Re: Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America

junk The traditional conception that latin american spanish is derived from andalusian dialect is misleading. I have observed differences on area dialectoids which can be only explain as coming from different sources. In general, andean dialectoids come from north castilian dialect; substrata of amerindian origin is effecting mainly in lexicon though there is some other facts on Peruvian and Mexican highlands spanish. It is surely due to the Quechua (Inca) and Nahuatl (Aztec) substrata respectively.

I've read of the situation in Peru. Quechua has formed a Sprachbund with the local Spanish, to the point it has adopted (the otherwise quite alien) n-tilde, among other things. As I recall, the Peruvians have finally given Quechua official status. I've been told if you want to learn a language as unlike any language you can imagine, try either Quechua or Navajo.

My sister's first cousin by marriage is from Chiapas state in Mexico (on the border with Guatemala). They have the same very German last name, and for a while both taught high school Spanish here in town. Southern Mexican is not like Standard Mexico Spanish (the standard which is taught in US), and my sister tells me when you listen to her cousin-in-law's mother, she can barely understand her; it's not too unlike listening to certain 'accents' you get in the deep South of the US, thick enough to cut with a knife. There is a Mayan influence at work, as well as just plain regional differences in this particular kind of Spanish.

I believe in the future there will be a crusade of standardisation of all latin american varieties of Spanish.

I would not call it a crusade, but something like this will happen. There will probably be two standards, that in Spain, and that in Mexico, rather like what you get in the US and the UK.

Mexican television predominates in the Spanish speaking world, though South Florida, Southern California, and more recently, New York City have also developed into media powerhouses. As I think about it, I believe Spanish language television programming comes in second only after English language programming world-wide.

Europeans tend to forget about Spanish. While Spanish is not a minor language, it's not the language Europeans studying a 2nd language go for first (English first, then French and/or German). Here in the US, if we mostly monolingual Americans deign to learn a foreign language, that language is usually going to be Spanish.

My own view is that Spanish is much more suited to be the 'world language' in that it is probably the easiest of the major world languages to learn. This is unlikely to happen, though.

Mark.