I could understand the Mendozans, and they could understand me. In just my short time there, I noticed that they used different expressions for lots of things, but I’ll take a changing vocabulary and a new set of idioms any day, as long I can learn from people that are speaking clearly and distinctly, as the Mendozans do. When they are giving directions, which I experienced a lot of, they say “derecho” instead of “adelante” to indicate “go far that way.” They call soda water “gaseoso”, instead of the Chilean “agua con gas”. Felipe told me that Argentineans use a different form of the imperative, which is influenced by Italian, saying “Comí este” instead of “Come este” for “Eat this”. I didn’t notice, but it won’t be that hard to get used to in Argentina. Now I have a conundrum though. I have been in contact with four different Spanish dialects so far, in my high school classroom, in Mexico, in Chile, and now in Argentina. They are all pretty different, so I am not sure if I should try to speak more or less according to one dialect, or if I should so that I speak according to the customs of wherever I happen to be. If anyone has any advice about this, I’m all ears.
Also, something you may not have not known: In most of South America, the people refer to their language as Castellano, not Espanol, referring to the dialect of Castile, as distinguished from Galician Basque, and Catalan. Read more about it at Wikipedia.
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