When it comes to heavy accents mine has got to be one of them, my youngest daughter used to try to correct me all the time but she finally gave up, as my son said "I have no problem understanding my dad". It's not only the accent but the pronunciation.
I wish I would have a teacher like "Cheech" on the movie "Born in East L.A." If you never saw that movie you missed a really good one. During an illegal immigration round up, Cheech is deported by mistake and is sent back to Tijuana because he didn't have his wallet with him and couldn't prove he was actually born here in this country.
While in Tijuana, he is trying to make some money to cross the border illegally like many of us have done in the past and one of the things he does besides selling oranges in the street is to teach the OTMs (Other than Mexican) how to speak English as he does in East L.A.
"Orale, whazzapennin, psss, psss, psss!" So back to me. If you ask me when was my chica born I would have said something like November 3rd... "No, Dad -- Not November turd, it's November T H I R D, say it, say it". What did I say? Turd, and what is it? Third. Shit they sound the same to me.
Yeah baby, I did hire my temp for the busy season, he is a big dude that sounds like the terminator, homey is big, he lifts weights and I think he may have taken steroids as his voice is way too deep. But he is actually a great employee and is learning very fast. His name is Doug. "No baby, his name is not dog, it's D O U G, say it, say it." What did I say? Dog, and what is it? Doug, shit they sound the same to me.
Well, I have been banned from using words like "banging". "No dad -- Diego was not banging Dora all over the house, he was however hitting the Dora plastic doll with a plastic sword".
When it comes to speaking the language, it does not come easy for me. And yet I survive monthly executive meetings at work, and even won a couple of story telling competitions during our Copperstate Mustang Club ice cream socials. So as you can see I am not too worried.
Then there's my other problem which is taking words out of context like the day I thought a pedometer was a device to measure farts . The list could be endless but I get by, and at 47 years of age and after 37 years of living in the U.S. I think my language skills and speech pattern is as good as it'll get.
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5 comments:
Absolutely funny...reminded me of a George Lopez routine!
Hey, maybe you have another career path!
OMG... LMAO... My best friend's husband is from Tucspan Mexico. He has a very heavy accent as well. I am the only person on earth that is allowed to mimic his accent... everyone else get yelled at. LOL He says sooooo many things that make me LMFAO... we now call it "Leo-bonics" A few examples...
"At least he has a roof under his head"
"Well, it's all water over the bridge now"
He pronounces:
cheeks... chips
Dork... Door
And so on. It's the best.
lmao! this was too funny.... I need to get my husband a 'pedometer'. I think he's been breaking records lately....blech!!
My dad has lived here for 31 years, and he mixes up words sometimes. He has a heavy Dutch accent.
I tried to tell him that you teach someone how to something and you learn how to something, but he still will mix them up. So, he will sometimes still ask, "Do you want me to learn you how to do that?"
I think it is cute!
Yeah, my dad still has a thick accent and still cannot to this day prounce a B. He still prnounces them as a V.
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