I was invited to a fancy restaurant dinner last night to celebrate my neighbor Israel’s 40th birthday. It was lovely, but also quite tiring trying to follow the fast flying remarks of the seven other guests at the table. At my level of Spanish, I just don’t yet understand enough of the language to be much more than a grasping observer. This got me thinking about the level of difficulty in various situations when trying to communicate in a non-native language.
Groups – These are always problematic. Trying to follow the volley of conversation, and jokes built upon jokes is extremely difficult. If you miss one link in the chain, it can be almost impossible to pick it up again until a new subject is broached.
Telephone – The advantage in talking one on one, in person with someone is that you have the advantage of hand movements and facial expressions as a surprisingly good guide to what they are saying apart from mere words. On the phone, you have no such luxury and it can be a struggle to understand.
Movies – These are somewhat like group settings, but the dialog is usually more nuanced and can be even more fast paced.
Speech patterns – People have an amazing variety of education levels, slang usage, vocal tics and other speech patterns that result in some people being very easy to understand and others being next to impossible.
There is a specific type of Mexican accent that is recognized in the US, or at least it seemed that way to me before coming here. It is represented in many parts of American culture. I can’t think of any specific examples at the moment other than the man in the bee suit on TV in various Simpsons episodes. This accent is very particular, more of a tonal drawl or lilt, and it is the basis of a stereotype Americans have about how “all” Mexicans sound in speech. I’m certain there are racial and cultural bias overtones as well to this perceived trait.
In any event, since coming to Mexico I haven’t heard this accent or tonal drawl at all in the numerous people I have met. I have detected a variety of accents and manners of speaking in various people. Some use a lot more slang than others, as in any language group. And then last night, for the first time down on the street outside my window, I heard a young woman conversing with her boyfriend in that voice, that lilt. It really took me by surprise for I had completely forgotten about it until now. When I asked Julio about it, he told me it was mostly a class distinction, that the voice we were hearing was from a poor area, which was interesting, because I tend to think of accents as being more about region than about class or economics. But of course that is silly, the world is filled with multitudes of accents linked to subculture as well as place.
Language just fascinates the hell out of me.
Ojalá is a Spanish word that means “hopefully”. Someone may be describing something like possibly getting a promotion next week and then say “ojalá”. I have just recently become aware of this word and it puzzled me the first time I saw it. I couldn’t figure out its root or context clearly, so I looked it up on the internet. It is derived from the Arabic “Insha’Allah”, meaning “if God wills it”. This is one of many words that came to the Spanish language at the time of the Muslim rule of the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th to the 15th centuries. In fact, Spanish (and Portuguese, for that matter) has been changed rather dramatically in ways that other romance languages were not because of this history.
