How many dialects?

Depending on what criteria you use for dialect there could be thousands. In some areas of larger cities one can tell that someone grew up only a few blocks away by their distinct manner or pronunciation or vocabulary choices. The basis of linguistic categorization in dialectology is done in an aerial fashion using things called isomorphs. So a dialect is basically one of two things. 1) It is a manner of speaking which can pinpoint your geographical upbringing or current speech community or 2) it is a distinct manner of speaking that can distinguish a general area of speech community.

For example in city (X) people who grew up on one side of a river say /car/ but on the other side of the river they say /cah/. Or on one side they say rubber band on the other they say gum band. One simple phonetic or semantic change. However as the aerial distance grows more and more isomorphs happen. Sometimes a geographical boundary will present a series of isomorphs these are called isomorph bundles. This often happens with neighborhoods that are populated with primarily one ethnic group. Put several isomorphic bundles together and you have a distinct dialect.

This brings about a dialect continuum. A dialect continuum can span several related languages with surprisingly little delineation between any two directly adjacent language communities. So depending on what you mean by dialect, whether you are trying to draw a nationalistic or ethnic boundary or simple neighborhood boundaries there could be very few to thousands of them. I have worked with a language that has 15 living speakers and 13 distinct dialects all withing 200 square miles.

Thanks for your reply, GiD.

I should have taken more time to make my point clearer.

Has Spanish been delineated into the same type of classification as has happened with English, ie. BrE, AmE, CdE, AuE ?

Do some, a lot of people maintain the notion that the Spanish of Spain is thee Spanish?

In the same sense as there is SWE/SFE, is there a consensus as to what constitutes SFS/SWS across the Spanish speaking world, the world of more formal, schools, universities, newspapers, magazines, etc.

Actually, thee Spanish of Spain is called Castilian.
Article III of the Spanish Constitution: "El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado." Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State.

Thanks, Walter. Rephrase my question;

Do some, a lot of people maintain the notion that Castilian is thee Spanish?

But ask a Catalan or Galician or Basque what they think about that.

yes Spanish in south america has distinct dialects based somewhat on nationalistic lines. A lot of it has to do with the regional native languages combined with the historical regional Spanish government's way of dealing with them. For example Mexican Spanish is unlike all other Spanish in SA primarily because Nauhatl was an official language in Mexico until relatively recently, while Argentine Spanish sounds more like Castillo because of the historical Argentine Government's way of repressing language an d people.

And Chile too. But in Argentina they say vos not tu and have zheismo and rioplatense.

Vos is the plural of Tu, technically but it has in certain dialects replaced it

Yes I knew that. Voseo is the use of the second person singular pronoun vos instead of tú in Spanish.

Actually, in Spanish, both "Castellano" and "Español" are synonyms. Two different names for the same language irrespective of where the language is used. In the constitutions of some Latin American countries the official language is referred to as "Castellano".

"Castellano" in Spanish just seems to be a more formal name. (In Spain there are political reasons for using "Castellano" also)

In English however the word "Castilian" seems to be used specifically for the Spanish from Spain.

You awakened a thread that was exactly 4 years old!

Oh, oops, I did not notice that. I guess I'm late for the party.