Originally Posted By: Zed
I do understand the concept of switching gears. I studied Spanish before my vacation there. Unfortunately all of my teachers were S.American so the accent was quite different; I couldn't understand anything said to me. The group I was with were, instead of the international mix I had expected, all from Madrid but very nice about translating for me. On the third morning I suddenly tuned in and understood whole conversations although I naturally missed a lot of detail. It certainly surprised the fellow who started to translate for me "But, but yesterday you didn't speak Spanish."
He was more careful what "compliments" he paid me after that.


Sudamericano is much easier than the various European Spanish dialects. It's grammatically simpler and the accent is more logical. One reason for the accent difference is that the Spanish colonies were founded before that King (was it Philip?) with a lisp made the silly rule that everyone had to speak like him and pronounce Barcelona as 'Barthelona'. So in that sense it's actually an older, purer form of Spanish than that spoken in Spain. In other ways Sudamericano is more modernised and egalitarian than Castilliano - they have practically done away with the formal/polite forms of address/pronouns/cases etc, especially in the plural.