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Accents

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Clarissa

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On the subject of accents, I wanted to share what happened at the departmental outing we had today. My colleagues and I went to the best restaurant in town to celebrate the end of the semester. The waitress who served us is Mexican. She heard us speak Spanish and started guessing where everybody is from based on our accents.

“Mexican, Venezuelan, Brazilian, another Venezuelan or maybe Colombian. . .”

“So where am I from?” the colleague from Spain asked.

“Oh, you are a gringa,” the waitress answered immediately.

15 responses to “Accents”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    More sexism and misoginy from the infamous Return of Kings site

    http://www.returnofkings.com/22358/10-reasons-why-foreign-women-are-better-than-american-women

    If you haven’t signed the petition to remove that site from the internet yet, then please do so now:

    http://www.change.org/petitions/www-returnofkings-com-remove-the-article-5-reasons-to-date-a-girl-with-an-eating-disorder

    Good news- we got over 12,000 signatures now.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      What an interesting way to promote a website.

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      1. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Why remove such comedy gold from the Internet? Sometimes people have a crap day, and it helps to have something to laugh at.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      So many questions…

      Why do you care what a private website runs?

      What can change.org do? What legal power do they have to remove private web content? I notice the petition page says “2,343 NEEDED” needed for what?

      And why give the site so much free publicity? Hosility doesn’t kill web sites, indifference does.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        “Hosility doesn’t kill web sites, indifference does.”

        – Truer words were never spoken.

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  2. E (The Third Glance) Avatar
    E (The Third Glance)

    Out of pure curiosity, where did she guess you were from? 😉

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “Oh, you are a gringa,” the waitress answered immediately.”

    I wonder if it’s because someone using peninsular forms sounds artificial to latin americans (especially everyday people).
    IME academic types from LA think peninsular forms are insufferable (and I had to get rid of mine when I spent a bunch of time around them).

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    1. Z Avatar
      Z

      IME it´s the high school teacher types who feel that way … professors are beyond such things –.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        These weren’t language specialists in the main but mostly social scientists (in various fields and countries).

        Living in Europe now after a mexican phase I’ve gone back to hardcore peninsular with distincion, vosotros, he dicho instead of dije. I’d like to go for lleismo but that seems to be a lost cause. Of course it’s mostly in my head since I’m hardly ever around spanish speakers at present…

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          I’m a specialist in Peninsular literature who speaks with an Argentinean accent and never mastered “vosotros.” 🙂

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    2. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      The colleague from Spain also looks like me: she is blonde, light-skinned and has blue eyes.

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  4. valter07 Avatar
    valter07

    Did the waiter guess you? 🙂

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      This waiter knows me from before because I always hang out at that place, so in my case the experiment didn’t work. :-0

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  5. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “I’m a specialist in Peninsular literature who speaks with an Argentinean accent and never mastered “vosotros.” :-)”

    What about vos?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I really like the voseo. And I know many words in lumfardo. This is, of course, thanks to my friend Mafalda.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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