Untitled Thought Project

Untitled Thought Project

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Untitled Thought Project
Untitled Thought Project
Broken Accent

Broken Accent

144 words

Aug 27, 2024
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Untitled Thought Project
Untitled Thought Project
Broken Accent
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While in France I constantly had to tell people I didn’t speak French, yet in Mexico, I am sometimes told I speak my timid, limited Spanish with a French accent.

Months ago on Air France from Madrid to Paris, I hesitated to use Spanish, afraid I may seem to be a Frenchwoman avoiding her own language.

Walt Kuhn, Chico in Top Hat, 1948. As seen at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

A waiter in Paris kept defaulting back to French with me, my face somehow contradicting the French illiteracy I’d claimed. He apologized, but I did seem French, he said, so I told him what Mexicans often tell me.

The waiter thought it was a game: Say something in Spanish! I politely refused.

Another stranger in Mexico recently asked me where I was from, puzzling over the sound of my voice.

It’s not that you speak broken Spanish, he told me, it’s that you speak with a broken accent.

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