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New York 2016: Spanish Accent

So, this particular post is going to involve a little bit of backstory. First of all, the Mild Fiancée speaks some Spanish. It wasn't her native language, but she's been around it enough where she's picked up some of it. Heck, at one point, she was fluent enough to converse with some of her students' parents.

Now, the fun part of this tidbit is that Spanish comes in regional flavors (here's a goofy video sort of explaining the differences). If this confuses you, think about how English sounds different depending on the person speaking it. If you've been speaking English for any substantial amount of time, you can tell when someone from the UK is speaking English. If you're from the US, you can immediately spot a southern drawl or a Boston accent. It's not just that people use different words, they just sound different in some accents. Well, the same is true for Spanish.

The reason that this tidbit is relevant is that the Mild Fiancée grew up around people who spoke Mexican Spanish. So, when she learned to pronounce words or say certain things, she learned the Mexican way of saying those thing. Her diction and accent marked the particular Spanish she learned. However, she moved to New York at one point in her life. They speak very different Spanish out there, largely due to the concentration of immigrants from the Caribbean. You're much more like to hear Puerto Rican, Dominican, or Cuban Spanish out there. So, as before, she picked up the Spanish around her, and suddenly her Spanish had much more of a Caribbean feel to it (as an aside, if you want to hear the difference, ask that person to pronounce "tostones").

This started to get funny when she moved back to California. Suddenly, someone who had grown up speaking Mexican Spanish sounded a little bit like a Puerto Rican. Imagine if your friend was born in the American South, moved to the UK, and came back with a British accent. You'd notice it right away, and you'd very likely find the change amusing. In fact, we had dinner with one of the Mild Fiancée's good friends from college, and that friend started cracking up when we were talking about this. Let's just say that she spotted the difference right away.

The best part, though, was that the Mild Fiancée had her revenge. We spent some time in New York recently, remember? We spent some time in her old neighborhood, where they don't speak my type of Spanish. So, she intentionally kept her mouth shut and made me go order when we were in one of the neighborhood restaurants. She fully expected me to run into some difficulties, but she wanted me to experience it first hand. And possibly laugh from the sidelines.

It turned out about how you'd expect. The lady and I made it work, but there were definitely a few moments where we had to repeat ourselves. From my perspective, it felt a little bit like my brain was on a slight tape delay. I didn't immediately recognize the words because my brain wasn't used to hearing them in that order, or with that particular inflection. But right as I would start to formulate a question or a "sorry, what was that?" (in Spanish, of course), my brain would sort of shunt itself into understanding. Suddenly, the words I'd heard a split second ago made sense, and I'd realize what the other person had said. It's a little surreal, to be honest.

And of course, the Mild Fiancée had a ball watching all of this. She didn't actually say, "I told you so," but I think she was probably thinking it. Luckily for me, there were no grave misunderstandings, so it all worked out. Still, for a few minutes there, I was acutely aware of the way my Spanish sounded.

Accents are fun sometimes.

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