Monday, March 20, 2017

An accent story.

The other Saturday I was at a museum here in the city with my one (Asian-Canadian) friend, and the museum guard was this young Mexican-American guy, and when we were standing near him discussing some fiber artworks, he jumped into the conversation and started speaking with us, only it turns out that he had a British accent!
I asked him about that, and he said his parents were poorer and monolingual Spanish in a pretty much monolingual Spanish neighborhood, and when he was a baby they bought this funky knock-off cable converter box that only got in international channels, so his main exposure to English throughout childhood was to British English via the BBC, though he grew up here in the city.
The story seemed true (he didn't seem like he was putting us on with his accent), and it raises a ton of questions, e.g. whether his accent is regionally identifiable or a mix of British English accents or the accent that British presenters use, or if it ever got Americanized through his exposure beginning in elementary school
What a weird, funky story.  Someone should do a linguistics / child development study on him.

No comments: