Stupid Missionary accent

[TripletDaddy]

A few years after my mission, a guy in our ward came home and shared his testimony in the same language. He didn't make any sense. He just said a bunch of phrases he memorized from the discussions.

lol.

That would be sweet.

get up at your homecoming to bear your testimony in Spanish...."Como la mayoria de las personas, Yo creo in Dios....."

[Donuthole]

lol.

That would be sweet.

get up at your homecoming to bear your testimony in Spanish...."Como la mayoria de las personas, Yo creo in Dios....."

"Durante estas charlas, hemos hecho hincapie . . ."

Hands down my favorite line from the discussions.

[TripletDaddy]

I call bullshit on the accent. Two years is not long enough to start sounding Australian, British, Latino. They are showing off.

Actually, I think you do come home with an accent, at least if you are speaking another language. The reason being is that you spend 2 years trying to adopt the inflections and intonations of that language. So all of a sudden you flip flop back to English and you get a bit mixed up. I agree that it doesn't take a year to get back on track, but I can definitely see having a bit of an accent for a few weeks when you come back. I am not saying that Spanish speaking RMs are going to get off the plane and start speaking like Ricardo Montalban (RIP), but they may have a little bit of an accent here and there.

If you go English speaking, it may be different, unless you purposely try to develop a British accent on your mission. Otherwise, not sure why your accent would change at all.

PS I am officially on record as wishing that one of the side effects of coming home from a Spanish-speaking mission would be a mandatory 3 month period of sounding like Ricardo Montalban. Tricking BYU co-eds into coming to check out your soft corinthian leather couch, offering to fulfill their "fantasy," etc....Now if I could have only laid my hands on a convertible Dodge Aspen with a red and white striped canopy top, I could have been the toast of Provo. How sweet would that have been, driving down University Avenue in that sled?

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Did she dig the jersey?

Probably not. After I saw numerous geeks rocking soccer jerseys over the first few weeks of school, I knew that the jersey needed to be boxed away.

[UtahDan]

Tricking BYU co-eds ...offering to fulfill their "fantasy," etc....

[wuapinmon]

"Durante estas charlas, hemos hecho hincapie . . ."

Hands down my favorite line from the discussions.

La expiación de Dios....

---La qué de Dios?

---La expiación

--qué demonios es la expiación? Es inglés, no es una palabra castellana.

I quit using the santísimas charlas memorizadas after about 3 months. The people just didn't get what I was saying.

"cuyo fulgor y gloria no admiten descripción" BLANK stare. Other than this part of Charla 1 and maybe a couple of hymns, when did you ever hear "fulgor?" I'm a literature prof and I don't recall ever having seen it outside Mormon stuff. It's a real word alright, but no one uses it. That's the problem with translation.

I also made my own flipcharts from any source I could find.....RS manuals, YM/YW lessons, seminary stuff. I glued things to the back of the standard ones so people could know what the heck we were talking about.

[YOhio]

I loved overhearing the following conversation on campus:

RM 1 - Elder Peters! (sometimes Elder was pronounced in the mission language)
RM 2- Elder Phillips! It's so good to see you man. What's your first name again?
RM 1- Todd. What's yours?
RM 2- Jason. Oh, man. It's so weird to call you Todd, Todd.
RM 1- And it's so weird to call you Jason, Jason. So have you heard from Edwards? How about Rowley?
RM 2- No. But I'm in Kearls Econ 101 with Jacobs.

and so on. Sometimes they talk about all the now-inactive people they baptized.

[BlueHair]

I'm not really a Ranch Dressing fan, but the creamery Ranch is outstanding. I could drink that stuff. Maybe that's why the co-eds are so fat.

[TripletDaddy]

I loved overhearing the following conversation on campus:

RM 1 - Elder Peters! (sometimes Elder was pronounced in the mission language)
RM 2- Elder Phillips! It's so good to see you man. What's your first name again?
RM 1- Todd. What's yours?
RM 2- Jason. Oh, man. It's so weird to call you Todd, Todd.
RM 1- And it's so weird to call you Jason, Jason. So have you heard from Edwards? How about Rowley?
RM 2- No. But I'm in Kearls Econ 101 with Jacobs.

and so on. Sometimes they talk about all the now-inactive people they baptized.

LOL. I think I heard that conversation about 10 times at least.

More of it:

RM 1: So have you heard from President and Sister Jones? I think they are back in Utah now.
RM2: Yeah, they live in Woods Cross. I can't wait for the mission reunion in October.
RM1: Me, too. I think I will make (insert name of local native dish) and bring it. I can't find a good place to buy (insert name of local native dish) here in the States.
RM2: Oh, there is this place in Orem where they sell (insert name of local native dish)! It is pretty good. The owners are members from (insert name of city in mission country).
RM1: So are you dating anyone?
RM2: Sort of. Do you remember Sister Thomas? She finished right around when we were out for a year.
RM1: Dude, she was pretty hot.*
RM2: I know. We kept in touch while I was out and then when I got home we started dating.
RM1: Cool. Well, I have to run to class. "(farewell in mission language)"
RM2: "(farewell in mission langauge)"

*if RMs went Spanish speaking, this would be an appropriate time for the RMs to do that thing where they snap their thumb and first two fingers together a few times, indicating, amongst other things, emphasis and intense emotion.

[SteelBlue]

I loved overhearing the following conversation on campus:

RM 1 - Elder Peters! (sometimes Elder was pronounced in the mission language)
RM 2- Elder Phillips! It's so good to see you man. What's your first name again?
RM 1- Todd. What's yours?
RM 2- Jason. Oh, man. It's so weird to call you Todd, Todd.
RM 1- And it's so weird to call you Jason, Jason. So have you heard from Edwards? How about Rowley?
RM 2- No. But I'm in Kearls Econ 101 with Jacobs.

and so on. Sometimes they talk about all the now-inactive people they baptized.

LOL. I think I heard that conversation about 10 times at least.

More of it:

RM 1: So have you heard from President and Sister Jones? I think they are back in Utah now.
RM2: Yeah, they live in Woods Cross. I can't wait for the mission reunion in October.
RM1: Me, too. I think I will make (insert name of local native dish) and bring it. I can't find a good place to buy (insert name of local native dish) here in the States.
RM2: Oh, there is this place in Orem where they sell (insert name of local native dish)! It is pretty good. The owners are members from (insert name of city in mission country).
RM1: So are you dating anyone?
RM2: Sort of. Do you remember Sister Thomas? She finished right around when we were out for a year.
RM1: Dude, she was pretty hot.*
RM2: I know. We kept in touch while I was out and then when I got home we started dating.
RM1: Cool. Well, I have to run to class. "(farewell in mission language)"
RM2: "(farewell in mission langauge)"

*if RMs went Spanish speaking, this would be an appropriate time for the RMs to do that thing where they snap their thumb and first two fingers together a few times, indicating, amongst other things, emphasis and intense emotion.

These are both spot on. The only thing more annoying was seeing two Americans carry on this entire conversation in their mission language. My brother called it BFS or bilingual fascination syndrome.

[wuapinmon]

These are both spot on. The only thing more annoying was seeing two Americans carry on this entire conversation in their mission language. My brother called it BFS or bilingual fascination syndrome.

Jealous much?

[wuapinmon]

LOL. I think I heard that conversation about 10 times at least.

More of it:

RM 1: So have you heard from President and Sister Jones? I think they are back in Utah now.
RM2: Yeah, they live in Woods Cross. I can't wait for the mission reunion in October.
RM1: Me, too. I think I will make (insert name of local native dish) and bring it. I can't find a good place to buy (insert name of local native dish) here in the States.
RM2: Oh, there is this place in Orem where they sell (insert name of local native dish)! It is pretty good. The owners are members from (insert name of city in mission country).
RM1: So are you dating anyone?
RM2: Sort of. Do you remember Sister Thomas? She finished right around when we were out for a year.
RM1: Dude, she was pretty hot.*
RM2: I know. We kept in touch while I was out and then when I got home we started dating.
RM1: Cool. Well, I have to run to class. "(farewell in mission language)"
RM2: "(farewell in mission langauge)"

*if RMs went Spanish speaking, this would be an appropriate time for the RMs to do that thing where they snap their thumb and first two fingers together a few times, indicating, amongst other things, emphasis and intense emotion.

Very well done. Don't tell me that you didn't do this too.

[SteelBlue]

Jealous much?

Assume much? I'm bilingual, but when I'm in America talking to another American I usually go with English.

[YOhio]

These are both spot on. The only thing more annoying was seeing two Americans carry on this entire conversation in their mission language. My brother called it BFS or bilingual fascination syndrome.

The RM stop'n chats occasionally reference a former missionary who has now gone off the deep end. "Did you hear about Romney? Oh, man. He came home and I guess stopped wearing his garments the day after his homecoming and is now way off the deep end."

[TripletDaddy]

Very well done. Don't tell me that you didn't do this too.

I can honestly say that I didn't, but my reason is a bit misleading. At its peak, my mission only had 12 North Americans. For most of my time, there were only about 6 of us. And of those 6, there were only 2 of us back at BYU.

So no, I didn't have the privilege of meeting up with old mission buddies while cutting through the Wilk. I am sure that had I done such, we would have dropped some Quechua on each other.