Chilean Dialects Whilst Chile is the birthplace of one of the most prominent poets in Spanish literature, Pablo Neruda, the Spanish he most likely grew up using to talk to his loved ones, is far from the widely used outside of Chile. The Chilean dialect is often considered to be one of the most difficult to understand and the most distinct types of Spanish, which originated in Central Spain. Chile was incredibly isolated by mountain ranges such as the Andes. This isolation has allowed the Chilean dialect to grow and evolve into what some people consider to be a completely different language. Furthermore, the dialect has been heavily influenced by the languages of indigenous Chileans such as the Mapuche, Aymara or Diaguita peoples, which has led to further digressions from the original Spanish that is taught in schools. For example, some words such as pololo or polola - meaning girlfriend/boyfriend - were adopted directly from the Mapuche culture, although in Mapuche, it means insect or bug. Some key characteristics of the Chilean dialect are their unique voseo ( the way they say you, which substitutes the word tú) tense and the omission of certain consonants of their words. While the term ‘vos’ itself is far less common in Chile than in, for example, Argentina, they still use the alternative conjugation of the tú form. As seen in the table below, rather than saying Vos hablás as is found in the voseo forms in Argentina or Uruguay, Chilenos are likely to say Tu hablái. However, ustedes is still used as the predominant way of addressing groups of people, and the conjugation there stays the same as is done in most South America. The Chilean dialect is considered to be quite musical sounding. Often, Chileans speak incredibly fast when speaking informally, so their words run together to the point where it can be pretty challenging to understand for nonChileans. Their c sounds and z sounds are pronounced like s’s rather than this, as is common in Spain, and the d’s between two vowels are often omitted. By Xenia
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