Most difficult Spanish Accents • The 3 you will not understand

You land in Spain after learning the language for so many years only to be in shock by how little you are able to understand. Sounds familiar? Avoid this by knowing the 3 most difficult Spanish accents to understand in Spain.

The 3 most difficult Spanish accents to understand in Spain

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The 3 most difficult Spanish accents to understand in Spain

1. Most difficult Spanish accents: Andalusian

The accent changes even among the different cities in Andalusia but all of them have few things in common.

The first thing that will shock you is that people are very lively and speak really quickly. People from the region drop many “s” or turn them into “h” so you will find yourself trying to fill the gaps.

For example : “Two or three times” will translate as “Dos o tres veces” but in Andalusia will sound like “Doh o treh veceh”.

2. The accent in the Canary Islands

People from the Canary Island have a very peculiar accent that sounds more like the Spanish spoken in Latin America than the Spanish mainland.

For once, the “z” is pronounces as an “s”, verbs are used differently and people tend to use more the formal “ustedes” than the casual “Vosotros”.

For example, “Are you going to the cinema?” will translate as “Vais a ir al cine?” but in the Canary Islands it will sound like “Van a ir a sine?”

In Barcelona, we normally stayed in Hotel Prisma, but it seems it has changed ownership. It is now called Casual Colours Barcelona. Looks way nicer and it is an easy 10 minute walk from the station.

3. Most difficult Spanish accents to understand: Murcian

To the untrained ear Murcian accent might sound like Andalusian and there are some similarities to it but it is indeed very different.

Some people from other areas of Spain might even argue that they struggle a bit to understand people from Murcia. While that’s an exaggeration there are some particularities to the accent that make it a bit tricky.

The most notable characteristics of a Murcian accent involve the heavy reduction of syllable-final consonants, particularly the “s”. Depending on the case it might disappear or sound like pretty an exhaled “h”.

There are also suffixes frequently used in Murcia that you will not really hear elsewhere like “ico/a”.

People also tend to shorten many words. The biggest example probably is “para”. While speaking it will just be pronounce as “pa”.

For example “What do you want a small cactus for?” will translate as “¿Para qué quieres un cactus pequeño” but in Murcia it will sound like “¿Pa qué quiereh un cactu pequeñico?”