¡Este Güey/Tío!

tyleroakley:

peacelovelesbian:

libby-on-the-label:

busterposeys:

at what point in history do you think americans stopped having british accents

Actually, Americans still have the original British accent. We kept it over time and Britain didn’t. What we currently coin as a British accent developed in England during the 19th century among the upper class as a symbol of status. Historians often claim that Shakespeare sounds better in an American accent.

No.  Not much above is actually true.  Let me try to explain in the most simplistic way how language change happens when one language gets exported to a far-away politically-separated land.  (This is not meant to be a strict lesson in history, although there are some parallels)

Let’s say we have a group of people who live on Circle Island that speak dialect A of Circlish.  They live uncontroversially under the reign of King Circulo III.

But after some time, King Circulo starts getting a big head, and acting tyrannical, and a group of persecuted Circlians escape, setting sail for Square Island, the land of freedom and easily-purchased fire-arms.

These renegade Circlians settle down, and establish the debatably ineffective Democratic Republic of Square Island.  They are no longer Circlian Pawns of the King, but liberated Squarites led by George Pentagonian.  However, they still speak the same dialect A of their separated Circlian brethren.

Over the centuries, the two far-removed peoples continue on their separate paths, interacting every now and then, but for the most part minding their own business.  The speech of the Circlians changes little by little, as languages always have.  Certain sounds become dropped in speech. Others are added.  The popular slang of one year is replaced the next year by the hippest words this side of the Triangle River.  Before you know it, a distinct dialect B has emerged, replacing the now obsolete dialect A.  

Meanwhile, the same thing has been happening to the speech of the good polygon-fearing citizens of Square Island.  But their dialect has changed in different ways.  Where some sounds have been dropped over in Circle Island, they have been retained on the other side of the Oval Sea.  Different expressions fall out of fashion, and some things said on Square Island, in what can now be labeled as dialect C sound downright strange to the subjects of reigning monarch, Her Circulosity Queen Cerclea IV.  And vice versa.

Of course students on both sides of the pond are still required to read literature from good ol’ King Circulo’s time, and they recognize most of what is said, but other things are less clear, and some passages understandably confuse the most intelligent speakers of dialect B and C.  Critically no one speaks the “original Circlish.”  In fact, it is hard to pin down exactly what would be the original language—because it had been changing since before writing was invented all those years ago in the small hamlet of Elliptico.

However, all these good folks can still communicate with each other, which is very helpful for Circle-citizens who watch Squarish movies (which dominate the market), and for Square-citizens who watch Circlish sci-fi shows involving evil salt shaker aliens that are intent on eliminating the mysterious Professor What.

More centuries pass, and the two dialects of this language have both continued to change.  They’ve changed SO MUCH that now the people of these two Isles can no longer talk to each other in what used to be their native dialect. Only the most well-studied professors of dead languages can still read the old tongue of King Circulo.  In Circle Island, phrase books are sold to potential tourists to Square Island, so they can talk to the local Squarites in their own language, Squarish.  On Square Island, they continue watching Circlish television and cinema, but only with subtitles.

The two peoples of these islands now speak different languages, that are not mutually intelligible.

So there you have it.

Now back to the real world.  

Neither Americans nor the British speak with the “original British accent”, whatever the hell that is.  While the accents in Great Britain did indeed ‘develop’ in the 19th century (and the 18th, and the 20th, and the 15th-17th… etc.), so did the accents in North America after colonization.  They changed in both places, and WITHIN both places (The Deep South, New England, Scotland, Wales, South England, etc all have distinct accents/dialects).With regards to the great Bard, no one speaks his dialect of English today, but if you listen to clips of what his pronunciation may sounded like, honestly, it sounds a lot like Scottish English (to my ears at least), which still doesn’t mean that they or anyone else has the “original British accent.”

Good day! :)

approximatelyinfinity:

How do I summarize what it is like to live in Spain? Basically, nothing is a big deal except food. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you know. 

More elaboration? Well, let’s see…

• No one is in a hurry. In fact, it is rude to even insinuate that you might tener prisa. Spaniards walk slow, eat slow, work slow. (But talk really fast.) One time I asked a shopkeeper how much a book cost, and he told me he didn’t know and to come back tomorrow. What?? No one would do that in America! They’d be like, I’ll figure it out quick so I can take your money now! Also, literally nothing starts on time. The only exception is bullfights. 
• In Spain, you party. Every day of the week, the discotecas are open LATE. One Monday night we went out to a discoteca, and it closed at 6 AM. (Needless to say we left before that.) Spaniards stay up late even if they don’t party, and basically it’s the worst thing ever if they have to get up early.
• The meals are as follows: Breakfast (el desayuno) is basically whenever you get up. And since Spaniards hate getting up early, this is usually like 9 or 10am. It’s a light meal, so light that I wouldn’t even consider it a meal. Café con leche, a croissant or a “magdalena,” a piece of fruit. Apparently Spaniards also can’t stand the thought of eating something substantial in the morning. Lunch (called la comida, NOT el almuerzo) is around 2 or 3pm, and it is the big meal of the day. In my house, it is always 2 courses, sometimes 3 if we have fruit for dessert. Dinner (la cena) is between 9-10pm, although some eat even later. It’s one plate, smaller than lunch. 
• Oops, I lied earlier. Siesta: also a really big deal. If you find a store open between the hours of 2 and 4 pm, you are SUPER lucky. Some people even come home from work, eat la comida, take a siesta, and then go back to work at like 5. 
• “El Crisis.” Spain currently has a 25% unemployment rate. Their economy is going down the drain. After living here for 3 weeks, I’ve already figured out why. It’s basically the previous bullet points: They’re not in a hurry to do anything, including earning money; they party all the time; their biggest concern is food; and they close their shops in the middle of the day! 
• Everything is old. I feel like if something is 100 years old in the US, it’s really impressive. In Spain, something has to be at LEAST like 500 years old for it to be impressive. Two weekends ago I was in Ávila, where there is a giant wall (la muralla) around the city. Construction began in 1090. Nothing has been added to it since the 14th century. 
• Water fountains do not exist. If you find one, it’s like finding the Holy Grail. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense because it’s dry and hot as heck here. 
• Stamps here aren’t stickers. In fact, they’re not even the lickable kind. You have to buy a freaking gluestick to use a stamp. 
• Bathrooms are gross. As in grosser than normal. If you find a public restroom that has flushing toilets, toilet paper, soap, and something to dry your hands with, you are the luckiest person ever.
• Reading stop signs in different countries is fun! Here’s as much as I know: the stop signs in Mexico and Honduras say “ALTO” (ie: HALT), the stop signs in Puerto Rico say “PARE” (which is a command to stop), and the stop signs in Spain say… “STOP.” …oh. Well that’s… boring… and weird. I don’t get it.
• Around here, you almost always wear shoes. Even when just lounging around the house, people wear house slippers. Apparently this is because it’s very dusty in Madrid and it’s hard to always keep the floors clean, so if you’re barefoot you get dirty feet. My señora always comments on how fast we take off our shoes when we come in the house.
• During Mass, it seems like everybody has different guidelines about when to sit and stand and kneel, yet this doesn’t seem to bother anyone. At first I was like, aaahhhh who do I follow?? And then I realized that no one cares, so I do what we do in the US.
• Vosotros. They use it. A lot. It’s not weird for me to hear it anymore, but I have not yet used it while speaking. Also, the Spanish lisp. It’s a real thing.

And finally, Ways to nonverbally scream “I AM AN AMERICAN!!! …or at least not from around here”:

• Wear flip flops. 
• Wear a baseball cap. 
• Wear non-european-looking things. (I feel like, no matter how hard I try, I dress like a gringa. Blarg.)
• Drink beer in giant mugs. 
• Get filthy stinking drunk in public.
• Talk loudly on the metro. 
• Carry a giant backpack. 
• Carry a water bottle (like, the washable kind). 
• Carry a fancy camera around. 
• Walk really fast. 
• Have blonde hair. 
• Be of African or Asian descent.

I like all your observations about everyday Spanish life, but I feel like I must object to the characterization that you give to Peninsular Spanish speech—that is—the “Spanish lisp.”

A lisp is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a speech defect in which s is pronounced like th in thick and z is pronounced like th in this.” In other words—a lisp is the inability to pronounce the alveolar fricatives s and z, and changing the tongue’s position to inbetween the teeth, so that both sounds become interdental.  It is not the case that a whole linguistic group—all of Spain—has a speech defect.  It just isn’t so.

Of course, probably the most recognizable aspect of peninsular dialects is the presence of the th sound (hereafter represented by the IPA symbol θ—like the th in think).  However, in a word like “gracias”—a Spaniard from Castilla-La Mancha, for example, will say “graθias” NOT “graθiaθ.”  There is no inability to pronounce the s sound.  In most of Spain, the standard pronunciation is called distinción — that is, the distinction between the phonemes /s/ and /θ/.  That’s why words like “casar” and “cazar” are not homophones, as they would be in Latin America.

In Medieval Spanish, there were several distinct sounds that in the North and central part of Spain evolved into /s/ and /θ/, but in the South, in Andalusia, all became just /s/.  This phenomenon is called seseo—where the sounds represented by the letters s, z, and c are all pronounced [s].  Some linguists and historians state that during la conquista of America, most of the conquistadores came from the south of Spain, from seseante areas, and therefore, causing modern-day L.American accents of Spanish to be seseante.  

Now there are parts of Andalusia in which all those  Medieval  sounds merged into the /θ/ phoneme (so they say things like “θi, θeñor), and this phenomenon is known as ceceo (pretty much the opposite of seseo).  Sadly, in Spain these ceceante accents are looked down upon and not seen as “good speech,” and many of these speakers take efforts to “correct” their “speech errors,” often resulting in a seseante accent, or a hybrid of the two, saying things like “Tenìa un curθo en Saragosa”.

But my point is that calling this speech characteristic a lisp is a gross oversimplification that is not only ignorant, but potentially offensive as well.