Spanish vs Castellano? By Juan Sánchez

Growing up, I spoke two languages at home, English and Spanish. I am the son of a Mexican father and a Guatemalan mother. Before arriving here in Sevilla, I knew that there were going to be differences in the accent and the dialect, but I knew I was still going to be able to have a simple conversation with a resident, without any problems. However, the minute I arrived in Sevilla, I had a conversation with one of the airport receptionists, and I was in shock. She spoke so fast that I just barely understood what she said. As time went on I got used to the accent. Then little did I know I had another situation, the dialect. Spain and Latin America have such a significant difference in their dialect. The first time I noticed was when I went to the Setas. In Latin America, mushrooms is, "hongos". When I asked what are setas? They explained to me that they are mushrooms and I looked at them very weirdly. Of course to them it is completely normal, to me it is something strange and new. The time that was so challenging for me was when I would go to restaurants and would try to read their menu. Friends in my program would ask me what a certain meal was in English, but I couldn't do anything because I have never even seen or heard of these words in my life. I could easily read the stuff, but I wasn't able to tell you what it was. For example patatas fritas. In Latin America, it would be called "papas fritas". Looking at a menu was so shocking to me and it took a class of Spanish gastronomy and time to get used to.

To me, the most interesting thing I found about the differences between the same language was what they call Spanish here in Spain. I took a solo trip to Barcelona, and went to a typical Catalan restaurant. When they were seating me they asked me, "Do you speak Castellano?". I looked back at them for seconds without a response, because I was so confused. It took them a while, but then they asked me again, yet this time they asked "Do you speak Spanish?" I said yes and the night went on. Later that night I looked up Castellano on Google, and it said that it was just another word for Spanish. Yet I have never ever even heard of that word in my life. After knowing that and hearing that word, I have been hearing it more often that ever.

It amazes me how we can speak the same language yet, there are so many words that are different and strange, but to them it is their everyday way of talking.