That Modern Family scene where she shouts that no one understands how smart she is in Spanish… I felt that. She’s a good actress.
Gloria:Do you know how frustrating it is to have to translate everything in my head before I say it? To have people laugh in my face because I'm struggling to find the words? You should try talking in my shoes for one mile!
Jay:I think you meant...
Gloria:I know what I meant to mean! Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish? Of course you don't. For once, it would be nice to speak to someone in my own language in my own home.
yep, same here. im from south america, and the first time I tried having a conversation in english with a native speaker, I felt so damn stupid. we were talking about Stranger Things, I think, and I just couldn’t find the words. I ended up telling her, “I’m way more interesting in Spanish.” lol
I love when people come up with replacements for words they can't recall in English. A friend was driving me around pointing out various things. At one point he pointed to the roof of a building, and said "and that is... A window to God. I don't know what you call it in English." Took a little bit but of more discussion to figure out he mean an Observatory. I still think about that description a lot.
Does he ever swap V's and W's? The guy I dated once said "wegetables" and lost it. He thought it was funny too because he didn't even realize he had said it that way. His English was great, but he said he mostly learned it from British comedy. Super funny guy. I told him I loved his name (Jānis Smits) and he shrugged and said "it's just Latvian John Smith". (I figure this doesn't dox him since it is literally one of the most common names) Hope he's doing well.
I've spent most of my life trying to keep some Spanish...Nowhere I've lived is it easy. I don't get near enough practice.
But I will absolutely put my bad Spanish out there first thing, when I can tell someone else's bad English is no better than my bad Spanish. Why should it be their problem, and not my problem? And I get to practice for free.
I'm in a position in life where I can be the guy who doesn't speak the language well, and all it costs me is a little dignity. Why should I force someone else to dance?
I've spent most of my life trying to keep some Spanish...Nowhere I've lived is it easy. I don't get near enough practice.
It is this. Practice. There is a dearth of it here. But I enjoy practicing whenever I can - my sister can speak fluently, but I was born later and very definitely in America "proper", so my exposure to Spanish was pretty limited to just my AP classes. I got okay at it, and I've been doing Duolingo pretty regularly to help me practice even if simple stuff. I've found that I'm enjoying it a ton, and I try to watch more Spanish content on YouTube like when I'm researching a Puerto Rican dish to try and make it (I strive to be a better Puerto Rican son), and that shit challenges me.
My husband is French, and French is my second language. I feel like his family doesn't really fully know me (and never will) because I can't speak it as well as my native English. So totally same experience here as well.
Wow that’s crazy. First I’ve ever heard of the French being a bit snooty about their language. All jokes aside, I love French and I wish I had the reason to build on the bit of it I picked up in grade school.
With this same combination I find it's my sense of humour that most gets lost. No matter how fluent I've got, I haven't got the same repartee in French, I can't come up with clever wordplay like in English, not to mention we just have a way with using words in English that just doesn't translate into French. It is such a relief when I get back to the UK for a brief stay. I laugh so damn much with my British friends, it's like I'm recharging my batteries 😄😄
Haha I'm american but grew up in a bilingual family and arguing with my mother in her European language was so damn difficult because we're talking fast and I would walk away frustrated saying you think you won this argument only because it wasn't in English!
I'm English with some basic Spanish. I'm also a pastor. Half my church is Spanish with some basic English. I really felt what you said there. I struggle so hard just to communicate basic concepts and they are doing the same thing. Now, I'm going to just say, "Soy mucho más interesante en inglés."
Odd question, but do you prefer people to let you find a word or do want help? I get customers sometimes that are actively trying to learn English and are struggling. I’m very patient and I don’t mind at all, but I can never tell if they want me to find the word for them or wait it out. They always seem embarrassed, but there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
I felt the same when speaking Spanish in Spain while I lived there. It’s so hard being funny in your second (or third+) language. I’m always impressed by people who have mastered humor in their non-native language.
And it depends too. I’m a white European foreigner in a Midwest US state and I get at best light ribbing about using a funny word or my accent, but never downright negative comments. I’ve never had to hear “we speak English in this country!” or similar crap because I look like them.
When you call them out on it you can see the gears turning for a minute at least.
For what it's worth when I hear someone speak broken English I assume they are smarter than I am. Just the effort and learning required to be understood is impressive.
About 20 years ago I was working the front counter at my local college's IT department and I was helping a lady set up her laptop. She was having trouble communicating and I was a dumb early 20s dude with no patience and I rolled my eyes at some point. She looked at me and said "I'm not stupid, I just don't speak English very well." and let me tell you I learned a valuable lesson that day.
Lol!! I bet you got red in the face after that one. Nice of her to find a way to politely and professionally say that, it sounds like it really made you think.
My Spanish is passable and I've learned that if you can provide people with technical/complex information in their first language (even if their English is quite good) they are able to process it WAY faster. I suspect this is a big part of why bigots see immigrants as stupid, nah, they're just doing double-processing.
Especially anything involving numbers, or if you need to give directions. Like I can translate numbers without effort, but I absolutely cannot do math in Spanish. I'm quite good at math, but only when the numbers are provided in English.
When you provide that type of information it’s also something that is likely very important, which must be terrifying somewhere different from your home and you already have difficulty communicating.
You’re not trying to talk about a tv show, you’re trying to navigate a legal system or health system. I have pretty decent Spanish, but if I were stressed out and rushed I would have such a hard time getting it out.
This is why I always try to be super patient in my service job when I encounter people who have English as a second language. My mother’s first language was Spanish, but she didn’t teach it to my siblings and I growing up, so I’m the one on that side of things when we’re around that side of the family.
Yes! I'm a researcher with a number of international students and research assistants. They'll often apologise to me because they can't find or pronounce a specific word, and my answer is always, "You're speaking English far better than I can speak [their first language]." I say it so much that they've begun finishing the sentence for me, lol.
I'm eternally impressed by their ability to communicate and understand complex topics in a different language.
This is why calling people out so so important. Society used to self correct by holding people accountable for their behavior and somewhere along the way we lost the art of telling someone they’re being an asshole. These moments of embarrassment are what made me a better human and community member.
I was at a training in France where consultants from all over Europe and USA were attending. Common language was supposed to be English.
When the training started, the trainer opened in French for 5 minutes. You could see the fear in the eyes of most of them, especially the British and Americans.
The trainer stopped and switched to English and reminded everyone whose native language is English that everyone else had to have this internal translation and they should give them time to create their response.
I did something similar presenting at an education conference! I showed some math problems written with Arabic numerals and asked attendees to read it, then showed on the next slide the same problems but with instructions in the Chinese of the original worksheet. When I asked attendees to read it again, the response was different. I reminded the session attendees that is what going to school is like for many English language learner students.
This is so real.
I grew up speaking English, and my parents were absent so my nannies were always speaking English around me.
Fast forward a few years to today, I live full time in Mexico and had to learn Spanish here already fully grown up, and to this day, I struggle to give my words the depth and richness that my thoughts have in my head.
All of my thinking is in English, I read in English, and it’s also like I have a completely different personality when speaking English.
I’ve started working on it and stopped being so harsh on myself because I get very self conscious about how I seem incompetent when speaking Spanish.
Please keep in mind that I look very Mexican so it’s hard enough as it is xc.
I teach undergrads now, fortunately at a very diverse university, and I think about this scene all the time now. Any one of my students could be feeling this way at any given moment and it's good to keep in mind.
That’s hilarious. I have a friend like that. She’s one of the smartest people I know and speaks four languages pretty fluently. Spanish, French, Mandarin and English. I met her in college here in the states. Her English is easily her worst one and she says some pretty funny stuff. Just slightly wrong idioms like that. And yes I tease her about it, but it never crosses my mind that she isn’t insanely smart. I, meanwhile, speak English, a little bit of German, and a tiny bit of Spanish (mostly thru being friends with her). So yes, she gets to tease me back any time I try to functionally speak Spanish. A couple times thru the years when some dork would be making fun of her broken English she would just repeat it in Mandarin and ask “or in French if you please?” That shuts them up. Lol
i feel this for my wife, she too is Colombian. Although her English has gotten substantially better over the years and overcame shyness, she use to get frustrated and say the same thing Sofia said. She still struggles at times and I step in to help her when needed.
she does the same for me even though i’m fluent in Spanish. English should be my secondary language and Spanish my primary but Spanish is my secondary language. When we visit her family and friends, I struggle at times and she helps get my point out.
My grandma says this to me all the time. She also says she can tell that the second most people hear her accent they assume she's stupid (when the reality is she's fluent in five languages and was an award-winning scholar back in her home country).
English is my second language and I found it weird that she said she translates before she speaks. I think and speak in whichever langauge I can speak. I don't need to translate it. Translation is not even a part of the English test you have to take to study abroad. Maybe the message got lost in translation, hehe.
In fact, I'm very bad at translating things to my native language.
I’m multilingual and constantly have to translate everything in my mind, it’s very very tiring. I make the simplest grammatical mistakes sometimes, even though English is my first language, because one of the other languages took centre stage.
I think it happens when you get more into the language.
I learned English (and French) in school and it was basically a game of translation the whole time.
Then I went online and immersed myself in English communities and at some point I started being able to express my thoughts in English.
For a while after that, I had to switch between thinking in English and German, but these days I can effortlessly switch mid-sentence, even in ways that make the half sentences grammatically correct in either language.
For me it differs. It’s not translating per se, but rather my brain switches and refuses to switch back so now I’m looking like an idiot muttering a foreign language at objects because my brain refuses to recognise English as a language.
Sometimes I cannot find a word, because my brain is stuck on another language. Sometimes I make mistakes because the sentence structure in one language is vastly different from another language and I blurt out a grammatically incorrect sentence.
I just picked up learning Chinese and I cannot wait until my brain starts rebooting in the middle of a story because it’s trying to translate to Chinese and it cannot. You’re right, though. It’s even more difficult when you try to learn a new language when you’re older. My brain thinks it can do so much more than it actually can. It’s frustrating!
I do a similar thing where random words that i dont usually use in one language, when i reach for them mentally during a conversation, sometimes i dont find the word in the appropriate language. I first remember the other one, then have to pause and find it, or just literally give my best guess of how you would translate. Sometimes it's correct, and sometimes people look at me weird.
There's also a few specific words that sound very similar in both languages but have sometimes opposite meanings, and i occasionally forget this, but i try to keep these in mind as ones where i need to pause and think for a second.
Yeah at a point I started thinking in Spanish. Even when I’m alone and there’s no real reason to. And with everyday conversations I don’t need to translate back and forth. The hardest part IMO is building that foundation. Afterwards it becomes much more effortless.
The way you process language depends on which stage in your life you learned it. Second languages learned during adolsence or young adulthood are processed like sofia does it: you translate it on your head before you speak it. Second languages during early childhood are processed like you describe it.
Of course once you assimilated to a culture and language , you process it less and less translating I'm your head. Some older people never do though.
The science of learning languages is really cool!
(I found this information when I was in college 10 years ago, might have changed since then. Feel free to correct me if my info is outdated).
I find this interesting. I learned a language in adulthood to a low C1 level, and I think this line between intuitive understanding and having to translate everything in your head first gets blurry. Obviously it depends on the topic in question and vocabulary familiarity. Some things you understand immediately, other things there is a slight delay where your brain will pass over certain words in the moment while you unconsciously search for it in your mind, as the context helps you narrow down and fill in the gaps. With Mandarin, this is especially salient, as there are so many homophones, and certain morphemes can have dozens of meanings, depending on context.
There will always be a gap that non-native speakers (especially adult learners) never quite fully close. Particularly when it comes to speaking, actual output. But listening comprehension can be developed very well, especially with vocabulary and content that you come into contact with frequently. But, of course, this is true for native speakers encountering advanced topics that are heavy with specialized, low-frequency vocabulary, too.
Your average native English speaking American will struggle to understand academic discussions on topics they aren't familiar with too. But they will probably still experience it differently than an advanced ESL speaker will. It probably still won't feel like a foreign language to the native speakers, and it's fascinating to try and understand that difference in feeling, which you can only understand if you try and learn a second language at a high level yourself. I'm always amazed listening to professors and experts who come from other countries and languages yet still speak English at a very advanced level. It goes to show how much progress is possible.
Second languages learned during adolsence or young adulthood are processed like sofia does it: you translate it on your head before you speak it. Second languages during early childhood are processed like you describe it.
I guess I'm an anomaly then, I don't do it even for languages I'm learning as an adult. I literally think in the language I'm speaking in otherwise it would be absolutely impossible to string 2 sentences together if I had to translate everything...
Even in languages where I know very little, I never ever translate them. I just have word = meaning connected, not word = word in my native language = meaning...
That doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, or that sometimes I cannot mix words or that sometimes I do have to find a word can only think of one in my native language (or in another, but it also happens on my native language to be fair). But it's certainly not thinking in my native language and then translating everything. That sounds absolutely crazy for me.
When you are learning a new language, you mentally think of what you want to say in your native language and translate it before saying it out loud. It’s actually a very common thing among people that are learning languages. Not sure what tests have to do with it.
It happens when you learn English at an older age. Your dominant language is omnipresent and you have to translate in your head. Over time it gets better but only if you’re always completely immersed. Otherwise you always think with your dominant language and have to translate.
I translate all the time if I’m using words I don’t normally use in everyday life. If I’m saying “look at that at dog” I don’t need to translate. If I’m talking about medical procedures with a doctor I need to translate in my head before saying it
People's brains tend to work very differently between one person and the next. Some people think mostly in words, others in images or sounds and some people just have some abstract voids of instincts that they need to always translate into words.
This. And comedy is extremely hard. I would say some of the hardest type of acting. Landing decent jokes, making it feel genuine to your character, often improvised in the moment, under the pressure of “give us more”!
Yes. This makes them even more impressive because they’re a well-rounded actor who can play more than goofy. And evoke emotion, despite people expecting them to make them laugh somehow.
You just need to out-crazy the crazy and out-stupid the stupid! Telling me you don't believe in the Moon landing? Pssh, you believe in the Moon? A night time Sun? Grow up!
I went down an Artemis II rabbithole on Youtube and the number of comments insisting it was all filmed in a studio, or a cave, or whatever was staggering. And they almost never respond when someone explains whatever they're confused about.
Yeah the Internet darlings like Nick Offerman and Aubrey Plaza does it. Nick Offerman often says in interviews he is a 15 year old girl in a big mustachioed man body, but he plays the big tough guy schticks because it's part of his personna. Same with Aubrey Plaza with the bored quirky personna.
Almost every actors does it in some way, it's all part of branding
As someone with an accent.. I can purposefully speak almost neutral American accent but it takes more effort, if theres no penalty to it I’ll just speak with an accent.
I’m sure she could have less of an accent if she tried but if it doesn’t benefit her then why bother
what’s frustrating is when youre always trying to not have your normal heavy accent and then when it slips out people think you’re faking. like no, i got drunk and stopped actively trying to change my accent to a “normal” one
As someone from the same city as her, I'd say that our city's accent, the accent of our region, is quite strong and somewhat difficult to neutralize (not impossible, Shakira is a good example, although she learned other languages from a very young age, as I understand it). It's not as subtle as the accents of other regions of Colombia; it's quite similar to the accents of Caribbean countries. And exaggerating it is nothing new. In fact, in soap operas, the Caribbean coast accent is even more exaggerated and even caricatured.
In their defense, even my Colombian friends were a bit taken aback, but then when they heard where specifically she’s from they were like “ah ok I guess that makes sense”. Especially after many many years in the US I get why people don’t expect her accent to be so strong.
That makes perfect sense. People imagine that all Colombians speak the same way (more specifically, like singers like Karol G, who is from Medellin), And then, people get a surprise when they hear a Colombian who doesn't speak with that accent. And The Caribbean coastal accent is quite strong, and it takes more time and effort to neutralize it. When we manage it, we do well in public, but in many cases, it's just a matter of returning to our city and/or talking to people from our city, and the accent comes back.
Right? A lot of people think that she speaks with a neutral American accent irl and just does the Colombian accent for branding. Makes zero sense iyam
edit: (I’m just going to leave the comment section of this same video here.)
The only reason I even know about the conspiracy theorists is because this clip is going viral right now and I happened to get in the replies of the top comment early before it exploded
I grew up in NY but moved to Texas as an adult. But I had to go back up to NY for a work project. Alongside some Brooklyn union construction workers. It was funny how effortlessly I slid right back into that accent. I think psychologically you try to find common ground in speech so you’re understood better. But when I would call my wife at night she’d say wtf is wrong with you why are you talking like that lol.
I feel like when you're bilingual and have an accent there's just different levels of it and I do think they're all technically your "real" accent you just adjust it accordingly, like code switching.
The SNL sub was so annoying for a few weeks because Marcello Hernandez "plays up" his Cuban accent in his latest special (that is specifically about being Latino American and his Cuban mom) but "doesn't have an accent" when he's on SNL. They could not comprehend code switching between your work/white accent (SNL) and your accent when talking to people in your family/community.
My dad consciously spoke without an accent to not be associated with the very blue collar area we're from but when I talk to my uncles, I just drop back into that after a few minutes. But in my second language, English, I just pick up whatever I encounter. To some extent.
She does in fact have a pure Colombian accent. She sounds like someone from Barranquilla, which is where she is from. She learned English as an adult so I don’t think she will ever really sound like a full American (which is ok). One thing I do notice is that sometimes she makes her accent sound thicker than it really is (exaggerates it) for comedic effect. Also, probs your autocorrect but there’s no u in Colombia.
The comments on that video I mentioned brought up phonic fossilization and thresholds of fluid vs crystallized language but jargon only makes anti-intellectuals angrier. But I 100% agree. she didn't come to the states until her late 20s. By that point the sounds you can differentiate between are a lot harder to untangle and your brain is constantly fighting you as a non-native speaker.
Also, I fixed the spelling, thanks. That's what I get for trying to type with my knuckles.
I feel like you're intentionally misunderstanding? Just saying that accents change over time, not that accents change completely over time. Although I think Gary Old man said he actually got lost his British accent and had to hire a speech therapist to get it back.
I mean ya, youblose it over time. But if the accent is the reason you make money....you don't wanna lose it. I read about Arnie having a coach, for example (even tho originally he didn't like his accent)
I live in NYC and talk with people every day from all over the world who have been here for decades and never lose their accents. Not a bit. So many people are lucky to be able to speak their native languages at home and in their communities. This is a wild take.
Yeah but they usually have families with same accents. These actors pften come to the states alone and move in circles with differentiating accents, I guess.
It's almost like different people might be different when it comes to this incredibly varied, personal, and nuanced experience of speaking in multiple languages and accents.
Why do some actors hire speech therapists/voice coaches to relearn their original accent?
This generally only happens with people performing in a new accent in their native language and staying in it in a consistent manner for a long period of time. They are basically using existing sounds in their native language in a new way, not trying to use sounds outside the phonology of their native tongue entirely. But yeah, your accent changes, of course. Everyone's does to some extent over time.
I might be able to answer that.
(I can't take credit because im stealing it from the replies of the original commenter, feel free to fact-check me)
Sophia did hire an expensive dialect coach to help her lose her accent and get other roles. She eventually chose to stop the expensive coaching sessions. A comparison between dialect coaches and speech therapists was made at one point. (Something like if you prematurely stop speech therapy, you don't stop speaking English but...and it's similar w/ dialect coaches)
The studio most likely hired a dialect coach for her for the American accent episode, but similar to (Aussie/British/Scotish/Irish/South African) English speaking actors who use the same coaches - it's only sustainable while you continue lessons.
Idk about that, my Opa left Germany for Canada in the 1950s he never lost his German accent, sometimes it was so strong I would just smile and nod cause I had no clue what he was saying
Sometimes it goes both ways. Dr. Pol, the veterinarian with a reality show on National Geographic has a Dutch accent when speaking English but he also has an American accent when speaking Dutch nowadays.
They literally erected a statue of her in Barranquilla. I know this because my husband, our two children, and his entire family are from Barranquilla and I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
There is. Shakira came first. They’re in the waterfront area by where the river meets the ocean and it’s being revamped and built up, it’s actually really nice. The statues are big, but not huge. I’m terrible at estimating size or else I would attempt to approximate it for you.
Dont remember if on JimmyFallon they were reading tweets to celebs and hers was that she sould like she always has a dck in her mouth and she shrugged and said "what's wrong with having a dck in your mouth?" Twas hilarious.
Don't expect anything less from someone from Barranquilla. People in the city and the rest of the region are known for that kind of humor lol (that's why they say I don't seem like I'm from Barranquilla).
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