• davel@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    These kinds of popsci graphs are quite misleading. Unlike with the “Spanish”* bubble, the “Chinese” and “Arabic” bubbles contain many mutually unintelligible languages. Though to be fair, many (most?) of the people in the “Arabic” bubble can speak/read Modern Standard Arabic as a lingua franca, and virtually everyone in China can read Standard Chinese.

    *Also, Dude, Spanish is not the preferred nomenclature. Castilian, please.

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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      3 days ago

      Spanish is not the preferred nomenclature. Castilian, please.

      ???

      I know there’s a divide in that some countries say “Español” and others “Castellano” but I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial difference.

    • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 days ago

      You seem like somebody who might have an answer for me:

      A streaming service that I’m using lists the spoken language of the show, and I’ve often seen Spanish, Espanol, and Castilian listed. What’s the difference between Espanol and Castilian - is it like a regional dialect? Also I’m probably misinformed, but I always thought that Espanol was the English word for Spanish, which makes it seem odd that the service would list both Espanol and Spanish separately.

      * Walter, this isn’t a guy who wrote the Magna Carta, this is a guy…

      • davel@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        If there are two Spanishish audio tracks, I think that pretty much always means that one is “Latin American” and the other is “Peninsular.” I haven’t investigated this myself, but I hear that the “Latin American” track is predominantly a white collar Central Mexican accent. The standard Peninsular accent for media is a Madrid accent.

        • Canadian_Cabinet @lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          This is pretty spot on. I use español when comparing Spanish to another foreign language but castellano when talking about the language as a whole. The latter is the most popular in Spain because español is also the nationality and we also can speak catalán, vasco, valenciano, gallego, and others

          • davel@lemmy.ml
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            4 days ago

            From what I’ve been told they call it castellano in Argentina too, but I have no idea why.

            No ho diguis als valencians que ells parlen català occidental 😛

      • arthur@lemmy.eco.brOP
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        4 days ago

        Castilian ia a region of Spain where the “Spanish” language comes from. But there is not the only language there, and there was repression against the other languages there, specially the basque language.

        So, call that language Castilian ia also recognize that other languages exists within the country.

        (I’m not spanish nor a speaker, so, I may be wrong)