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As a Spanish (Spain) speaking person I can notice the differences between European and American Spanish. Is there also such a big difference between European and American English?

Vocabulary and Phoneticaly wise.

Erik
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    I'm not sure how you would quantify the differences, but anecdotally, I do know that there are sufficient differences in accent that my father from NYC had a lot of trouble understanding "the natives" when he was assisting his company's Australian division. – Jeff Zeitlin Jun 30 '22 at 15:33
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    You mean 'between British English and American English'. See this blog. – Kate Bunting Jun 30 '22 at 15:49
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    An interesting question that raises a crucial problem: what measures of language might be used to quantify and compare difference? We would need measures of vocabulary, verb forms, word order, phonetic shifts from original pronunciation, declension, conjugation, syntactical parsing, and many other aspects. These matters are so broad that an answer is impossible here, being at best an informed opinion. For this (opinion reason) I suspect the question with be closed. I will not vote to close yet, because others may have a more optimistic view. – Anton Jun 30 '22 at 17:38
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    I'd like to know the answer, if it were knowable. But this is the sort of thing you'd hafta be a native of all 4 dialects with vast linguistic knowledge of them to answer properly. I'd think Borges could have done it, if someone had asked him; but I don't know of anybody else offhand. – John Lawler Jun 30 '22 at 17:50
  • I suspect a lot has to do with technology. When printing presses became common the tendency of spelling and basic syntax to diverge was suppressed, and, again, when radio became available to the "common folk" pronunciation became more standardized. Since the English "split" between continents was later than with Spanish, these technologies were a bigger factor. – Hot Licks Jun 30 '22 at 18:00
  • Please clarify what types of differences you want to focus on. My instinct is to focus on mutual understandability, that is, communication gaps. But maybe your focus is grammar, or vocabulary, or something else. With clarification I can retract my close vote (ping me if you edit the question, please). – aparente001 Jul 01 '22 at 03:14
  • For me the term “European English” conjures the English of upper-class Continental polyglots, which is likely easier for most Americans to understand than that of many of the Queen's subjects! – Anton Sherwood Jul 01 '22 at 04:16
  • Specifically Castillan Spanish? Or other dialects/languages of Spain? And what version of UK English. – Stuart F Jul 01 '22 at 07:36
  • Is this question about speech, or about writing? Or both? – gidds Jul 01 '22 at 08:42
  • @gidds It's about both – Erik Jul 01 '22 at 10:48
  • It was about general differences (meaning a bit of everything) , you can mantain your close vote if thats a problem for you :) @aparente001 – Erik Jul 01 '22 at 10:51
  • I appreciate the chance @Anton :) – Erik Jul 01 '22 at 11:11
  • This is a great question (essentially about mutual intelligibility), no need for extra details, we all know it is asking about standard examples of all 4 (standard Western Hemisphere Spanish might be a hard choice though). And contra JohnLawler it is very quantifiable (lexicon differences, sound inventories and changes, grammar might be hard). But pro @JohnLawler, this is a multi language question that is probably addressed better on [linguistics.se] or even a programming or math SE. – Mitch Jul 05 '22 at 14:02
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    @Mitch, the differences may be quantifiable on each of the dimensions you list, but there is bound to be some arbitrariness in any attempt to combine the scores for different dimensions into some kind of an overall score. Nevertheless, the question should be reopened, because the existing answer proves that it can be given a reasonable answer; that answer deserves to be exposed to competition. – jsw29 Jul 05 '22 at 16:02
  • Thanks for being open minded @Mitch, seems like not a lot of ppl here knows how to do that. – Erik Jul 06 '22 at 05:49
  • @jsw29 Understood re arbitrariness. Standard data science answer is to normalize and/or standardize, PCA or some other dimension reduction, then cluster. incommensurable dimensions are combined all the time (eg height and weight). Of course, you have to make well-informed choices at every step. – Mitch Jul 06 '22 at 13:24

1 Answers1

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No, there is less difference between American English and European English than there is between American Spanish and European Spanish. The reason for this is that the English were about a century behind the Spanish in the colonization of America. The means there has been more time for things to drift apart. Going the other way, look how much closer to European English that Australian English is than the American English in the United States and Canada. That's because the antipodes were settled even later than America was.

It's as easy to find differences in vocabulary between England and America as it is between Spain and America. That's always going to happen in languages spoken over such a large area. The same can be said for pronunciation, where just as virtually all American Spanish speakers "don't know how to say" z's and ll's, many European English speakers "don't how how to say" their r's. So that's all a wash for vocabulary and pronunciation.

But what really stands out in the Spanish-speaking world is that the pronouns and the conjugations of the verbs are quite different. This is grammar not lexicon, so it's much more striking. That doesn't happen in any of the Englishes.

Most American Spanish speakers have no second-personal plural vosotros, vosotras pronouns and corresponding verb inflections like habláis and hablad. In American Spanish one uses the formal third-person ustedes forms instead, which is a completely different person. And some countries in America use vos for the second-person singular instead of tú, which brings its own verb forms like vos hablás in some countries

It's very hard to find anything in English that's so dramatically different transatlantically in terms of grammar as this is in Spanish.

aparente001
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tchrist
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  • I was taught that the pronunciation of 'z' and 'll' in Spain itself is a "posh issue". And European English speakers not knowing how to say 'r' is more of a difference between Spanish and English. It's almost a different consonant written the same, as with the French 'r'. – Weather Vane Jun 30 '22 at 19:01
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    Very informative, if unavoidably brief (a thorough answer would make a book or two). It reads like the convincing basis of a substantial answer. I will not now vote to close. – Anton Jun 30 '22 at 22:02
  • The biggest grammatical distinction I can think of is that BrE is a bit more free with some contractions than AmE. I think the description of ustedes is a little incomplete, but close enough to make your point. – Azor Ahai -him- Jul 01 '22 at 00:10
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    @AzorAhai-him- What does BrE do that compares to “y’all’dn’t’ve”? – KRyan Jul 01 '22 at 04:21
  • AAVE or Black American English, and American slang would be mostly incomprehensible for the majority of British English speakers were it not for the exposure to American movies, TV shows and music. – Mari-Lou A Jul 01 '22 at 04:27
  • Re "That's because the antipodes were settled even later than America was.", I find that claim very dubious with respect to Australia. Other factors would be the far stronger cultural and social links between Britain/Ireland and Australia, the White Australia policy until 1966, and the much greater clustering of its homogeneous population in just a few cities. Also, Australia was first settled in 1788 (just 12 years after the independence of the U.S.), yet didn't gain independence itself until 1901. Given all that, I doubt that the earlier settlement of the USA is of that much significance. – skomisa Jul 01 '22 at 05:55
  • And of course Australia has always had a far smaller population than the United States (currently ~25 million vs. ~330 million). With a smaller and less dispersed population in Australia, and a single massively dominant language (English), there have been fewer catalysts for language change. – skomisa Jul 01 '22 at 06:01
  • «virtually all American Spanish speakers "don't know how to say" [...] ll's» → Well, to be fair, virtually all European Spanish speakers don't know how to say it either! Same goes for African Spanish speakers (which are always left out in these questions). In fact, I'd say there's less people pronouncing /ʎ/ in Spain itself than in America. Yeísmo keeps expanding, and soon it will be so prevalent that it would probably be considered the new default. – walen Jul 01 '22 at 09:18
  • @skomisa Your error is thinking that the American Revolution matters here. It doesn't. It also doesn't matter whether we're talking about settlements in what is now the United States versus what is now Canada. The first permanent English colony on the American continent was established in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. That's the date to pay attention to here, nearly two centuries earlier. Time matters tremendously. – tchrist Jul 01 '22 at 12:15
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    @walen Yes, I'm sure that yeísmo is now the default. Even 40 years ago, few if any of my professors in the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid made any effort to avoid yeísmo in their own speech (ni Carlos Bousoño). The history of changes in choices of second-person pronouns (tú, vos, usted, ustedes, vosotros) is far more interesting and varied. It's more complex than just the loss of vosotros alone, too, although for that we do have concrete dates showing the trends as the link shows. – tchrist Jul 01 '22 at 12:27
  • @tchrist Your error is thinking that I claimed the American Revolution mattered. I merely used it as a convenient yardstick to point out that Australia first began receiving European settlers very shortly after that. You might update your answer to provide evidence for your claim all that matters is the date of first settlement, because simply asserting it to be true is not persuasive. – skomisa Jul 01 '22 at 14:30
  • @KRyan Memes aside, AmE speakers only contract auxiliary "have" whereas Brits will do both – Azor Ahai -him- Jul 01 '22 at 21:08
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    @AzorAhai-him- Ah, yes, that does sound British to me. But for the record, “y’all’dn’t’ve” isn’t a “meme,” people really do say that in regular speech in certain parts of the US. – KRyan Jul 01 '22 at 21:10
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    @KRyan I think this probably isn't the place to quibble about contractions vs. rapid speech. – Azor Ahai -him- Jul 01 '22 at 21:37
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    @AzorAhai-him- Indeed not. Otherwise we'll have people arguing about the ubiquitous djeat, djeachet, howja, er, im, em, cepfur, spose, neath, snot, fraid, innit, gonna, wanna, sposta, hafta, huvnae, winnae, nother, missa, kenna, dint, dincha, mighda, canna, cannae, cannuv, cudda, shudda, wudda, wudna, cudna, dizzint, dinnyevent, shudnuv, shudna. :) – tchrist Jul 01 '22 at 22:30