Today I’m sporting a Chilean accent, according to a new Spanish-speaking colleague.
Given that the last time I spoke to a Chilean was back in 2004, I can’t be copying anybody’s pronunciation. This tells me that I’m hypercompensating for turning many years old the day before yesterday by developing a childish lisp (which is what the Chilean accent is.)
This is very embarrassing because I don’t control the accent.
To me, Chilean doesn’t sound so much childish as… clipped with an odd rhythm that makes it seem like the words are stumbling over each other as they come out of the mouth.
It’s one of the hardest Spanish accents for me to understand though I had a very good friend from Chile (from the north which used to be Bolivia so he wasn’t quite as hardcore as further south).
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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