[deltadoc]

Hola Señor Rick,
I find it interesting to note that Spanish is so different depending on which Spanish speaking area you are from. For instance, people I work with from Puerto Rico cannot hardly understand people from Columbia or Panama for instance. One guy from Mexico went to Madrid and basically had to learn to speak Castellano in order to be understood. He said that the Spanish spoken in Mexico, Central America and South America really has its roots in an ancient dialect of español.

I'm curious about Mexico and whether the language differs much in the different areas of Mexico itself?

For instance if I wanted something with ground beef, would I say, for instance
"Qusiero una enchilada con carne picada" or "Qusiero una enchilada con carne molida"?

In Spain, it would be picada, in Puerto Rico it would be molida. So how much does the language differ within Mexico, and in particular for "ground beef"?

I was always taught that carne just meant meat. So would carne also be used to refer to other meats in Mexico or does it always mean "beef"?

Thanks, looking forward to your answer!

doc

[Rick Bayless]

The wonders of language! Just a millinnium or so ago, almost everyone in Europe spoke the same language. As cultural differences evolved, so did the languages. And now we have Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian and so forth--all evolving from Latin. My guess is that Spanish in Spain, versus, say, Argentina or Mexico, will eventually evolve into something that's so different that Latin American's will have to go to language classes to learn to speak it. At present, though, it's mostly vocabulary that changes, so when you go to a country, you have to learn how folks there say things. (Or, sometimes, you have to learn what NOT to say, since a perfectly benign phrase in one country might be quite offensive in another. This is true between Puerto Rican and Mexican Spanish.)



As to the 'carne molida' v. 'carne picada' issue. In Mexico, it would be much more common to say 'picadillo,' the name of a preparation made from 'carne molida.'