Merci beaucoup

So I have an accent. Big deal. I don’t think about it as much as other people do. I mean, I’m not aware if it has ever set me back in any job, any travel, any encounters thus far… and to be honest, I guess you could say maybe on occasion I enjoy embellishing my little Delight twang  (I can do really great Miranda Lambert karaoke.) However, recently I have become much more aware of not only my own accent, but of my inability to pronounce words in other languages properly. (correctly? accurately? What’s even proper here?) For example- last weekend at an amazing French restaurant on the sea with seafood canapés and apple rum crepes I observed that apparently “merci” is most certainly not appreciated by the owner of the restaurant when pronounced “mercy.” He scoffed at me! I’m starting to feel like I’m really just embarrassing myself even when I try to be grateful.

I blame/credit my new awareness on/to my new friends from Algeria (Canada and Spain) and Croatia. Two amazing, well traveled, beautiful people who speak many languages fluently. Um, even their English is better than mine. They love counting how many times I use “y’all” begging me to say “fixin” or “gonna.” They laugh and mimic my accent when I get really excited and blurt out something so redneck that it sounds like Ellie Mae Clampett just joined the conversation. But all that I’m used to, my friends in DC and even some in Little Rock did that. What I’m not used to is how hard it is to roll my Rs in order to thank someone properly for refilling my glass at dinner.Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. That was me trying to rrrrrrrrroll my tongue frusteratedly. (Side not for Mom and Carmen- that was one of those swiftly things!!!)

Anyway, I remember making decent grades on tests in Italian in Italy from Mona Shackelford and in Spanish in high school with Mr. Denny- two very capable teachers who mastered other languages coming from small towns in Arkansas just like me. However I think the reason that it none of it stuck was not because I couldn’t memorize the words (actually I still can identify lots of nouns and list the different verb conjugations in my head) but it’s because I never really pronounce anything that sounded remotely Spanish or Italian! I couldn’t roll my tongue if you pointed a gun at my head. Imagine how Brad Pitt’s character in Inglorious Bastards, pronounced grazie “graught zee” and arrivederci “a reever derchee” at the movie premier… yep, that’s about how I do it too. I’m genuinely sorry because now I think it must be insulting to everyone who has worked so hard to learn and appreciate different languages.

So that leads me to my new goal- working on the pronunciation and enunciation of some common Italian, Spanish, and French phrases- specifically being able to roll my Rs! I eHow’d how to do it and they say I should be able to figure it out in five easy steps. I found plenty of things on youtube to practice my speech while in my apartment, and I know my friends are more than willing to help when we go out to dinner. However, while walking down the sidewalk at lunch it just hit me that this new goal could actually be two-fold in nature!!!!! (My best friends know how I get so excited when things are two or more fold!)

Here’s how I’m going to go about killing two birds with one stone! Ready? I’m kinda excited right now. Not only will I be bettering my vocabulary, I will actually be warding off unwanted attention from Dominican men to and from work, and on walks I go on! No skeezy, sweaty, stinky men are going to want to approach, much less flirt with, the crazy white girl who repeats loud, strange flemmy, gurgling sounds shaking her head while walking down the street!!! “Merrrrrrrrrrci, Grrrrrrrrrrazie.” See, it really helps if you say it loudly and shake your head to try and roll your tongue. Because currently you see, I think I sound like a schizophrenic toad. Hopefully within the next 35 days I transform into sounding like a plain old schizophrenic walking down the street eloquently thanking, greeting, and bidding “adieu” many different languages. 

Adieu!