Stupid Missionary accent

[Color Me Badd Fan]

My point is, you like CMB, they like wearing soccer jerseys, both are considered geeky be different sides; ergo, quit calling stuff geeky. I like CMB too. I bought their CD, though my tastes have changed since then.

Let them wear their jerseys in peace. If they won't stop talking about it, ever, that's another point entirely.

There's no accounting for tastes.

We definitely agree on something- CMB kicks ass. Very few groups could pull off a song entitled "I Wanna Sex You Up" while wearing suits that looked like they were the last bastardized cultural vestiges of Miami Vice.

[wuapinmon]

Our resident GA Gene R. Cook spoke flawless Spanish with the worst accent I've ever heard. He refused to roll his R's. It was quite a feat to speak such impeccable Spanish, better than most of the natives on the street, in terms of structure, with such a thoroughly Anglo accent. I used to love to immitate him. In retrospect I think he did it on purpose.

So many girls in my classes will swear that they "can't" trill their "r's." I point out that I've never met a native who couldn't do it, and that they can physiologically (unless they have a harelip, in which case I teach the the Venezuelan palatal R [like an initial Brazilian 'r']), but that they've never practiced making the sound. I usually go look up RHCP's "Give It Away Now" on Youtube and have them practice saying "Give it away now" (I realize the meaning of the lyrics, but this is a purely pedagogical practice...I'm no svengali) over and over again. The way your tongue slaps against your hard palate/alveolar is the beginning of the "r" trilling sound that they need to do. This helps some, others just laugh meekly/nervously and put their hand in front of their mouth when they speak.

[wuapinmon]

We definitely agree on something- CMB kicks ass. Very few groups could pull off a song entitled "I Wanna Sex You Up" while wearing suits that looked like they were the last bastardized cultural vestiges of Miami Vice.

I still can't tell if you're serious, or this is schtick.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Our resident GA Gene R. Cook spoke flawless Spanish with the worst accent I've ever heard. He refused to roll his R's. It was quite a feat to speak such impeccable Spanish, better than most of the natives on the street, in terms of structure, with such a thoroughly Anglo accent. I used to love to immitate him. In retrospect I think he did it on purpose.

His english/american accent is also quite the hoot. It especially comes on strong when he tells the story of manipulating his first date partner (his future wife) into kneeling down and praying with him to get a confirmation that they should get married.

[Pheidippides]

My guess is that they were speaking the language for 2 years, so there is going to be a little transition time.

My friends that went to the UK (London and Scotland) came back with a noticeable British tone in their voices. They would end every sentence with an upward inflection.

It happens.

For awhile after I came home, I would accidentally mix up the following words:

"Reunion" instead of "meeting"
"Assist" instead of "attend"

I still call discussions "charlas." It just makes more sense to me.

I never "forgot" how to speak English, though. Missionaries may be taking it a bit too far if they go that route.

I am sure missionaries from other countries come home and accidentally let slip some foreign stuff. For example, when EPU came home from Italy, he was probably used to simply murdering anyone that disagreed with him. I am sure it took some time for him to get out of that habit.

I did accidentally break out into Japanese when praying at home/answering the phone for the first couple of weeks. And there are still concepts that I can't properly explain in English, which I'm sure Lebowski can appreciate. And many of my larger and more sophisticated words had fallen into disuse.

Plus I had a Canadian inflection thanks to a companion or two.

But that wore off in a couple of months.

My favorite (is this unique to Japanese?) is when one RM will find out that another RM served in Japan and then they will have a linguistic pissing contest to try to figure out who is better. That's when you bust out your secret word than nobody else knows. Mine was "existentialism" (jitsuzonshugi) although I would occasionally use "sub-arachnoid hemorrhage" (kumomaku) in fierce battles.

Until I realized that (1) RMs have abysmal grammar, so who cares if the vocabulary is good and (2) that kind of crap was dumb anyway, especially because I knew all of the standard kanji and therefore was a shoe-in for victory as long as a paper and pencil were present. This lead to a personal rule: I never speak Japanese in the states to a non-native speaker, and I only speak to native speakers when they are either close friends or have affirmatively shown their willingness to do so (after an initial greeting, of course).

[TripletDaddy]

I'll admit that I bought a Bayern Munich jersey while in Germany and mistakenly wore it one time when rollerblading around.

lol! and not because you wore a soccer jersey.

You know what the hardest part about rollerblading is, don't you?

[YOUTUBE]c9q30Ce2vwE[/YOUTUBE]

[SoCalCoug]

I went to Chicago. I came back talking about polish sausages and the Cubbies.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

lol! and not because you wore a soccer jersey.

You know what the hardest part about rollerblading is, don't you?

[YOUTUBE]c9q30Ce2vwE[/YOUTUBE]

To tell you the truth, I regret the rollerblading also- in fact I regret the whole thing. I actually bought them before the mission and had never really gotten into it and good enough to make it a lasting hobby. On the Bayern Munich jersey occasion, I'd met a girl literally two days after my mission who I wouldn't have touched two months later and we went rollerblading. It was the triple whammy- soccer jersey, relatively unattractive girl and rollerblades- not a shining moment in my life.

Fortunately, it wasn't as ridiculous as the guys bringing their skateboards on campus to class.

[wuapinmon]

Until I realized that (1) RMs have abysmal grammar, so who cares if the vocabulary is good

My first day of SPAN 311 (Spanish for Returned Missionaries) at BYU, the instructor started the class like this:

"Hola, hermanos, a mí no me importa nada lo que saben de José Smith (Esmit). Estoy aqui para enseñarles el español que no está en las charlas. No se permiten anécdotas de la misión en mi clase. Quiero que hablen de las cosas presentes para que aprendan algo nuevo."

(Good morning, "brethren" [used with an almost mocking tone, like she wanted to say "Elders"], I don't care at all what you know about Joseph Smith. I am here to teach you Spanish that exists outside of the missionary discussions. I do not allow mission anecdotes in my class. I want you to speak about things that are/in the present so that you learn something new.)

About half the class looked really pissed.

[SteelBlue]

Another reason for the word finding difficulties is that some missionaries didn't have a big vocabulary in English before they left. We just had a kid get back in our ward and in the middle of his talk he had to turn around and ask a Spanish speaker "what's the word for profundo?" I knew this kid and I guarantee you he'd never once used the word profound in English. I think that 2 years of acting a lot more like an adult than you ever did in the previous 19 can send some guys home with a bigger vocab in the new language (bigger polysyllabic vocab).

[wuapinmon]

Another reason for the word finding difficulties is that some missionaries didn't have a big vocabulary in English before they left. We just had a kid get back in our ward and in the middle of his talk he had to turn around and ask a Spanish speaker "what's the word for profundo?" I knew this kid and I guarantee you he'd never once used the word profound in English. I think that 2 years of acting a lot more like an adult than you ever did in the previous 19 can send some guys home with a bigger vocab in the new language (bigger polysyllabic vocab).

This is another reason why the Liberal Arts require study of a foreign language; it helps you better learn your own.

[Pheidippides]

My first day of SPAN 311 (Spanish for Returned Missionaries) at BYU, the instructor started the class like this:

"Hola, hermanos, a mí no me importa nada lo que saben de José Smith (Esmit). Estoy aqui para enseñarles el español que no está en las charlas. No se permiten anécdotas de la misión en mi clase. Quiero que hablen de las cosas presentes para que aprendan algo nuevo."

(Good morning, "brethren" [used with an almost mocking tone, like she wanted to say "Elders"], I don't care at all what you know about Joseph Smith. I am here to teach you Spanish that exists outside of the missionary discussions. I do not allow mission anecdotes in my class. I want you to speak about things that are/in the present so that you learn something new.)

About half the class looked really pissed.

I can imagine. I was a TA for Japanese 221 (the RM class) and students would not believe how poor their grammar was. I had a lot of clean up to do on my own when I came back, but by that time I had taken all but the literature classes for my degree (and I had taken BOTH the grammar and the linguistics options). I could show them book after book, and they'd never believe me. "Oh, our trainer said this," or "Oh, we learned this in the MTC." This, DESPITE THE FACT THAT I HAD BEEN THE TEACHER IN THE MTC FOR SOME OF THEM AND HAD AT THE TIME TOLD THEM HOW WRONG THE MTC WAS GENERALLY IN MATTERS OF LANGUAGE.

But that's another soapbox.

[Indy Coug]

My first day of SPAN 311 (Spanish for Returned Missionaries) at BYU, the instructor started the class like this:

"Hola, hermanos, a mí no me importa nada lo que saben de José Smith (Esmit). Estoy aqui para enseñarles el español que no está en las charlas. No se permiten anécdotas de la misión en mi clase. Quiero que hablen de las cosas presentes para que aprendan algo nuevo."

(Good morning, "brethren" [used with an almost mocking tone, like she wanted to say "Elders"], I don't care at all what you know about Joseph Smith. I am here to teach you Spanish that exists outside of the missionary discussions. I do not allow mission anecdotes in my class. I want you to speak about things that are/in the present so that you learn something new.)

About half the class looked really pissed.

I'm amazed I actually translated your Spanish paragraph accurately. Life in a bilinguial branch has actually done something useful for me.

[KillerDog]

Since I won't be so presumptuous to assume you went on a mission and I won't be so insensitive as to ask you where you went on your mission in case you haven't served, have you ever at least had a time in your life where you spoke a language other than English on a regular basis?

Yes.

[KillerDog]

My friends did that, too. In fact, when we all came back to BYU, they would introduce me as their flatmate.

I think stuff like that is totally normal and to be expected.

I know what K-Dog is talking about, though, because there always seemed to be the knucklehead that pretends to really struggle putting together a sentence in English, even though he has been home for over a month. Also, this struggle always seems to happen around a group of girls.

Exactly.