>>> I find the Puerto Ricans are more easily understood than Mexicans in general once you get past the speed with which they speak!
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>Interesting that you say that. I attended a high school with a pretty large Hispanic population. Hearing them speak Spanish, it often sounded like they spoke really fast. I later decided that many foreign languages sound fast because if you don't understand the language, what you hear is every syllable instead of the whole word. Yet, some cultures must talk faster because when I hired a Jamaican, he certainly spoke English quite fast. With the speed and the accent, it was sometimes hard to understand him even though he was speaking English.

Happens with Serbian as well, whereas it's a language where each sound is pronounced quite sharply and is hard to mishear. It's just spoken too fast in some areas. Then add a few local expressions that they insert here and there, and the fact that it's actually spoken quite slow in my area. The lady who taught me English worked for a year or two somewhere in the south, and she said it took her two months to get to understand her school principal; by the end of semester she was able to understand students too.