Their Spanish is awful


I'm a fluent Spanish speaker of Mexican origin and often watch films in Spanish without subtitles. Then I saw this movie. Holy crap was it hard to understand. You can hear the Italian influence. Argentina has to be the whitest country in South America. They don't have much of that indigenous influence on their language, which is probably part of the problem. Mexican and Columbian Spanish are the best because they're easier to follow and are more pleasent to the ear.

If my thought-dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine.

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I'm a puerto rican native and trust me; our Spanish accent is absolutely the worst out of the bunch. It's disgusting.

The Argentinian spanish accent is both chilling and beautiful. It sounds like poetry. Every time they cussed in the film was fantastic.

After watching some Mexican films, I prefer the Argentinian Spanish. It's a bit more poetic, though Mexican is the most comical out of all the Spanish speaking countries. In all honesty, I had a hard time understanding Amorres Perros.

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Well, there IS such a thing as awful Spanish just like there's really bad English, but the Spanish in this movie was not awful.

I'm a native of Peru and I actually kind of like the Argentinian accent. I personally find Mexican Spanish a bit grating, but my least favorite of all is Caribbean Spanish (Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican). Still, it's just a matter of preference, every place has its own accent.

Technically if you want to talk about "proper" Spanish you'd only hear it in Spain, and it would follow the rules set forth by the Real Academia Española which determines what words and pronunciations are proper and which aren't, but I'm fairly certain the Spanish coming from most Latin American countries wouldn't quite make the cut if you held it up to this standard.



I'm so ugly...that's ok 'cause so are you.

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Well, "proper" Spanish in Spain is really hard to find as well. I live in Sevilla, Andalucía (souther Spain), and our accent is very peculiar. Many people hate our accent, others think it's really "funny".

What I mean with this is Spain is not a HUGE country, but the 40+ million people that live in it are very different. The gallego accent is also hard to understand at times, the catalonian accent can also be hard to understand, the Canarias accent is similar to a Cuban accent...I mean, there is hardly "proper" Spanish in Spain. Only in Castilla, not even in Madrid. Spain is a mix of very different cultures: celtic, arabic...I don't have many things in common with a guy from the north to be honest, not only in terms of language, but also character, sense of humour, etc.

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@Joeyjoejoe - The Argentine dialect is bar none the coolest and most beautiful manner of speaking Spanish. I’ve always hated the Mexican dialect myself but I recognize that’s just a personal preference. People should be proud of their own regional language but not at the expense of trashing someone else's. You sound like a racist idiot that probably fell asleep in Spanish class – and possibly history too. The Argentine people are largely European so why wouldn’t their language influence the Spanish in that country?

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And Spanish is also European.

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JoeyJoeJoeShabadooSenior
"Mexican and Columbian Spanish are the best because they're easier to follow and are more pleasent to the ear."

Really? Are you frekin' kidding!!! Try to watch "La vendedora de rosas" without subtitles!!!
Any mexican film has (like COLOMBIAN or any other) localisms that other country can't understand... and it's all right because it's part of the culture of the country that made the film.
So, if you don`t like that... keep watching "Chespirito" and "Betty la fea"!


Prostitute: What the *beep* are you doing?
Johnny: I'm gonna kill a bunch of people.

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The OP speaks Spanish well but gives the impression of being an English speaker trying to speak Spanish in my opinion. I think it's just trolling. Although I could be wrong.

I found it very easy to understand apart from a few phrases I didn't get which were more slangy.

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By the way, a question for the native Spanish speakers, could "sus ojos" not equally be "his eyes" and therefore refer to the one killer? (I suppose it could be "her eyes" as well but not in the context of the film.) Is it an abritrary translation whether its one or the other it would have made equal sense either way?

I suppose you can argue whether the title refers to the one specific secret in this plot, or the fact that we all have secrets in our eyes. If the latter, would "los secretos" in plural not work just as well, or better?

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Also, I see there is also some discussion of this on another thread called something like "the only problem with thr translation"

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From what I knew of the movie I always expected "sus" to mean "hers", but the movie makes it clear it must be "his"... Since eyes are plural you have the word "theirs" as a possible translation for "sus", the singular, "su" must always be translated to either "his" or "hers", the ambigous nature of the title in Spanish is convenient and not enforced with deliberated hard work, it is just natural that such a sentence would be ambigous, the trivia says the writer did not liked the translation to English because it destroyed the ambigous nature of the original title, but the original title's ambiguity is inherent to Spanish and required no wise word selection as he would have wanted for the English title.

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Espero q menciones a Bety La Fea sabiendo que es colombiana y sólo por que el imbecil de JoeJoeJoShabadoSeñor mencionó al castellano colombiano... Pero ¿Mencionó al castellano colombiano o fue al estadounidense? Es que "Colombian" es la palabra inglesa para "colombiano", pero "Columbian" es una de las palabras inglesas para "Estadounidense".

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I like the accent, but I agree that Argentinian is a rather grammatically poor dialect of Spanish. They have lost all the composite tenses. For example, When Morales says "pasaron 25 años", he really means "han pasado 25 años" or when Sandoval says "no paré de pensar" he really means "no he parado de pensar". They shouldn't use the former unless they're dead, or it's a finished business, etc. Regular Spanish has 8 tenses in the indicative mood, Argentinian has only 3, it has lost the future (Argentinians always say "vas a venir" instead of "vendrás") and all the composite tenses. In the subjunctive mood it has lost 5 out of 6 tenses. It has only kept the present. Argentinians incorrectly say things like: "me gustaría que vengas" when they are supposed to say "me gustaría que vinieras". In the conditional mood they have of course lost the composite tense. And I haven't even talked about using "ustedes" instead of "vosotros", which represents the loss of a whole conjugation person. I mean no disrespect though. It's just a fact.

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Muy bien explicado. Pero dudo que en otros países se hable mucho mejor, incluyendo España. Una vez escuché a alguien decir que Argentina era el país donde mejor se hablaba la lengua española, incluyendo España. Y quién dijo semejante tontería, estarás pensando. Pues bien, fue el que en ese momento era el presidente de la Real Academia Española, durante una visita que hizo al país de Borges.

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Argentinians incorrectly say things like: "me gustaría que vengas" when they are supposed to say "me gustaría que vinieras".

You are wrong about this. They use the subjunctive correctly just like Chileans do. I know this because I live in Chile and have Argentinian friends.
Secondly there is nothing wrong with using "vas a venir" instead of "vendras". It is the difference between saying " Are you coming?" and "Will you come?" in English. Neither is incorrect.

The only major difference apart from pronunciation is the conjugation of the "vosotros" person. Almost all Latin American nations do this though.

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Are you for real?

I was born and raised in Chile, my native language is indeed spanish. I work writing, and I've never EVER heard or read someone arguing about the use of the third person plural "ustedes" instead of "vosotros". Spain is the only country who uses that conjugation, though we learn it in primary school, but never use it in real life.

I think that one thing that is confusing about argentinian pronunciation is how they change the accent in the words: "pará" insetad of "para" (stop), "pasáme" instead of "pásame" (give it to me), etc. It's like they change the "graves" into "agudas" and the "esdrújulas" into "graves"... but it's just like we tenf to "eat" the final "s" in most speaking words.

Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language

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Your faultfinding is unrealistic considering that the mistakes you claim Argentinians make are forms of speech also seen in other Spanish speakers and other Spanish speakers can easily understand what you say Argentinians mean when using those phrases you claim to be wrong. You are being a nitpicking linguist in an unrestrained world of orators. You only have a point with that issue about the voseo, but their voseo is so well known that it surprises only those living under a rock that come from the woodwork when movies like this one get recognition... And the issue with voseo is that it is an antiquism, just that. Grammatically-wise, Argentina is in the same level as every other Spanish-speaking country out there.

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Todo bien macho, pero si que no te guste el acento argentino no te da derecho a criticarlo. Curiosamente mucha gente extrangera (amigos españoles, colombianos y mexicanos) me viven diciendo que les encanta mi acento. A mi me gusta el de ellos, cada acento tiene tu timbre, su riqueza, pero es irrespetuoso que si no te gusta lo trates de "awful". Saludos.

-cure

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Se escribe "extranjera" y seguro quisiste decir "su timbre"

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Este post es ridículo. Los acentos enriquecen nuestra lengua. Yo soy Colombiano y soy feliz escuchando a los españoles, argentinos, caribeños, caribeños, etc. Denigrar otros acentos es no haber salido nunca del barrio.

Otra cosa es que en las películas usen mucha jerga, lo cual me parece contraproducente si la intención es llevarla a todos los países de habla hispana. Ni dentro de un mismo país nos entendemos la jerga. Deberían dejar de hacer eso.

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Oxford College is awful too.

The stupidity of the things people say on imdb never fails to make me lmfao.

Yeah, look in the mirror.

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[deleted]

Te llamas Enrique y escribes con la gramatica de los hispanohablantes de Hollywood... En ingles lo que has dicho se diría "The Argentinian accent is the favourite of my ears"... ¿Así que tus oídos pueden gustar o no de diferentes acentos y su favorito es el Argentino? Estas hablando pesimamente... Debiste decir "A mis oídos el acento argentino es el mejor" o "mi acento favorito es el argentino", sea como fuera es "a mis oídos" no "de mis oidos".

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