Hybrid Neanderthal/Denisovan first generation child

[wnylib]

28. ¿A la orden de quien? Que chistoso.

Last edited Wed Jun 8, 2022, 12:29 PM - Edit history (2)

There is a group of native Spanish speaking friends in my area.

This group of friends grew out of contacts that a Mexican American friend has made since she first came to the US. I was her English tutor through Literacy Volunteers. Her husband is American and they met while he was on vacation in Mexico. His American accent is so thick that it hurts my ears. He uses the flat American "a" instead of the Spanish "a."

She also took night classes in English through the local school district. She was homesick and made friends with everyone in the class who came from a Latin American country and a few from other countries, like Albania. I got included as the gringa friend.

We started meeting for birthdays. That expanded to holidays and various family events. The size of the group varies as some move away due to careers or college while other new ones join. When we all get together in a restaurant, we reserve two banquet tables or a room.
They come from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil. The largest number is from Mexico. One is from Spain, but married to a Puerto Rican, so he has adopted more Latin American usages.

All of them (including me) say that Puerto Rican Spanish is the hardest to understand. The Mexicans are from Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Tijuana, and Chiapas (Mayan descent, met her American husband when he was in the Peace Corps). So there are a variety of Mexican dialects in the group. Portuguese is similar enough that we can usually understand the Brazilian, and she knows some Spanish and English for clarification if necessary.

I adopted Latin American grammar usage early on. I understand Castilian from Spain, but I am too used to Latin American pronouns and second person verb endings to speak "Spaniard." Venezuelan pronunciation is very close to Castillian, but with L.A. pronouns. So is Mexican, except for the Nahuatl influence.

I don't have any direct experience with Catalan or with Cuban Spanish. There is one Cuban woman in the group, but she refuses to use Spanish and I've only heard her speak English - perfectly, without an accent. Her family came here when she was a child.

We've had some hilarious experiences with occasional misunderstandings due to dialect, or, in my case once, missing the ending of a word and taking it for a different one. I love the Mexican sense of humor, very dry and at times, a kind of gallows humor.