An accent story.
So when I started Spanish I thought if you learn Spanish you could just listen to anyone in the Spanish speaking world and it would be the same. Well as demonstrated by this video by Babbel that is not true. And your accent and lexicon will also be influenced by what you listen to, read and who you talk to as you learn your target language. My Spanish certainly did.
At the beginning, I had the very common American English accent with my super strong pirate r's and vowel sounds galore (Spanish only has 5 singular vowels while English has 12 more or less). My vocab was the "international Spanish" they teach us in the states, which is a mix of Spanish and Mexican vocabulary. But all of this is nnnooorrrmmaaalll for beginners.
A year down the line and I decided to volunteer in Peru and this was when I began to note some of the differences between what I was taught in class and what I heard on the streets of Lima. A camiseta (t-shirt) was a polo, an aguacate (avocado) was a palta, everyone one said chau instead of adios, and people didn't pronounce the s or d in pescado (fish). But four months wasn't enough to pick up all the Peruvianisms so the story continues in the US.
Back in the states, I took a job working as a social worker in a part of town with tons of Spanish speakers (Antioch, TN for all my Tennesseans out there). The fun part of learning Spanish in the US is there is so many countries represented. I spoke to folks mainly from Mexico and El Salvador, but I met Cubans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and even more with all of their dialectal differences. Puerto Ricans sometimes switch out the rolled R for L, and some Hondurans call barrios (neighborhoods) colonias just to start. My ears were spinning! So I decided to hone in on Mexican and Central American Spanish. I started learning Mexican hip-hop and watching anything I could find from Central American. I was so influenced by there Spanish that when I would speak to my Peruvian friend Michelle (now wife) on skype she said I sounded Central American! But this also influenced my vocabulary.
Fast forward a year and half and I am back in Lima, Peru teaching English. My Spanish had reverted back to its Limeño roots with the occasional Mexican/Central American slip. At the time, I was studying for a big Spanish test called the DELE (Diplomado de Español como Lengua Extranjera). I took the test the first time thinking, "I don't need to study the listening section. I live in Peru. I hear Spanish all day long." Wrong! I failed the test the first time due to the listening section. This is a test from Spain so I was back to learning a new accent and vocabulary. I started watching La Casa de Papel on Netflix and listening to podcasts from Spain (mainly about linguistics and psychology). On the second time round I was ready.
So have fun with it! Who do you want to connect with? Who do you think has a cool accent? Pick a country or person and try to imitate them!
10 gennaio 2020
