By crstein1
I wonder why it doesn’t bother more Spanish people that much of their television and movies are done with voice-overs. They were originally American shows or movies, sometimes British, and when they arrived in Spain, were set to Spanish tracks instead of English. It’s obvious that the words don’t match up with the actor’s mouth and sometimes the expressions don’t exactly follow through either. I recognize many of the more famous actors, and it’s so strange for me to hear a different voice accompanying them. I’ve noticed certain intonation patterns are different here. For example, many times, when people say ‘sí’ (yes) they inflict their voice in a way that seems like a question, even if they are not expressing doubt. For example, I might say to a friend, ‘have you eaten yet’, and they would definitively respond ‘yes?’ Also, I’ve noticed Spanish speakers tend to be more abrupt with their intonation patterns, whereas English speakers tend to sort-of trail off. To me, these differences make voice-over movies so annoying.
I knew I was going to learn grammar and vocabulary, but I’ve never given much thought to speech patterns. Yet speech patterns have been one of the most important lessons I’ve learned. My experience here has made me so much better and understanding body language and communication tendencies. All too frequently I don’t know what people are talking about. Perhaps I zoned out for a moment (it’s very exhausting to speak in a foreign language!), or perhaps someone has said some sort of colloquial phrase that I don’t understand. It’s frustrating and embarrassing to always be admitting that I don’t understand and asking for clarification, so many times I just use the ‘smile and nod’ approach, and hope that in the next few moments, with more context clues, my confusion will be nulled. Since the ‘smile and nod’ approach isn’t always applicable, I’ve learned to rely on my learned knowledge of intonation and body language. For example, when I come home from class, and my host mother says something in some sort of slang expression that I don’t understand, yet inflicts her voice in a way that signifies that she is asking a question, I can safely assume that answering, ‘I’m great, how are you?’ will be a correct response. When I’m having a cup of coffee with a Spanish friend and they tell me something, but drop their voice down to a quiet tone and speak slowly, and frown a little bit, I can gather that they are telling me something sad, and I should probably frown a bit, too.
Part of this learning process has been learning to trust my instincts. In the beginning, every time I was unsure, I would get so nervous that I wasn’t responding properly, but now I don’t worry about that as much. The other day in school, a group of students standing right outside the door, all holding unlit cigarettes and looking a bit flustered, asked me for something, even though I didn’t know the word, I safely assumed they were asking if I had a lighter, and I was confident that responding, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have one’, would suffice. It’s interesting, that I’ve grown into a more confident person because of these types of things. You would figure that I would grow into a more nervous person. But being nervous and stressed takes so much energy, and I’ll save the angst for the times I’m actually really confused, like when I actually have no idea what’s going on. Thus, for the little things about language and culture, which would’ve made me panicky a few months ago, I’m now poised and cool.