How to Maste-rrr & E-speek the English Language

brickhousechick

‘Sanks-God’ that I learned English at the age of 9.  The earlier you can learn a second language the better.  

Some of the known benefits of starting early include, getting higher standardized test scores (didn’t experience that benefit), higher confidence (ok, yes), flexing and exercising your brain muscles to give you a significantly larger density of grey matter (is that what’s clogging up my brain?) and developing a more natural native-like sounding accent.

In other words, if Spanish is your first language, learning English at an early age will ensure that you do not sound like Gloria from Modern Family or Jack Black in Nacho Libre.

I have developed a list of situations to avoid should you be one of the wonderful native Spanish speakers who did not get the opportunity to master the English language early-enough.  I sanks my mother for inspiring me to come up with this list.

1.  When attending church services, whatever you do, do not wish anyone any kind of peace.  No matter how much you try and how slowly you speak, you are going to end up wishing them, piss on earth.  When others shake your hand to say, Peace Be With You, simply reply by saying, You too.

2.  Never tell anyone if you have seen the movie, Meet the Fockers. Do not attempt to repeat the title.  Just tell them you saw the movie with Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller.

3.  When shopping for linens, make sure you know the store well.  Know what aisle everything is in so as to avoid having to ask an employee where anything is.  Particularly the bed shits.

4. When speaking, in general, try to smile as much as possible.  Even though you may be in a perfectly good mood, others might interpret your pronunciation of every single vowel to have an…angry tone. Perhaps the fact that you are yelling, might contribute to this misconception.

5.  If a storm is coming, particularly the windy rainy type of storm, do NOT refer to the actual name used to describe such storm.  Just say, a windy storm.  Otherwise, people might think you are forcing them to hugh-rry up.  In other words, do not tell your neighbors to run to the store to stock up on canned goods in preparation for the Hugh-rry-cane.

6.  There is no E in the word Spain.  Only one, in the word Speak.  Definitely only two, in the word Sleep. I know it is difficult to                  ‘e-stay’ on track with this rule, but try just saying the Sssss sound without that E.

The final and most important item on this list:

7.  Forrrrrr-get  all  about  de  list  above, and  e-say  whatever  ju  wan  tu  e-say.  Be  proud dat  ju  no  tuu  lan-guajes  and  make  de  oderrr  pipol  have  tu  under-e-stand  ju.   Ju  are who  ju  are.

Piss Be With Ju All.

 

43 thoughts on “How to Maste-rrr & E-speek the English Language”

  1. Hahaha! Ju arrrrrre hilarious! I love your list! I felt like as an English speaking person in Spain and France. Don’t even get me started with England. They really don’t speak English. They have their own clannish words for everything and mutter in between…
    Thanks for coming to the party. I hope you are meeting and making lots of new friends!

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    2. My poor mom gets laughed at by all of us all the time – but we love herrrrrrrr de wai shee is. 🙂 I’m sure it was tough in England as well. The same thing happened when I visited Spain, it was so different than my Spanish and the accent was different that we usually needed someone to interpret. I remember driving the waiters crazy asking them to bring out samples of the food they were talking about so that we could know what to order.

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  2. Yeah, Susie sent me. I’ve never seen Modern Family. Gloria is a treasure. I have always tried to understand when others who had not mastered English spoke. I sympathize I spoke Polish exclusively for my first four years. No, I wasn’t born in Poland. my grandparents thought that Polish was easier for them to understand. Now, I’ve lost it and pretty much any chance of another second language.. Love your post. Will follow.

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    1. Hi Tom! Was that you I accidentally spilled my Sangria on at Susie’s? So sorry, you can pass along your dry cleaning bill, I got it covered. 🙂 Glad you stopped by and are following. How neat that you could speak Polish! Maybe if you were to get hypnotized or something, it would all come back! 🙂

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  3. Susie’s wild ride dropped me here.
    We had a co-worker who’d pronounce sanx with n silent! People would get a kick out of getting her say Thanks Giving Day!

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  4. OMG! This was so real for me. Being half Filipina and growing up around many from the “old country” these are all so hilariously true. The region of the Philippines we come from also has trouble with the letter “h”. It simply doesn’t exist. So house becomes ouse…and if they try to say the letter it’s pronounced “haych”. Another popular phrase with us is “kill delights” which is, in fact, “kill the lights” also known as turn off the lights. 😉

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    1. That is so cool that you are half Filipina and can relate to this, Kitt. I love “kill delights”, that’s hilarious. I think as I get older my accent seems to be coming back, particularly when I’ve had too much to drink! 🙂

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      1. Oh, well drinking too much brings EVERYTHING up to the surface. A little side note… My mom once looked at my sister after her BFF had left & said “She’s kind of a ditch, isn’t she?” My sister…”Uh, do you mean ditz, mom?” Mom…”Hee Hee. Is that what the word is?” Sis just rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah. Talk about ditches…”

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  6. Popped over from Susie’s ride, and found your very funny post! Loved this. Some of the biggest challenges I’ve had understanding accents were when I worked for the Navy and was around a lot of Philipinos. Took me a while to get it. Another biggie was learning to understand my step mother-in-law, who was raised in Japan and moved to Georgia and Tennessee as an adult. She learned English from the mountain people, and they’re hard enough to understand at times. Throw a Japanese accent on top of that, and I dare you to understand her. My poor son, her “grandson” has a very hard time understanding her, and last summer, it lead to some very weird conversations.

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    1. Whoa! That’s a lot of mixed accents to try to decipher! My kids struggle with my mom at times and the fact that her hearing is going so it makes it for LOUD and weird conversations. LOL. 🙂

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  7. This cracked me up. I can totally relate to all these pronunciations as I hear my mom and aunts and their stories. But they don’t sound as bad as that Fuera De Serie chic on Modern Family…thank God because she really burns me out.

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  8. This is so true and so hilarious. I’m studying Japanese right now, and while I’m good at some of the basics, I can do a left turn into Funny Looks Land. Still, it’s good to be multilingual. Power to de pipple!

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  10. From my experience its not only learning, you have to practice too, I keep bitting my tongue.

    hilarious = hilarante? aunque no sabria como conjugarlo, que no hilario es un nombre? o algo sobre hilos como de tejer? oh well.

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  11. Pingback: And the Winner Is……….. | The Accidental Cootchie Mama

  14. This was hilarious. My husband has a lot of spanish friends who he works with and they are constantly trying to get him to speak with an accent. I love it. Our dinner parties are hilarious. I still can’t roll my r’s. 🙂

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  15. This is hilarious, Maria! I struggled with Spanish in college. The pronunciation always got me. Unfortunately, while in Venezuela, I undoubtedly offended many. 🙂 Great post!

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  16. For many years, I cooked for a living in kitchens mostly filled with Central and South Americans.
    Got to the point where having conversations with my fellow english-as-a-first-langauge-rs was awful because no one accented anything.

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  17. Great list! Especially number 1. The Spanish-speaking priest at my husband’s church did not benefit from learning English early. Everybody loves him so they try really hard not to laugh when he raises his arms and says, “May the piss of the Lord be always with you.” But there’s always at least a couple snickers.

    My second favorite is number 7! My husband is a linguist. In addition to English, he speaks French at almost native level, is quite fluent in Spanish and can get by in a couple other languages. I, on the other hand, speak very good English and very bad French. I have tremendous respect for anyone who learns a second language to the point where they can actually converse in it.

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    1. It must be hard not to chuckle when the priest wishes piss on everyone! My mom tries so hard to say it right but it never comes out sounding like peace. 🙂 I do feel fortunate to be bilingual and try to get my kids to appreciate it. They don’t see the benefits yet but hopefully they will soon.

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