Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarnium
I'm a brand-new Spanish learner at college, and I have a question about accents. I want to get my pronunciation correct and minimize my American accent, and I thought the best way to do this would be to imitate a native speaker as closely as possible. However, I live in the United States, Ohio, and my teacher is from Spain. Her accent, while I like it, is a bit different from the Mexican and Caribbean accents that are usually seen in Spanish speaking people in the US. (Which I'm not actually very familiar with).
I'm thinking of trying to copy her accent, "ceceo" and all, to get practice pronouncing a Spanish-language accent, instead of just doing my best guess as to what a Mexican/Caribbean accent sounds like. However, I've heard that North American Spanish-speakers tend to think that the Peninsular accent is either absurd or pretentious, and I don't want to get the cold shoulder.
Also, while I live in the US, I also live in southeastern Ohio; there are very few hispanic immigrants here. This teacher and the ones that come after her are going to be the people that I hear Spanish from the most, and so I'm still thinking it might best to just try to copy them, whatever their accent is. If using a peninsular accent later on causes problems, I can always at least drop the ceceo.
Thoughts?
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Hola Zardium. I'm actually very glad you asked this question because accents of Spanish(and or English, Italian)are my favorito subject.
The majority of Spanish speakers that live in the U.S. are from Mexcio and the Mexican accent for those of us living in the U.S. is the most logical accent to speak with. (We border Mexico. It's one of the longest borders in the world.) And I have the soluction for you amigo mio. Every night I watch 4 Mexican novelas, that's right, 4 Mexican novelas.
I went to Cuba one time and they asked me if I was Mexican. I said no. They said then why are you speaking with a Mexican accent. jajaja=hahaha So you're simple solution is to watch Mexican novelas. Also I have bought many Mexican novelas on DVD and I watch them.
Now if you live in Florida, New York or New Jersey you might want to speak with a Cuban/Puerto Rican or Dominican accent. Which would just happen if you lived there and were around those speakers.
That being said do not worry that you copy your ceceo speaking teacher for now. Actually you'll have no choice in the matter. We speak like or with the accent of the people we are around. The important thing is that you learn to understand and speak Spanish. The important thing is that you learn lots of Spanish words/vocabulary. (You need to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs también.) I lived in Italy and learned to speak Italian. Then I learned Spanish. My Italian accent didn't last long. Acutally my Italian accent helped when I was around my friends from Argentina. They said I had a very good Argentine accent and all I did was speak Spanish with an Italian accent.
I was lucky because when I first started learning Spanish I found some audio CDs of people having converstations from different countries. Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Colombia. There was this one converstation between two Colombian brothers. It was one of my favorites. I listened to that conversatation over and over again over 1,000 times. I got where I could imitate their accent perfectly. Then I met a guy from Colombia. He said I spoke just like the people from Colombia. Also I could imitate the accents of all the other countries just by listening to that CD over and over. One time I went to a Mexican party and right before I went I listened the converstations between Mexicans. At the party the Mexican people said I sounded like somebody from Mexico City.
When I went to school in Mexico in Guanajuato my favorite Mexican teacher was from another Mexican state but he had lived in Guanajuato for 9 years. He spoke with a mixture of his home state and the state of Guanajuato. I recorded his lectures and could imitate his voice perfectly.
Also I had lived in Guadalajara and Michoacan. Once a Mexican guy told me that he was trying to figure out from what part of Mexico I was from because my accent was a mixture of all of the accents I had been around. But he actually thought I was Mexican. One time I was speaking Italian to guy from Italy. I just imitated an accent from southern Italy I had heard and he said that I sounded like somebody from a place in southern Italy.
So accents can be learned like anything else. I'm from California and I have my California accent. My mother and realatives are from Arkansas and when I go to Arkansas I speak with a southern accent which is very different from how we speak in California.
Another interesting part to this story is my wife is Cuban. I can also speak with a Cuban accent.
My wife however went to a Mexican school for 5 years and watches Mexican novelas so she
can speak with a Mexican accent. People are always saying she doesn't sound Cuban.
The other reason for that is that she is from a different part of Cuba that has a very
different accent from the Cuban accent of La Habana the capital of Cuba. Yes, even in
Cuba the accents are different depending in what part of Cuba one comes from.