Questions I should not be asking right now ...

[guanin]

...but this is driving me nuts. Does anyone know where exactly Maya and Alejandro are supposed to be from? Not that I'm even trying to gather some coherence out of that train wreck, but this has always bugged me. They sound Mexican, but then the show sorta implied that they were Dominican, but Dania Ramírez is Dominican and Shalim Ortiz is Puerto Rican and half Dominican (and the son of Charytin. huh). So what the hell is going on?

Comments

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

The show does imply they're Dominican. HeroesWiki says they're from Santo Domingo, and I usually trust them for background character detail stuff. But honestly, their accents are all over the place; I wouldn't even say they sounded Mexican to me.

[rampant-chaos8.livejournal.com]

That confuses me. Because I believe at one point, doesn't Maya say that she came "all the way from South America" to find Mohinder? And the Dominican Republic is most definitely not in South America. Geez, show, make up your mind.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

The question came up again after someone in my class told me that he'd read that Dania had to learn a Mexican accent for her role in Heroes and I went, "Huh?" Not that it makes sense for them to have asked her change her accent if she were a Dominican since that is her native accent. I'm assuming Shalim might be able to do a Dominican one, though I can't vouch much for my Mexican accent when I'm around non-Mexicans.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

Well, that would be because she ran away to Venezuela first to become a nun as if this were some soap opera. But this shows total disregard for geography drives me insane.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

It's my understanding from somewhere random that the Mexican accent is to Latin America what the mid-Atlantic accent is to the USA; it's the one most people find easiest to understand throughout. Supposedly international Spanish language newscasts and most movie dubs are done with Mexican accents for that reason. But again, I'm not sure how true that is. It would also not be outside the realms of possibility for most Americans to be more familiar with Mexican accents than Dominican ones, making it a little easier to understand. So that might've been a factor. But...yeah, I can't see them making Dania learn the accent just for that.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

Well, there is the emphasis on pronouncing all the letters correctly, (unlike in Puerto Rico :) which would increase comprehension, I suppose. I know Puerto Ricans have no problem understanding it because of the telenovelas, though the dubbings have never sounded Mexican to me. But then there's the mild resentment over the intrusion of a foreign form of the language on supposedly Puerto Rican television. This is especially true of Univision, which I for one refuse to watch, but the problem with them is more wide ranging than this.

Though most Americans would be reading the subtitles while she was speaking Spanish, anyway. Personally, I needed them when she was speaking in English. Why must they always make the actors adopt such thick accents? Interesting aside: I've noticed that I find it easier to understand non-native English speakers when they speak with a British-like accent versus an American one. Oh, and the Brits I know also pronounce Spanish way better than most Americans.

[visiblemarket.livejournal.com]

I honestly have so much trouble telling accents apart in general I probably wouldn't notice. I can tell Mexican from non Mexican and Spanish from non Spanish, but beyond that...well, I think I've got a hold on Argentinian as well.

True, but I think a lot have taken Spanish or at least understand it to some degree. Heh, I love how it was super-thick in S2 and then was suddenly somewhere around Rosie Perez-level in S3. I think the British accented people are more likely to have learned it "better", ie, from more expensive private schools or, in places like India, from a traditional English school teacher and in a tradition where you had to learn it or not have any chance of advancement at all. People who speak with American accents learned it from TV and/or Peace Corps volunteers.

I think Europeans in general, just from having so many other countries and languages around and close by, tend to be a little better at learning them. Americans don't really need to.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

I can tell Mexican, Colombian, Spaniard, and Argentinian. That's it. Argentinian is essentially Italian with a soft "j" sound (in English, not Spanish) replacing the yeismo of the "ll". For me at least, Mexican, Colombian, and Bolivian have the same general rythym while still being distinct. I keep confusing Colombian for Mexican for like two seconds in hope before I realize that it's not.+

Not in my experience. And I'm including my Illinois dwelling nieces/nephews. They know some extremely basic loose words at most. Well, actually I was referring to Latinos there. And the Indians I know who were at least partly raised in India speak with flawless American accents (and one was born in Manchester). That's why hearing Mohinder at first sounded weird to me, though it would make more superficial sense. Maybe it depends on the region.


Well, to be honest, the people I know are from my uni, ie. the institute where knowing some Spanish is required, so that would skew the stats. But there is more interest in pronouncing things correctly.

[ti-ana.livejournal.com]

This was driving me insane for a while too. Still does, cause I thought all along that they were supposed to be coming from South or Central America, but then all the show info says they're from the DR. Which totally doesn't make sense because neither of them speaks with a DR accent. Actually, they don't have a clear accent from *anywhere*. Maya attempts to have some sort of generic accent, but it comes out really fake and makes her sound like she's trying too hard and overacting. (Personally, I didn't like her character because of that. She's like a telenovela actress.) But yeah, that really annoyed me.

[ti-ana.livejournal.com]

I used to confuse Mexican and Colombian too. I still do sometimes, if I only hear someone talk briefly. Once I hear a Colombian talk a bit longer, I can tell them apart. It's got a different melody to it, although it also depends what part of Colombia they are from. There are some Colombian accents I can pick out immediately, after a couple of words. But I've developed the ear for it because I have so many Colombian clients at work and my supervisor is Colombian too.

The Argentinian accent is really easy to pick out, but for the life of me, I can't tell it apart from the Uruguayan one. I'm still stumped!

[guanin.livejournal.com]

That's what it looked like at first, but then they did the flashback episode and put them in DR and suddenly everything was even more confusing.

God, she is like a telenovela actress. Her whole storyline is just full of so much melodrama that it set my teeth on edge.

[guanin.livejournal.com]

I hadn't come into contact with Colombians before coming here, but most Latinos in London are Colombian, I think, so now I hear it everywhere. I know two girls in my uni and I think they might ave slightly different accents, though that might be because one speaks faster than the other. I'm kinda bad with subtleties in accents.

I don't know the Uruguayan one or the Chilean one for that matter even though I've known four Chileans. For some reason, I can't seem to remember it.

[ti-ana.livejournal.com]

Oh, my entire department is mostly Chileans and Argentinians, so I've sort of gotten to know the Chilean one too. Uruguay is exactly like the Argentinian one. No joke, they're almost impossibly to tell apart. Well, the Uruguayan is like the Buenos Aires accent, to be exact. You'll have an easier time telling a part an Argentinian who's not from Buenos Aires from an Uruguayan. There are some subtle differences. I think in Uruguay they conjugate verbs in "vos", but they still say "tú" instead... hard to spot if they never use the pronoun, though. Chilean sounds a bit like Argentinian, but no "vos". And they say stuff like "¿cómo estai?" instead of "cómo estás?". They also say "cachai" a lot, which is sort of like "you know".

I hear that the Colombians who speak faster are the ones in the Caribbean side. (Actually, Colombians who live on the Caribbean side speak a lot like we do in PR. They also sound like Venezuelans, who, btw, I have been known to confuse with PRs, lol. Shame on me.) In Cali, Colombia, they use "vos", which I thought was pretty interesting. They also speak a bit slower.