After weeks of planning a day to get together and not being able to because of travelling and sickness and other things, the British girl living in Jávea and I finally agreed to go out to dinner today. We met at the port at 7:00pm and first stopped at a bar to have a drink. She had a beer while I had tea. Actually, I asked for tinto (red wine), and the waitress brought me tea, so I guess I learned a valuable lesson… Speak very loudly and exaggerate my Spanish vowels. I was actually pretty content though, because I had a very bad sore throat (my second one in a month) so the tea was just what I needed. Anyway, after we talked and drank for a little while we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant that specialized in pizza. When we walked into the restaurant it looked like British town. Let me remind you that I live in Jávea, which is a very popular destination for British and German people. Sometimes I forget how many British people actually live here because I live more in the old/historical part of town farther away from the beach. As soon as I got to the port, however, I was instantly reminded. The guy who owned the restaurant was British and he was at the table next to us eating and drinking with another British couple. We ate our pizza, which was delicious by the way, and drank our wine (I finally got my tinto) and we talked about the things that we have encountered in our schools in Spain that would never happen in the United States or Great Britain.
After eating and drinking for about 45 minutes, the people at the table next to us began to speak to us. They were all from England, of course. They asked us where we were from and we chatted about everything. The people were very nice and you could tell that they were pleased to meet some other English-speakers, especially young women who would laugh at all of their jokes. One of the men went on endlessly talking about how he and his wife had saved his one-eyed dog and also how he found out that his son was gay. At this point I felt a little uncomfortable because I didn’t know whether to laugh at the things he was saying or to be serious. Meanwhile, his wife, who was sitting across from him, kept talking about how he was telling the story wrong (actually she said that he was talking out of his “butt” to put it nicely). We also talked a bit about my life in Atlanta; which is when the restaurant owner pulled up the GPS on his iPad and started to look at places in Atlanta.
The more time I spend with British people, (trust me I have met quite a few down here) the more I realize that many of them really don’t think highly of Americans, or of the American accent. To me, it’s quite interesting what a difference a British or American accent makes to people. I look at accents as a beautiful thing. I think that it’s so interesting that people from different countries can share a common language but yet sound so differently. And I definitely love to hear an American accent. Since I’ve been to Spain, I have met many Canadians, Australians and people from England, Scotland and Ireland and I am always amazed at the differences in words and pronunciations; but not once have I ever considered that one group of people may be better than or less significant than another group of people based on their accent.
Well in my experience talking with people here, I have realized that the English think very fondly of their own accents and most think that the American accent is trash. They don’t say these things directly to my face, of course, but they do say the most random things that make me think this way. For example, as we were talking to the couple, the lady began to tell us of how her son never had a strong British accent because their family had done so much travelling when he was young. According to the lady, every time someone would hear her son speak, they would say that he sounded like he had a Scottish/American accent. She said that she was very upset that people would say this about him and then she said to us, “Do you see what happens? You travel a lot and you start sounding like an idiot.” I didn’t know whether or not to be offended by that comment. Was she saying that her son sounded like an idiot because he had a Scottish or American accent, or because he didn’t have a British accent?
It seems that every time I am around British people the topic of accents appears, and it’s strange because I am never the one that brings it up. “You think that I speak very posh? You should hear the way my friend speaks,” said one girl that I came across. That’s great, except, I never said anything about her accent. She brought it up on her own. From my experiences, many British people come across as a little arrogant because of the way that they speak. I am very curious though to know how this came about. Could it have something to do with the British Royalty? Could it be related to the early conquest of British territories? Or could they just have a big ego from hearing the way that people in America and other nations talk about their accent? I am not sure but I would love to find out.
Thinking about the differences in English accents leads me to ponder on the differences in Spanish accents. Just like Great Britain claimed so many territories in the past, Spain did the same, which is why countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina all speak Spanish of course. I haven’t gotten to the point yet where I can tell exactly from what part of the world a Spanish speaker is from but I have heard that most Spanish-speaking countries think of a Spanish (from Spain) accent as superior to their own. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, the director of the school here in Jávea, whose daughter I give private lessons to, told me to make sure that when her daughter speaks to me in English, she doesn’t sound like she’s from México or Peru. So basically she was saying that if her daughter happened to go to an English-Speaking country, make sure that the people there know that she is from Spain and not some Latin American or South American country. She didn’t necessarily make me mad when she said that, but just a little bothered.
At the end of the day I am very happy that we met the people at the restaurant. They were extremely friendly, funny and pleasant to be around. They even bought another bottle of wine for us to share. It’s great to have a good conversation in English every once in a while. I’m sure that the other girl enjoyed their company a little more than I did; however, because at the end of the day, they had a lot more in common with her than with me. To me they were just foreigners from another country who just so happened to speak English, but to her they reminded her of home. They did leave me, however, with a burning question. Do many people from one country think that they are superior to similar countries based on their accent, and if so, where in history did this idea come about?
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