Learn Puerto Rican Spanish Breakdown (Improve your Spanish in general)

Hey, what's up my people, it's Rocky here from SpeakSpanishFaster.com and in today's video, we're going to be listening to an authentic conversation in Spanish between my cousin Kevin and myself. So first, we're going to listen to the audio together. All right, then we're going to break it down line by line to sort of decode the text and a few things before getting started. First, the dialects. All right, my cousin Kevin, he's from Puerto Rico. He lives in Puerto Rico. So he has an authentic Puerto Rican accent. So if you're interested in learning that type of Spanish, he will be a great person to study. I'll point out a lot of the characteristics of his Spanish. Now, my Spanish is, I don't know, I'm Puerto Rican. So I have some Puerto Rican characteristics, but I also lived in the Dominican Republic. So I also have some Dominican characteristics in my Spanish. So it's sort of unique, unique to me at least, but that's key when learning Spanish, even with Kevin. Yes, he has a Puerto Rican accent, but not everyone in Puerto Rico talks exactly like him. All right, it's no different than in America with English. Like I speak English different than you speak English. All right, we all have our own unique way of speaking. So that's very important to know as you're learning Spanish. All right, no matter which Spanish you are trying to learn, you're going to develop your own accent. But look, regardless of which type of Spanish you are trying to learn, this video is going to help you improve your Spanish speaking and comprehension ability. Now, another thing that I want you to pay attention to is how many words you actually know, even though you may not understand the words when they are spoken. All right, this is usually surprising to many people, many students, and it can actually be a confidence booster because if you read the conversation, you can probably understand most of it. But if you were just listening the first time, you might not be able to understand most of it, right? So what this means is that you simply just need more listening practice, and over time, you're going to hear these nuances and be able to understand them without constantly having to read when you listen. Now, final note is that if we are talking too fast for you, one thing I recommend to do is slow down the audio to 0.75x speed or 0.5x speed here on YouTube. This is a powerful tool that you can use. It will help you fully hear the words that are being said. Okay. So without further ado, comencemos. Yo, que lo que tipo? Nah, what's up, bro? Mira, vamos a tener un baby shower el 5 de Octubre. Tú sabes que hay espacio aquí pa' ti y para tu esposa, pero yo sé que ella quizá no va a querer quedarse porque no conoce a todo el mundo y va a haber un montón de gente aquí porque viene viene la hermana de Kendra con su marido. También viene mi sobrina, la abuela de Kendra y la pana de Kendra, pero hay espacio. Podemos comprar un par de colchones inflables. Tú sabes cómo lo hacemos, papi. Pero sí, avísame si quieres que te pase mi dirección pa' que busque un hotel cerca de aquí. Okay. Tato, chequeamos. No, papi, este, claro, este, yo te entiendo. Este, yo, tú sabes que si estuviera solo, yo me quedo en tu casa. A mí no me importa dónde duerma porque pues tú sabes, papi, tú sabes cómo es esto. Este, ya yo conozco, ya yo prácticamente conozco la gente, pero Cristi no y obviamente pues como tú dices, ella no se va a sentir cómoda, este, porque Cristi te conoce a ti, pero tampoco conoce a Kendra y Cristi es tímida, no se va a atrever a quedarse allá y así en cualquier, verdad, caucho o algo así. Pues no, pero yo te agradezco como quiera, verdad, por decirme que yo sé que a ti no te importa que tú como quieras, te gustaría que yo me quede allá, pero si no, yo no tengo ningún problema. Yo lo que quiero es estar contigo y pasar esos días contigo. Me entiende que después que yo esté allá, a mí no me importa dónde yo me quede, pero tampoco quiero que Cristi esté incómoda. So yo me puedo quedar en un hotel barato que a mí eso no me importa. All right. So let's go through this audio. Now, I'm not going to just read through the whole thing in English too, because I have the English under it. So I'm just going to be kind of going through this quickly, but highlighting some of the the key things that for your ear to get used to when you're when you're listening to Spanish of how sometimes words can sound like they're together and the cutting of words and things like that. So I start with que lo que tipo. So que lo que is a Dominican greeting where you know, every video I say, hey, que es la que hay mi gente. That's like a Puerto Rican, que es la que hay is what's up in Puerto Rican Spanish, but que lo que is what's up in Dominican Spanish. And the reason why I always tease Kevin, I always like to tease him a little because Kevin is actually one of my cousins that made fun of me when I was growing up and my Spanish wasn't good and him and his friends would make fun of me saying all your Spanish is trash pretty much, you know, how you Puerto Rican, you don't speak Spanish. Now I speak Spanish and now it's like my Spanish isn't Puerto Rican enough. So now he's he makes fun of me because he says why all you sound Dominican sometimes why you sound Dominican, but it's because I lived in the Dominican Republic for a year. So and I have other cousins that are that I grew up with that. Are half Dominican. So I grew up also with a Dominican side of my family and I lived in the Dominican Republic. So obviously I will have some Dominicans more in my Spanish and you know, sometimes a Dominican accent leaks out. So I really don't have us a one accent or the way I speak like the way I speak is sort of a mixture of like what I have some Puerto Rican characteristics. Some Dominican carrot characteristics. Some people will say I have New York in characteristics, whatever that means, but it's just there's a few. Sorry to kind of sidetrack here, but there's a few key lessons here is number one. Your Spanish is going to be unique to you. No matter what type of Spanish you're learning. I always say yes focus on a certain type of Spanish because that's where you're going to build your vocabulary your your essence your your rhythm and all that but at the same time know that because you're you're especially if you're not living in a country, you're going to be exposed to other Spanish's whether you're consuming content, whether you're talking about other people. So I'm especially because of my job. I'm speaking Spanish with many other different Spanish speakers from other different countries and Kevin he's in Puerto Rico. He lives in Puerto Rico 24 7 his wife Puerto Rican kids are Puerto Rican. He's talking Puerto Rican Spanish 24 7 whereas me. I'm talking Spanish with all different people in different countries. I lived in Dominican Republic like so my Spanish is more mixed. I have more influence from other cultures in my Spanish and that's okay. So it's important that you know, that's okay. Like you're never going to please everybody when you speak and I'm sure there's Puerto Ricans like that will hear Kevin talk and say oh like he's from X part of Puerto Rico. He doesn't speak Puerto Rican Spanish properly, you know, I'm saying so you can never please everybody. So don't put so much pressure on yourself. That was a big step for me when learning Spanish and other languages is like I know we're going to have pressure on ourselves. We're going to put a certain amount of pressure on ourselves to be great right to talk a certain way. But at the end of the day, it's important to put less pressure on yourself because you're going to perform better and there's really no reason to put pressure on yourself when speaking a foreign language like you've taken the time to learn somebody else's language. So be proud of that and just just keep going. All right. Sorry for this side rant. This is why I got it. I need to stay on script. All right, I apologize. So I say yo, bro Mira or I say meta. So meta that's more of like a Puerto Rican way of saying meet instead of saying meet. I say meta. Vamos a tener un baby shower. So vamos a tener un baby shower. Vamos is the correct way, but I cut my essence. I say vamos a tener or vamos a tener and I turn my R's to L's as well. And that's actually characteristic of both Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic parts of the Dominican Republic specifically the capital Santo Domingo. Vamos a tener un baby shower el 5 de Octubre. All right. Tu sabe que hay espacio aquí pa ti. Hay espacio. So instead of espacio, notice I cut the S. Hay espacio aquí pa ti y para tu esposa. So here I said pa and here I said para. Pa is just para but just cut. So I could have said y pa tu esposa or I could have said para ti y para tu esposa. The correct way is para but I use pa when I'm speaking with Kevin or like my friends or family like my Spanish is really quick and I cut a lot of things. So pero yo se que ella quizá no va a querer quedarse porque no conoce a todo el mundo. So you can hear all the ways properly. This would be quizás no va a querer quedarse porque no no conoce a todo el mundo but Caribbean Spanish. We like to talk fast and it takes too much time to roll all those ours. So that's why even in Dominican Spanish like they would even cut the ours. They would say quizás no va a querer quedarse. So, you know, but I would say the reason we cut ours or turn ours to L's a lot of times is all for speed. It's much faster to say no va a querer quedarse than querer quedarse porque you know no va a querer quedarse porque no conoce a todo el mundo va a haber va a haber va a haber. I just said haber haber see Kevin would have made fun of me for that va a haber un montón de gente porque viene la hermana de Kendra Kendra's my wife con su marido también viene mi sobrina la abuela de Kendra y la pana de Kendra pero hay espacio again espacio espacio espacio espacio podemos comprar un pal that's a lot. That's one common thing. You'll hear him. You'll definitely hear from me, especially even Kevin. We really don't use the R at the end of words. We all we all pretty much always turn it to an L and I'm not saying that's proper proper Spanish is to turn it to an R but that is a more Caribbean characteristic. And again, not all Caribbean Spanish or not all Puerto Ricans do that. It's just that's what we do and I'll and there are a lot of other Puerto Ricans that do it. All right, um pile de colchon inflable to save como lo hacemos papi Puerto Ricans a lot. We say papi so you could see sort of the mixture of characteristics. I would say I use a lot of Puerto Rican characteristics when I speak Spanish, but I would say my intonation in the way. I sound has more of a Dominican cadence. So and I do use sometimes I use Dominican words to or phrases. So it's just a mixture and that's that's unique like and I love I love that because I'm just unique with it, you know, so at least wait, where were we? Okay avisa me si quiere que te pase mi dirección pa' que busques busque I said pa' que busque para que busques pa' que busque un hotel cerca cerca de aquí. Okay, tato chequeamos. So tato is short for está todo. That's a Dominican thing. Tato tato is like, okay. All right. Puerto Ricans was more say está bien to say okay, but in Dominicans they say tato tato tato loco. So then I say chequeamos chequeamos like yo, I'll catch you later pretty much yo chequeamos we'll check in later. Now, let's go through Kevin's now. I can't sound exactly like Kevin, but I'm going to read through it. So no papi claro yo te entiendo. So one thing about Kevin, you'll notice he says este este that's really common in Puerto Rican. It's like instead of saying um, they say este este so that's one way if you want to sound more Puerto Rican just add that to your Spanish like when you're thinking just be like este yo no sé, you know, so he said tú sabes papi papi tú sabes que si estuviera solo yo me quedo en tu casa a mí no me importa donde so you can see but Kevin cuts a lot of the S's as well ya yo conozco ya prácticamente prácticamente conozco a la gente pero Cristi no y obviamente pues como tú dices ella no va a sentir cómoda porque Cristi te conoce a ti, pero tampoco conozca a Kendra y Cristi es tímida no se va a atrever quedarse allá y así en cualquier vela cualquier couch so Kevin said vela I say that too vela that's a Puerto Rican thing vela instead of verdad we say velda okay vela o algo así pues pues no pero yo te agradezco como quiera vela pues decírmelo y por yo sé que a ti no te importa que tú como quiera te gustaría que yo me quedo allá pero si no yo yo no tengo ningún problema yo lo que quiero estar contigo y pasar esos días contigo so notice notice the that's one interesting thing. I'll say listen listen to the way Kevin's flow sounds verse mine and you'll clearly see differences even though we're both Puerto Rican and obviously my like I said my flow. I would say is a little more Dominican than Puerto Rican. Kevin's flow is very obviously. He's fully Puerto Rican and lives in Puerto Rico, but I have other friends in Puerto Rico that speak a little different than Kevin and I'll do some of those audios in the future because I think this sort of content is probably the most beneficial to you and then he says yo lo que quiero estar contigo y pasar esos días contigo me entiende que después que yo esté allá a mí no me importa donde yo me quede pero tampoco quiero que Christy esté incómoda. So yo me puedo quedar en un hotel barato que a mí eso no importa importa instead of importa. So just be on the lookout for now what I want you to do now what we're going to do. We're going to listen to the audios again, but now that we've gone through it and you've read it in English now, you can actually listen to it without your brain trying to translate and trying to figure out what we were saying. Now you can kind of sit back chill and really focus what I really want you to focus on this time when listening to it is focus on the flow the intonation and the pronunciate like I always talk about this. That's the most important thing in Spanish intonation and pronunciation. So focus on both of those now that you now that you're not going to be lost when you're listening. You're going to know the characteristics. So listen to the flow listen to the pronunciation the words that are cut the changing of sounds the difference just listen to it all and just really take note of some of the things you hear because what this is doing is it's training your brain to hear certain patterns to recognize them and this is important even if you don't want to learn Caribbean type of Spanish. It's very very important. If you want to learn Puerto Rican Spanish Dominican Spanish more Caribbean type of Spanish, but even if you're learning a different type of Spanish just going through this exercise is going to be life-changing for you because it changes the way that you hear Spanish. So even when you're consuming podcasts or YouTube videos from other people you're going to view Spanish from a different lens and it's going to help you when you're when it comes time for you to speak Spanish because you're going to realize what characteristics you want to you want to use and what type of intonation or flow you want to practice and when you're studying other intonations, you're going to know like, okay. I know that I need to sound like this when I talk or like, oh, claro papi que tu quieras el like, you'll know which type of inflection points and things that you want and especially when you're reading the text then you'll see like, oh now I know when they at the at the cama Rocky said con su marido instead of consumado like it's just those little things that is going to make you sound even more authentic and I actually learned a lot of this from this guy that I actually paid to learn from he's actually he doesn't he's not a Spanish learning coach. He's in he's a voice coach and accent coach for actors. He doesn't even speak Spanish. He speaks only English, but he helps like let's say somebody hired me in a movie to sound like Tony Montana Tony Montana my they wanted me to sound like Tony Montana on Scarface. So I'm speaking English, right, but I'm trying to sound like Tony Montana in the movie Scarface and he would teach me how to study the voice and how to sound more like him through pronunciation and intonation. And this is what he does with real professional actors. So I reached out to him and I just wanted to pick I had to pay him for this for coat for a coaching calls, but I really wanted to understand how he goes about this to teach people accents because I knew that I could use it to help people learn Spanish and even learn it for myself when trying to improve the way I speak Spanish or the way I learn other languages or speak other languages. So now you can do the same thing. All right. So let's listen to this audio again. Y'all get okay people and I was up bro. Man. I'm a tener un baby shower. El Cinco de Octubre. Tú sabes que hay espacio aquí para ti para tu esposa. Pero yo sé que ya quizá no va a querer quedarse porque no conoce a todo el mundo y haber un montón de gente aquí porque viene viene la hermana de Kendra con su marido también viene mi sobrina la abuela de Kendra y la pana de Kendra, pero hay espacio podemos comprar un par de colchones inflables. Tú sabes cómo lo hacemos papi, pero si avísame si quieres que te pase mi dirección para que busque un hotel cerca de aquí. Okay. Tato chequeamos. No papi este claro este yo te entiendo este. Yo tú sabes tú sabes que si si estuviera solo yo me quedo en tu casa me no importa dónde duerma porque pues tú sabes papi tú sabes cómo es esto este ya yo conozco ya yo prácticamente conozco la gente pero Cristi no y obviamente pues como tú dices ella no se va a sentir cómoda este porque Cristi te conoce a ti pero tampoco conoce a Kendra y Cristi es tímida no se va a atrever a quedarse allá y así en cualquier couch o algo así pues no pero yo te agradezco como quiera verdad por decirme lo que yo sé que a ti no te importa que tú como quieras te gustaría que yo me quede allá pero si no yo no tengo ningún problema yo lo que quiero es estar contigo y pasar esos días contigo me entiendes que después que yo esté allá a mí no me importa dónde yo me quede pero tampoco quiero que Cristi esté incómoda yo me puedo quedar en un hotel So I hope you enjoyed this style of video this one thing when I came back when I decided to come back to YouTube and start filming content. I said to myself, you know what screw the algorithm screw all that stuff. I'm good. I'm just going to create the videos that I think will help you the best like best way possible and I really think these types of videos are the most effective videos that are going to help you level up your Spanish. Now if you if you're really serious about taking your Spanish to the next level then I highly recommend you check out my three secrets to learn Spanish faster. It's on our website. Just go to speak Spanish faster.com YouTube or click the first link that's in the comments. That's going to take you directly to that page where I share with you my three biggest secrets. They sort of build on top of what I taught you in this video my three biggest secrets to help you learn Spanish faster. And if you enjoy that then you might enjoy one of our courses signing up for one of our courses that we currently have over 30,000 people in right now. I'm taking our courses. So, you know, we've grown big and it's all thanks to you guys for showing us so much support. So, of course, if you enjoyed this video hit the thumbs up, let me know because that will let me know that you like the style of video or comment. Let me know your thoughts on the video. If you enjoyed it any questions you had and I will be happy to help you in any way possible. Last but not least, please do not forget to subscribe to the channel turn on notifications. So you never miss another video. Hasta la próxima vez. Tú sabes, hablamos.