Ten things that give away this is your first time to Mexico
This was a funny and accurate read Top Ten things that prove this is your first time in Mexico!
Forum Discussion
Chris, I did not realize that you were back teaching in Texas??
Back to the topic, sort of -- when I was traveling in Mexico, I found that the folks were very forgiving of my mispronunciations and grammatical errors. They were so grateful that I was even trying to speak Spanish.
The only exception was this: the summer after high school (1970!!), I was part of an exchange program and spent three months living with a farm family way out in the mountains of the West Coast of Mexico. These people were just wonderful -- this experience had a huge influence on my life.
Unbeknownst to me, however, my "family" spoke with a heavy Indian (Nahuatl) accent, kind of a sing-song pattern, with lots of idiosyncratic errors in pronunciation and grammar. Not knowing any better, I absorbed their speech pattern, as teenagers will.
So at the end of the summer, I went to Mexico City to meet up with a Mexican friend of one of my USA friends. This person (a young lady) was highly cultured and sophisticated, very well educated. I showed up at her lovely home and started to make conversation in Spanish with her and her family. After a few minutes, the room fell silent, and they all burst out laughing hysterically. I was mystified.
She explained (in perfect English), "You can't imagine how funny it sounds to hear an Indian dialect coming out of your gringo mouth. It's as if a Chinese person had come to the US for the summer and had lived with a poor family from the Deep South."
To this day, I still retain traces of that same accent, although I can overcome it if I try.
Back to the topic, sort of -- when I was traveling in Mexico, I found that the folks were very forgiving of my mispronunciations and grammatical errors. They were so grateful that I was even trying to speak Spanish.
The only exception was this: the summer after high school (1970!!), I was part of an exchange program and spent three months living with a farm family way out in the mountains of the West Coast of Mexico. These people were just wonderful -- this experience had a huge influence on my life.
Unbeknownst to me, however, my "family" spoke with a heavy Indian (Nahuatl) accent, kind of a sing-song pattern, with lots of idiosyncratic errors in pronunciation and grammar. Not knowing any better, I absorbed their speech pattern, as teenagers will.
So at the end of the summer, I went to Mexico City to meet up with a Mexican friend of one of my USA friends. This person (a young lady) was highly cultured and sophisticated, very well educated. I showed up at her lovely home and started to make conversation in Spanish with her and her family. After a few minutes, the room fell silent, and they all burst out laughing hysterically. I was mystified.
She explained (in perfect English), "You can't imagine how funny it sounds to hear an Indian dialect coming out of your gringo mouth. It's as if a Chinese person had come to the US for the summer and had lived with a poor family from the Deep South."
To this day, I still retain traces of that same accent, although I can overcome it if I try.
