crellston

"Australian Shiraz wine as its spelled instead of saying Syrah" I think the pronunciation is actually totally difference but where confusion arises is that they are genetically the same grape, the styles of the two wines are very different. Syrah being old world, Shiraz, New World.

Cowboy1968

I think that especially native English speakers struggle with the idea that there is ONE and really only just ONE way to say words correctly (in a foreign language).
It may come from that fact that your language is a total mystery when it comes to pronunciation, compare the U in butter, bury, butte.
In fact, English is probably the least phonetic and most difficult language I know (not that I would know more than four or five).
Other languages are simply much stricter, especially those which are very phonetic and have strict rules regarding pronounciation and emphasis, like Spanish. Which makes it literally impossible to pronounce any word incorrectly, no matter how obscure or "complicated".

thursdaysd

Cowboy1968

Well, yes and no.

Latin American Spanish and the variations in Andalucía differ slightly from "Standard Castilian" on the peninsula.
But also these two main groups of Spanish follow precise rules for pronounciation - as you pronounce, just for example, the "z" in Latin America and Andalucía in just one way, and in Standard Castilian in one other way. And you can say that the tone of the language is a bit softer in one region or a bit harsher in another.
But there is no discussion how one would say chorizo in Buenos Aires vs. chorizo in Madrid. Both variations have strict rules.

If that was the case for English, "shire" in Worcester-shire, Buckingham-shire or Wil-shire would all be pronounced absolutely identical. If Worcester-shire was pronounced like it is, this would not be accepted by "Standard English" (if there were such) as "correct" but just as a local oddity that had no impact and could be happily ignored by anyone else speaking (non-existing) "Standard English".

Just as French has a zillion variations but just one Standard French which rules and is always correct,

thursdaysd

I don't know who you have been listening to, but I grew up in England and I say "shire" in those three cases in exactly the same way. (And it's Wiltshire with a "t".)

However, I don't dispute the fact that English has more exceptions than rules, but I find it hard to believe that there are no dialects in Spanish.

kja

Now I'm curious!
Surely, in many Spanish speaking areas (whether Spain, Central America, or South America), there are traditional dishes (or perhaps fish) with names that trace to their pre-Spanish linguistic origins. And if so, the names could have morphed as they moved from (say) Moche to Incan or Asturian to Castillian or whatever, and they could have morphed differently in different regions with other prevailing cultures. Wouldn't that, potentially, lead to different pronunciations of the names of certain traditional dishes, even with a much more recently imposed common language with strict rules of pronunciation, just because the local name is different?

Cowboy1968

Good question.
You have several of words of Arabic origin that morphed into Spanish/Castilian, which follow the same rules as any others, e.g. alcázar or azúcar.
Technically, Spanish is very good in morphing sound into letters. If there is a certain sound that must be maintained through the tenses and cases, the spelling will change to accomodate the sound.
For example, if you need a "K" sound like in English kilo or car, it can be either "c" or "qu". Depends on the letter that follows. A, o, u require c; e and i require qu. So when you hear "calidad" in Spanish, you know that it must start with a C, there is no other way to achieve a "K sound" when the next letter is an A. Same with "queso" - you hear the E (well, not as randomly pronounced as in English but phonetically as in Spanish), and you know that you must write the word with "Qu" at the beginning.

There are probably thousands of dialects in Spain and Latin America or the Carribean.
But it is not a matter of dialect that when you tell someone "I live in Kent." there is no way to tell if Kent is the proper spelling or Cant.
In Spanish, you would have one region twisting the sound of the letter LL (paella) from pae-ya to paell-ya or anything in between.
But within that liguistic region there is only ONE pronounciation of LL. And would be replicated with any other word that contains LL.

The big oddity in English is that you have all those words containing the very same vowel, but you pronounce the same vowel in different ways, e.g. bury, butter, butte. In Spanish you would wrestle around with the spelling until you achieved the desired sound, so anyone reading the word would automatically say it with the correct pronounciation. Once you learned the 10 or so rules (and the phonetic spelling, which is an unfair extra task for English-speaking students), it's literally impossible not to pronounce any Spanish word 100% correct (correct within the respective liguistic region).

thursdaysd

Probably a reflection of their history. English is Anglo-Saxon/Old English plus Norman French plus Latin in roughly equal parts, that's why there are multiple words for the same thing/concept and multiple pronunciations for the same spelling. Spanish is more purely a Latin-based language with some Arabic borrowings. And no one bothered with "proper" spelling until really quite recently.

Cowboy1968

If you consider 1741 "quite recently" than one has to agree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy

I assume that when you speak a very widely used world language like English you might assume that your understanding of how a language should be "managed" is the norm or default solution. But it is actually the norm for many other languages that there is strict supervision.

The norms themselves have, of course, changed over the course of centuries. But eventually, it's "academies" or other official bodies in countries like Spain or France which decide what is right and what is wrong.
If you had went to school in other countries, incorrect spelling or grammar would have even impacted anything you wrote in other subjects.
I doubt that there is a single employer in France who thought you were fit for any job but janitor if your CV had two spelling mistakes in it.

thursdaysd

You are making an incorrect assumption. I went to school in England. Everything I wrote, in every subject, was corrected/marked for spelling and grammar. Learning correct spelling is more important in English, since you can't rely on phonetics.

My comment on "quite recently" referred to England, where Johnson's dictionary first appeared in 1755, and yes, I do consider that quite recently, given that it was unlikely to have much effect initially. After all, the Norman Conquest, which started the introduction of Norman French, was in 1066.

Cowboy1968

Oh, I see.
Well, at least we added bit more traffic to this obscure forum ;-)

thursdaysd