How does “Neutral Spanish” work in Latin American media?

Question

From what I’ve heard, it’s an “accentless” Spanish that is used in Latin American voicing/dubbing for movies, TV series and video games, with the purpose being to derive maximum enjoyment out of every country in Latin America without catering to a specific country. However, I don’t quite understand everything.

I always hear people on the internet say “Everyone has an accent” in response to someone who claims to have no accent. So how can Neutral Spanish just not have any sort of accent?

If it’s an artificially created accent that voice actors have to learn, wouldn’t that make it difficult to get immersed into the media you’re watching, since it’s not a natural accent anyone speaks with in real life?

In: 80

Answer 1

>So how can Neutral Spanish just not have any sort of accent?

The thing with “neutral Spanish” is that there isn’t such thing as a “neutral accent”. It’s what’s called “chilango” (the accent of people from Mexico City).

People from the capitals usually have a more “clear” accent in most countries (Bogota or Lima for example), but Mexico City is a special case because it’s the most populated city in North America (and the second largest in the American continent) and it’s closer to the US where most movies are made, so this idea of Central Mexican accents being “neutral” became popular.

It doesn’t make any sense because, again, everyone has an accent and it’s pretty clear when a Mexican is talking, but people have weird ideas all the time.

>If it’s an artificially created accent that voice actors have to learn, wouldn’t that make it difficult to get immersed into the media you’re watching, since it’s not a natural accent anyone speaks with in real life?

The idea is to make syllables as easy to understand as possible. Spanish isn’t like English so you can pronounce things syllable by syllable and still get what the other person is saying. Caribbeans usually pronounce the “s” as an “h”, Argentinians and Uruguayans usually pronounce the “y/ll” as “sh” and the slangs from other countries can be impossible to understand for non-natives. There’s some controversy regarding “neutral dubs” because some words sound too silly and people feel “mexicanismos” (mexican slangs) are being pushed over the rest of the region (like when they say coger for sex instead of coger for “to grab/pick” or “papalote” instead of cometa for a kite).