Standard Mother Language?

Another post to celebrate the International Mother Language!

I’m Ecuadorian and my Mother Language is Spanish. I’d say is Ecuadorian Spanish because I love using our slangs and a bit of “wrong” grammar, product of a merge with the native Quichua. Now please don’t think in Ecuador we talk very different from standard Spanish…but wait!… with so many countries and cultures speaking Spanish what is standard Spanish like? We do speak different everywhere but we do understand each other most of the time. I mean, I have weekly parenting podcast in Spanish where I interview people from different countries and get feedback from everywhere. It seems that most people gets the meaning of the conversations, although I make an effort to avoid speaking my way so I’m not confusing anyone with our strange grammar.

This reminds me when I was backpacking in an island of the Titicaca Lake, Bolivia and met another adventurer from Argentina. We were able to understand each other perfectly but people from the island thought he was talking in English. This was so fun because people asked him higher prices and both sides asked me for an interpretation.

It must be a matter of getting used to the new accent, as when I first spoke in English (by telephone) with a guy from South Africa that wanted to buy from my online store. I thought he was from Greece, really! Then when we met in person after a while talking I was able to understand everything in English, not Greek

Do you have any experience when you didn’t understand native speakers of your mother language? Do you have a clear idea of what “standard (your mother language here)” sounds like?

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