Last time I was in Argentina, I asked a woman (in Spanish) where she was from, hoping that she might speak a language that I speak better than I speak Spanish. When she answered with her name, I didn't know what to ask next.
Actually, sadly, I reverted to English. I said "Sorry Brigitte, I didn't ask your name, I asked where you're from". She replied "Sorry, my English no is good".
I somehow got it out of her that she was Swiss. So I asked - Est-ce que vous preferrer parler en francais ou en allemande? She then launched into a rapid torrent of Schweizerdeutsch from which there was no recovery.
> States like Wyoming, Illinois, Maryland, and Colorado are all considering similar laws that would make a clean drug test a prerequisite for food stamps, welfare, and other forms of government aid
> The Earth has a roughly 12 percent chance of experiencing an enormous megaflare erupting from the sun in the next decade. This event could potentially cause trillions of dollars’ worth of damage and take up to a decade to recover from.
Also, the long A, as in "day" is much clearer in an NZ accent than an Australian one.
Aussies tend to say "doy" or something like it.
And the pronunciation of LL in Spanish seems to be different all over.
In Buenos Aires, they say either sh (like fish) or zh (like beige); but in the north of Argentina, they say LY. I think Mexicans say Y; and some Spaniards make that palatised L sound that doesn't exist in English.
Sorry, I don't know how to type the phonetic symbols here.
The other characteristic of Argentine Spanish is the tendency to drop an S before a T, or at least turn it into a faint aspiration. So they might say "como ehtas" for "how are you".
(Suddenly not sure whether aspiration is the right word, but I think you know what I meant).
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…