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Guest Voz: Are Spanish accents really all that funny?

By Vanessa Perez
LatinaLista

“No? That wasn’t any better?” my mother would ask. “Say it one more time.”

“Chip, ship, sheep.” These three little words had distinct sounds and meanings when I said them. They lost all distinction when my mother would repeat them after me. I laughed. My mother would join in the laughter. I thought of it as a game that my mother and I played frequently. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her to pronounce the sounds. I couldn’t have been over the age of six at the time. She was determined to practice her English and lose her accent.

Ellen Degeneres and Sofia Vergara

My mother never had to tell me that her accented English bothered her. At the age of six, I may not have understood this, but as I grew older it became clear. I noticed that when my mother and I were out shopping or at a restaurant inevitably someone would ask her, “Where are you from?” She paused and smiled, then would say “I’m from here.” Forcing the person asking the question to either drop it, or probe further, “but you have an accent.”

If they probed, and they often do, she might add something like, “I’m from Puerto Rico. And Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and I was born an U.S. citizen, so I’m from here.” I’m old enough now to know what is behind her indignant response. It’s her desire to feel that she belongs. To be recognized for what she is, a U.S. citizen. To not be seen as a foreigner, an immigrant.

My mother moved to Maryland from Puerto Rico at the age of 16. She graduated from high school and college there. She is fluent in English although her speech is accented. I can barely detect her accent. This might be because I was raised by parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who all speak English with a Spanish accent. I really don’t hear their accents anymore, not until someone points it out.

My aunt, my father’s sister, is more outspoken about her discomfort with her accent. “It bothers, you know, to have people constantly ask me where I’m from. I’ve lived in this country since I was twelve!” she’ll say. She is now nearly 60.

The English-only movement in this country is strong. Over the past several months, we’ve all heard Republican presidential hopefuls speak about changing the official language to English in this country if they win the election. There was even an advertisement that ran against Mitt Romney highlighting the fact that he speaks French, as if that were a bad thing. But speaking English in this country isn’t good enough. You need to be able to speak English with an American accent.

Maybe my family history explains why I was outraged by the new Cover Girl Tone Rehab commercial featuring Ellen DeGeneres and Sofia Vergara. The commercial begins as most Cover Girl advertisements do, with beautiful women selling the secret to youth, beauty and happiness in a jar. The end of this commercial, however, takes an odd turn when Ellen says one of Sofia’s lines. Sofia retorts, “That’s what I was supposed to say now.” Ellen replies “Well, no one can understand you.”

When I saw the advertisement for the first time it made me cringe.

Sofia Vergara is an Emmy nominated actor and one of the leads in ABC’s six-time Emmy award-winning series “Modern Family.” She is the hottest Latina actor of the moment. What do you mean no one can understand what she’s saying?

I know that this is supposed to be all in good fun. Ellen and Sofia are both women of comedy. Yet in the current anti-immigrant and anti-Latino climate, the advertisement is highly problematic. It reinforces the stereotypes of the hot-blooded, sexy, spitfire Latina. The one who should be seen, but never heard. The Latina (read immigrant/foreigner) whose speech is so unintelligible, she has no right to speak.

It’s time for the United States to embrace multilingualism and acknowledge the wonderful linguistic resources this country has. As a country we lose when we don’t see these linguistic resources as an asset.

Vanessa Perez is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College — CUNY and is the author of Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration: Narratives of Displacement.

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Comment(17)

  • VanessaOden
    March 14, 2012 at 10:39 am

    @LatinaLista Great article! I’d like to interview Vanessa P

  • Anna Hernandez-Valencia
    March 14, 2012 at 10:48 am

    Babalu sounds much better with a spanish accent!

  • LatinaLista
    March 14, 2012 at 10:56 am

    @VanessaOden would love to connect with you, where can we email you?

  • Martha Morolez-de Anda
    March 14, 2012 at 2:42 pm

    It is not funny. I do not like that “lady” at all.

  • lisapizza1
    March 14, 2012 at 5:39 pm

    Who is from Spain?

  • VanessaYPerez
    March 14, 2012 at 7:27 pm

    Thanks so much. @VanessaOden . Would love to connect with you.

  • SonyaDST
    March 14, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    @DrJamesPeterson I kept thinking… isn’t this commercial offensive?!?!

  • soundingoutblog
    March 14, 2012 at 11:20 pm

    @VanessaYPerez *Loved* your post-you might also dig Ines Casillas & J. Sebastian Ferrada’s “Listening to Modern Family” http://t.co/ZQUSMfLQ

  • VanessaYPerez
    March 15, 2012 at 6:11 am

    @soundingoutblog Thanks so much! Great piece on “Listening to Modern Family.”

  • Lorna Vega Zygmunt
    March 15, 2012 at 11:18 am

    Great article Vanessa Perez!!

  • Vanessa Perez
    March 15, 2012 at 11:18 am

    Thank you Lorna Vega Zygmunt!!

  • HCorderoGuzman
    March 16, 2012 at 6:37 am

    @VanessaYPerez @hispanicnewyork perfect. Will take a look. Thanks.

  • viohln8
    March 17, 2012 at 1:29 pm

    @CLC_DePauw http://t.co/stmzufwP

  • LatinaLifestyle
    March 18, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    @VanessaYPerez Don’t forget to get your #LALLBLOG Conference this weekend with “flash” code to get $100 off! http://t.co/p9b9RO8e #LLblog

  • KaramyRenfrow
    April 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    I perceive some overreaction in your and your mother’s interpretation of  her being asked where she’s from….such a question doesn’t necessarily have to carry an implication of “foreigner” or non-citizen, it often is an (admittedly ignorant) way of asking “What’s your ethnicity?”  or “What kind of accent is that?’ I was born in this country, as was my mother, father, and all of my grand-parents…..but I am of Southeastern-European descent and grew up in the northern Midwest. Now that I live in Kentucky (where most “whites” are of Western-European descent), I am frequently asked where I’m from, simply because I talk and look different than most people around here. 

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