Variation and variety of diminutives and pronouns. Aspects of interest for the teaching of Spanish to Portuguese speakers

Abstract

Spanish teachers in Brazil and in Portugal take interest in two aspects that directly affect their teaching practice: the geographical variety of the language they teach and its contrast with Portuguese. Indeed, despite the homogeneity of Spanish, there are very different linguistic areas, geolectal varieties with their own personality that contrast because of their phonetics, grammatical and lexical features. In this article we will focus on the different geographical realizations of three topics that are specially challenging when teaching-learning Spanish to Portuguese speakers: diminutives, direct and indirect object pronouns, and the forms of address. Through a comparative analysis between the two languages from a Contrastive Linguistics approach – and with the contribution of Sociolinguistics – we will show how variation and variety occur in the Spanish language. The results prove that Spanish teachers in Brazil and Portugal should not be restricted to their own language variety – native or as a second language – or to standard Spanish. On the contrary, teachers should make their students aware of the different varieties and uses of Spanish speaking countries attending to the specific needs of their students and the linguistic peculiarities of the region where they teach.

Keywords: diminutives, pronouns, treatment.