Ventriloquism
In your teens you read The Catcher In The Rye, and for a week or so you sound like Holden Caulfield. You read Hemingway, and you begin to speak in very short sentences. After Bukowski you try to sound like a drunken old madman who eats typewriter ribbons. Reading can alter your speech patterns, often with hilarious results. Ever hear someone attempting the voice of a Trainspotting character with an Ilocano accent? Or Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments in Visayan? From hereon we’ll probably hear Herodotus in our heads with a Scottish accent.
Ige on Pinoys with English accents: “Nausukan lang ng tambucho ng British Airways, nagka-accent na.” I have a friend who picked up an English accent by reading P.G. Wodehouse and watching reruns of The Avengers.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s second most famous export turns 80. Shakira must be third.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 9th, 2007 at 09:55
I love Shakira! Heehee. At close sila ni Garcia Marquez…she also calls him “Gabo.” And I think some of her song personas reflect some characters in Garcia Marquez’s novels. (Except that stupid song “Hips Don’t Lie.”)
March 9th, 2007 at 10:19
Ah, Yes! My preteens and early teenage years were spent reading much of Ludlum and Forsyth. My grandmother called me black-hearted and bloody-minded. Then I discovered Shakespeare and the Victorian authors. My father then called me melodramatic and accused me of harboring imagined hurts.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:26
I know, I know, with my clumsy old English brogue, I am a linguistic oddball easily sounding like the lovechild of Boy Abunda and Melania Trump.