Geografía lingüística: a brief insight into the variety of the spanish language across Latin America

Geografía lingüística: a brief insight into the variety of the spanish language across Latin America

Margarita Feizaka

University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences

DOI: 10.22364/fg.18.6

Keywords: Spanish, Latin America, dialect, geolinguistics

Abstract

While there are studies on differences between traditional Spanish and Latin American Spanish, they tend to either compare Castilian Spanish to one national variation in Latin America (e.g. Mexican Spanish) or assume that the whole region of Latin America is rather linguistically homogenous. This research aims to provide a brief insight into differences between variations of the Spanish language spoken in different countries in Latin America, comparing three local dialects: Mexican, Venezuelan and Chilean. Qualitative content analysis and the comparative method were applied to conduct the research. The findings suggest that there are differences in grammar usage and lexicon between different countries. While phenomena like anglicisms and changing prepositions were detected in all local dialects, Mexican Spanish stood out in terms of grammar, and Mexican and Venezuelan Spanish vocabulary showed specific local expressions.