Speak

In Tanya Barrientos’ essay “Yo Hablo Espanol,” she describes her humiliation and frustration with the looks she gets because she doesn’t speak fluent Spanish.  She was only a toddler when her parents moved to the U.S. from Guatemala, and they made a conscious decision for the family to assimilate.  Spanish would not be spoken, and therefore little Tanya, perfectly fluent in English, would not be subjected to to the stereotype of the “lazy Mexican.”

Later, as America embraced cultural diversity and rejected the “melting pot,” Barrientos found herself barred from the Latino community.  She was not a true Latina because she spoke Spanish like a gringo in Spanish 101.  But she also wasn’t accepted in mainstream white culture because of her high Inca cheekbones and last name.

I found myself relating to the story as I was teaching it but wasn’t sure why.  I have never spoken any language regularly except for English.  But then I remembered: my speech was considered odd for most of my life until ninth grade.

When I was five and my brother was three, our family moved to Bath, England for six months on a Fulbright exchange.  My dad taught at the community college there, and his colleague--at whose house we stayed--taught at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.

Bath has some historical significance in England, but it’s not exactly a metropolis.  Our address was “Up Yonder, Box Hill.”  The neighborhood seemed somewhat provincial.

Children regularly threw rocks at my brother and me because of our American accents.  I particularly remember walking along a narrow path with a tall hill on the right.  One child was talking to me animatedly—something about “wearing your Sunday best”--while another child waited on top of the hill out of my sight.  I suddenly felt a pain in my right eye and blood on my face.  The cut from the rock was on my eyelid.  The kids took me home and helped me clean it up, repeatedly emphasizing that I was to tell no one what happened.

I am also now right-handed based on my trip.  I initially wrote with my left hand but was corrected until I started writing with my right.  Apparently writing with one’s left hand was consider a sign of demonic possession.

(This story is not meant to imply that Brits are backward.  I don’t doubt that I would have been an outcast in the American South with my northern accent, and a Southerner would likely have faced a similar fate in Michigan).

By the end of my trip I was officially welcomed into the fold by the other children.  This was likely because I finally spoke like a full-fledged Briton.

When I returned to the U.S. to enter first grade, I received a number of odd looks based on my accent.  In second grade, I remember trying to say the word “cat” and realized I could not--I pronounced it “cot.”   During one recess a couple girls on the playground repeatedly asked me to say words and then broke out laughing whenever I spoke.

After a few years I completely forgot about the issue and entered middle school.  At this point I started getting picked on.  My guess is that this related to my being short, shy and nerdy--and being in middle school.  I became vaguely aware that I didn’t speak like those around me and decided to try to do so in order to “fit in” better.  The cadence of my speech became more choppy and the tone more nasal.  I began to clip my “ings” and started to sound more like a Michigander.  A teacher I’d had for AP History in eighth grade told me during his ninth grade logic class that I’d lost my accent.

I have no idea if this effort did me any good--I was ignored in tenth grade, which was worse in my mind than being ridiculed--but the changes stuck.

I haven’t minded sounding more like those around me, but a Northern Michigan accent is not without its problems.  Another Michigan resident I met years later--a woman I was trying to impress--was proud of her Canadian-sounding accent while stating that mine was closer to that of a Yooper (the half-endearing, half-derogatory term used to describe residents of Michigan’s upper peninsula).  My Ohio-born wife also has poked fun at me for pronouncing “salsa” as a nasal “sayalsa.”

As someone so frequently ridiculed for his accent, I should be more tolerant towards others’ speech, but this hasn’t always been the case.  My brother and I as teenagers were not above mocking our mother, who was born in Indiana to parents who moved North from Georgia.  We especially liked imitating her clustering of verbs, such as “Can you run go find the towel for me?”  Our all-time favorite, though, was when some minor issue would come up--a dropped sewing needle for instance--and she would yell “Goddamn bloody fucking son of a bitch!” loud enough for any impressionable teenage house guest to hear.

I am also fond of an Ohio friend’s story of teaching in Tennessee and a student’s informing him that he “smoked a pop.”  My friend was puzzled and tried to figure out how a soda could be smoked.  The student repeated “smoked a pop” until both became frustrated with the exchange.  My friend finally realized that the student “smoked a pipe.”

Unlike Barrientos, I don’t have to worry about basic fluency.  But I still sometimes think about the way I speak.  I hesitate whenever someone asks “How are you doing?” on whether to say “well”--revealing potential snobbiness--or “good,” which implies that I am a man of the people but do not necessarily know my grammar.  

But I don’t worry any more about getting rocks thrown at me.