If you love travelling, we cannot stress it enough how convenient understanding the local language can be. Your sign language is not universal and having to turn through pages of the dictionary is not convenient either. There are numerous apps for learning a foreign language, but it never fairs with learning in person. Most people don’t think about the language spoken at their destinations. However, they lose out on the adventures they could have ventured if they had known the basics of the language. Tarifa has been a tourist destination for ages. Windsurfing and sightseeing are well-known attractions everyone is aware of. However, there’s a lot more you can enjoy with a basic understanding of local Spanish dialect in Tarifa. SpanishTarifa offers Spanish lessons to a wide numbers of people in Tarifa. We provide travellers and residents of Tarifa with private Spanish learning sessions at their convenience. Unlike language schools, our approach to open learning outdoors or indoors suits any schedule you may have. Moreover, with our local Spanish tutors, you will be speaking local Spanish dialect in no time. Here are some of the differences in local Spanish dialect and other Spanish dialects.
There should be little surprise to know Spanish has different dialects based on where you are. With millions of speakers and regions spread across the globe, there’s bound to be some differences. While most have same basic standards in writing, spoken varieties have a difference in pronunciation and vocabulary. The Spanish spoken in Spain and most European countries is called Peninsular Spanish (also called European Spanish), and Spanish of the Americans (Hispanic American Spanish) is spoken in the North and the South American subcontinent. With SpanishTarifa, we train in Peninsular Spanish with small variations unique to Tarifa.
For grammar, the Spanish dialect in Europe differ in the use of second person pronouns and verbs. While in Spain, we use “tú”, the Americans use “vos” for informal representation of “you”. And in plural second person representation, “tú” becomes “vosotros” and “usted” becomes “ustedes”, but “vosotros” is not used in Hispanic American Spanish. So there is a “T-V distinction” in the Spanish dialect in second person. And for each second-person pronoun different Spanish dialect have corresponding verb forms.
The verb tenses for past events are slightly different as well. In Spain, we use present perfect tense to describe past events in relation to present perspective while Hispanic Spanish use preterite representing the event as a single word. For example “he llegado” is used in Spain to say “I have arrived” while “llegué” is used in Hispanic Spanish. In short, in most of Spain it is preferred to use compound tense to describe past events while other dialects tend to use preterite form.
For vocabulary, different dialect tends to have different words to describe objects, food and other things. These tend to be affected by local indigenous people or foreign influence. As in Mexican Spanish, there are many words borrowed from Aztec language Nahuatl. Even with the differences, there shouldn’t be a significant confusion about the different Spanish dialects. As European Spanish is just considered more bookish and formal. At SpanishTarifa, we will help you learn, speak and understand the local Spanish dialect, so you do not have to worry about amusing the locals.