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Kenny posted an update 8 years, 8 months ago
Teaching my two Irish American nephews the Spanish language. These kids have so much energy, an Irish-Puerto Rican nuclear reactor. They are learning so fast and already getting an accent.
I am fascinated by it, because I can control form and grammar, but not the accent. Leaving that to them, to figure it out. Is almost an alchemical process. The accent we got in Puerto Rico is not from Madrid, for the most part is Andalusian. That accent is fast and not every letter is vocalized.
This is an Andalusian accent, if you are learning Spanish you may not notice the difference, but there are differences.
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It’s very interesting how language is learnt. My husband is Italian but learnt English as a young child so has no accent at all, just that of a native speaker of South African English. I learnt French in high school for five years (along with Afrikaans – 12 years – and Zulu – 3 years), whenever I come across a foreign Latin-based language my automatic response is to pronounce it with a French accent (I guess it’s the accent of my French teacher, who was actually French). It’s almost like the French sounds have been imprinted on me as patterns for Latin languages. I am having to work extra hard to try to pronounce Italian words the Italian way as I slowly learn it!
Thanks Kenny. That is quite a different brand of Spanish, I only understood a few words of it! . . . . Languages are so interesting. Over the years I’ve learned French, Italian, Spanish, and German and speak each with varying degrees of proficiency, and find it easy to move into the accent of that language . . . but when stumped for a word in one language I’ll borrow it from another with odd results. Some British accents are almost like foreign languages and challenging to understand.
I guess they are repeating the patterns of speech, hence an accent. We are fast speakers, sometimes I have to tone it down, depending on the circumstances. The other thing, fascinating to me, is the future of English in Puerto Rico and how the language is going to develop. There is a phenomena that is unique in PR, there are more Puerto Ricans living in the States than on the Island. They are spread and have families in those places, hence they are picking different patterns of speech from all the States. My brother lives in Utah and his accent is different from a person living in New York.
I wonder what type of English accent are we going to end up with in PR. Is it going to be a New York accent ? A Texas accent ? or probably a huge mix of everything. Is going to be very interesting, to see how that is going to manifest.