but Catalan is a language easy to Spanish speakers and people in Barcelona are nice, if you don’t understand anything, you don’t worry you can ask them to repeat.

On the other hand I think you should inform in your University in Spain about language of course, if this language is Spanish all will be easier, you’ll start listening Catalan in your spare time and this is always better.

Another possibility is going to study en other Spanish cities where people speak only Spanish as Salamanca, Valladolid o Madrid.

Bye,

Boarderbabe,
You mention that you want to learn Spanish that you "can use in the States." Specifically what will you be using your Spanish for in the States? Teaching Spanish in high school or college, or something else?

Almost all the Spanish spoken in the 'Americas' is Castilian. That language is the Official language of Mexico, Argentina and all other Spanish-speaking Countries in the Hemisphere, all members of Instituto del Idioma. As with other languages you will find variations among what you read and what you hear spoken. Such is also the case in Spain: In Andalucia, for example, it's said that people 'swallow their 'S's.'

In Barcelona, you will surely learn pure Castellano unless you enrolled in a course in Catalan. It may be an advantage to learn the language without regional variations.

During the Franco regime, languages other than Castilian were outlawed. But Euskera, Galego and Catalan flourished, at least partially because many people didn't like el Caudillo or his Policys. Speaking their own language was a way for people to express themselves

Franco regime was a dictatorship...don't forget that. When a kid is hit (very hard) at school just because he/she said something in a language other than castillian ,when someone goes to jail if it is heard in the street speaking catalan or euskera, it's easy to understand that people reacts against it. As they had to wait for long till they were able to react (almost till Franco died) , they overreacted in some cases. But 30 years later (now) I think things are getting normalized on the languages side.

salamanca pronunciation of "fish" in spanish

pes-ca-tho ( more or less)

sevilla pronunciation:

pe-cao

.. in which case.. you wonder if they are talking about a "pecado" which is a "sin"

I guess we also should ask about dialects in America. I understand that Cuban Castilian makes people in Chile laugh.

bilboburgler writes: "I guess we also should ask about dialects in America. I understand that Cuban Castilian makes people in Chile laugh."
It should be the other way 'round. I've found Cuban much more faithful to Spain's Castellano than is Chilean. But the Official language in both Countries is Castilian.

LinCasanova: a similar situation exists in French. Peche is fish; but it is also 'sin.' Some words from the Hail Mary: Prié por nous pauvres pecheurs. I got in trouble with two French Maitres d'ecole in the use of those words a long time ago (in a former lifetime). But that's a whole 'nuther story.

There's no such thing as correct and incorrect pronunciation, IMO. That just seems snobbish. Would you say then that the only correct English was spoken in southern England and that all you Americans were speaking bad English? The vowels are totally different to British English, not even starting on the different expressions and vocabulary.

<<Peche is fish; but it is also 'sin.'>>

Bad example. "la pêche" is fish, while "le péché" is sin, and they are pronounced quite differently.

Nontheless, French, like most languages has homonymns which have to be distinguished by context. There are many instances in English which could also be cited (sighted, sited).

i was just trying to throw in some humour that tends to throw off my students when they come. obviously, you finally get used to it.

and don´t get me wrong..

i ADORE sevillanos and their accent/way of speaking. They are the most cheerful of the spaniards i have met.

i love the gypsy carriage drivers..

anyway. good luck to all you (us)students.