Interesante. I notice that the tinge to my voice can change depending on situation/mood/energy level. The more reserved I am, the less the New York comes through. It's like I relaxed at the interview and laughed at the one guy because he thought "New York" was, like, some huge Fifth-Elementish city, only. I laughed and said "Are you kidding? New York City is just a tiny dot on the most Southern tip of a woodsy state." and went on to talk of Buffalo and Albany, Binghamton, Syracuse...But he was just hearing my voice. "That's it right there, when you said 'are you kidding?'" That was because I relaxed. But I understood his focus. I pay too much attention to all these things, too, sometimes. Colors, lights, sounds, people's voices, words. Sometimes I lose track of the conversations and related importances, paying so much to these.

I can do a Spanish accent very well, feels natural. I'd say it's so good that I would probably get myself into trouble by making speakers think I can handle more words and verbs and sentences than I actually can. My teacher says its because I heard the sounds when I was young. I think, too, it is the musician part of me. I can do many accents well. But that's because I'm not trying to look at a ü and say "u" and so on. I just think of/see/hear the sounds as different sounds, entirely. You can't pretend techo in Spanish uses the English Language letters of "t," "e," "c," etc. They are simply different letters, completely different letters and your brain has to know that right away. I am guessing that a life of hearing my Spanish name minced up and stamped clean by the ubiquitous Anglo tongue really brought my attention to how differently two languages can use the same sounds. I'm sure it did.

But I could explain forever how instinctively the shorter, diaphragm-touched, and softer-edged vowels of Spanish come to my tongue, and someone else may just say I'm explaining away an ability I have because I heard the soundset at a young age. After all, there wasn't just Spanish, but for a little while, French and German, too. We were learning to knit, then...maybe it's not being an aural person. Who knows! I love sounds. And music. And language. I often think I could have devoted my entire life to studying languages. Once I said that, my mother said "I once thought the same thing." Both my biological parents are word/language people.

Spanish speakers usually begin conversations with me in Spanish. It happened again at the little bodega just the other day. Man looked at my two bags and then up at me and said "Es todo?" But of course, I hesitate and say "Yeah," and that's what happens when I don't join in quickly, they get it and move to English very quickly and I feel angry at myself and sad that I couldn't just nod and smile and say "Sí, es todo. Cuanto, por favor?" Then I can't even understand the man when he says "A dollar fifty" and I hand him three dollars, utterly confusing him. I don't understand Spanish or English at the end of all if it, so give the Pocho back his change and let him take his jalapeños home. Maybe they burn some of that Anglo chromium off his hidden nopal tongue.

Pues. Trees are now in bloom, ants are on the march, the sun is once again shining, and I'm soon off to move furniture for the day. Catch you later!