Lingua Clinic Spanish Tutor
This week we focus on a dialect widely spoken in the Southern part of Spain, Andalusian, or as it’s called in Spanish, Andaluz. It is spoken in Andalusia and Gibraltar as well as the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Africa. The Andalusian dialect is, in fact, the second most widely spoken dialect in the country behind Castilian.
It has some differences in pronunciation from standard Castilian, although it is readily recognisable as the same language. Notable differences are widespread pronunciation of ‘s’, ‘z’ and soft ‘c’ sounds like the English ‘s’ rather than the ‘th’ sound of standard Spanish, and use of ustedes rather than vosotros for the second person plural. Regular readers of our blog may notice that these differences are also present in the Spanish spoken in Latin American countries, and that is because these former Spanish colonies were largely populated from Andalusian emigrants and so their dialects share many of the same fundamental characteristics.
Our Spanish lessons in London teach standard Castilian, but with a good grounding in this dialect, you should quickly adjust to Andalusian and other local variations as you travel to other regions of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries around the world.