(Untitled)

[katiescarlett29]

People keep telling me how wonderful my Spanish is.  I'm sure they must mean "for an American."  It must become obvious whenever I open my mouth that I'm not from here, because people ask; and it's only afterwards that they tell me how great my Spanish is.  This is false.  I stumble over words more often than not; I draw a blank while searching for

Comments

[in_water_writ]

I've had the same thing happen in Italian... when I've pointed out my difficulties to compliment-givers, they say it's my accent... that I might stumble over finding the words, but that my pronunciation doesn't sound foreign. Maybe that's it? Even though I learned Italian in school, I grew up hearing my grandfather speak it with my dad and aunts and uncles, so I'm used to knowing how it's supposed to sound. Was it similar for you?

The greatest compliment I ever got was during a conversation with a vendor in Pisa... she was surprised when I asked her to slow down and repeat something, so sorry, I'm American, and then she told me she hadn't realized I wasn't Italian. I hope you get a moment like that on your trip.

Also, is it odd that I never find it happen the other way around? Like, I've never met someone who didn't speak and understand English fluently, but whose pronunciation was so good you couldn't tell. Just an odd coincidence?

[katiescarlett29]

It wasn't quite the same for me growing up; I heard my mom speak Spanish with my grandmother, etc., so I suppose it was similar.

Ha, no, I haven't ever met anyone with a perfect American accent but an incredibly imperfect grasp of English. I wonder why it works that way?

Some of it, I'm sure, is because it's possible to engage a person in conversation where they're doing the vast majority of the talking. Then if you understand most/all of it and your responses are accented properly, it sort of makes sense that you could be mistaken for a native, or give the impression that your language skills are far greater than what they actually are. That's mostly what's been happening to me, I think.

[blendedchaitea]

Most of the time it does have to do with pronunciation and accent. There's no way in hell I'd pass for Japanese (ha!), but whenever I've spoken Japanese with native speakers, they know instantly that my teacher was a native speaker too, and that I can use the accent well.