Zoraya and Eliza

I hope you don't mind if I tell another story about John. It's June, isn't it? All About Father. Sounds good.

Yesterday as we walked home from church, we came up the horrible hill that I hate and through Plaza Larga, and down the street past a little restaurant that sits in a corner. We pass this restaurant every day, many times a day. Nearly always, there is a young woman outside the restaurant, handing out flyers to passers-by to advertise for the dinner and flamenco show that goes on there nightly. We've been. It's good.

The show is a little short, and there are only two dancers, a singer and a guitar player, as compared to some of the flashier shows that might have as many as eight or ten dancers and musicians performing. The setting, however, is much more intimate than in the bigger shows, and the food is wonderful. The price is also excellent -- 28 euros for a full dinner and the show, as opposed to the same price for just a show in the caves of the Sacromonte, where the seating is very crowded and sometimes it is difficult to see.

The restaurant is called Zoraya, after the christian maiden who was taken as a political prisoner by the sultan, and held in one of the towers in the Alhambra. The sultan fell in love with her and married her, much to the dismay of his first wife, mother of prince Boabdil. Boabdil became the last moorish king to reign in Granada. It's a great story, although very difficult to separate the legend from the fact.

At any rate, we see these young ladies outside the restaurant every day. They nearly always offer us a flyer, even though we repeatedly tell them that we've been there and that we loved the food and the dancing. You would think that we might stick out to them, being fair and blondish and obviously foreign, but I don't really mind that we all look alike to them.

Yesterday, John was walking ahead of Marie and me and took the flyer as we usually do, and paused to explain to her that we had seen the show and eaten the food. As frequently happens, she looked at him with a little surprise on her face and asked where he was from. This is the interesting part.

Our Spanish friend, Pepe, always tells John that John is more Spanish than most Spaniards. He knows the history, he loves the culture, he loves the food, and is incredibly knowledgeable about Spanish soccer. Pepe also tells John that John's Spanish is perfect. We know that's not true, but it's a nice compliment. The thing is, Pepe says, that John will never be mistaken for a Spaniard because he just looks too gringo (or giri, as the white folks are called here).

So, when John first begins to speak to almost any Spaniard he's never met before, they inevitably ask him where he's from. When he says he's from the USA, they're always surprised and comment that he doesn't speak Spanish like he's from the USA.

John learned Spanish on his mission, here in Spain. When he left on his mission he was studying English grammar at BYU, which he loved, but he learned that BYU's language program in English was not very extensive at the time - they were mostly a literature department. After returning from his mission, he learned about the wonderful Spanish linguistics program at BYU and switched his major.

For a few years, he spoke a more Castillian variety of Spanish, using the theta and other linguistic elements he learned on his mission, but when we moved to Texas for graduate school, he found himself working with and researching more Mexican Spanish. This trend continued as he continued some of his linguistic research at the Latin American Cultural Center in Manchester, NH when he began working at UNH. In NH, most of the Spanish speakers are from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and a variety of South and Central American countries. Eventually, he made a choice to adapt his Spanish to a more American (meaning North, Central and South) Spanish. The native speakers he interviews and associates with often comment on how difficult it is to place where his language influence originates.

It was the same with this young lady at the restaurant. When he told her he was from the USA, she said, "But, you didn't learn Spanish here in Spain? Did you learn it in Argentina?"

At first, it was hard to tell what she meant by that. Some Spaniards are very elitist when it comes to what is "good" Spanish and what is not. It's pretty ridiculous because most of the differences are purely accent and vocabulary, just like in British, American and Australian English. As we talked to her a little more, however, I realized she had paid him a great compliment. It turns out that she is Argentinian.

I thought of Eliza Doolittle and Professor Higgins and the Hungarian linguist who was out to discredit the professor's linguistic credentials. I recalled how the Hungarian danced the night away with Eliza, seeking to expose her as some kind of a fraud (which she, in fact, was), and Henry Higgins' delight when his rival declared that Eliza's English was too perfect and that she must have learned it as a second language. He was convinced, therefore, that she must have been born Hungarian!

It tickles me that Spanish speakers often think that John must have learned his Spanish in their own native country, because he has purposely created for himself an accent that is as neutral as possible. I guess it's kind of like the way that national news commentators try to speak a generalized kind of English in order to appeal, aurally, to a wider audience.

Pepe may be right, but we have yet to figure out a way to disguise John's northern European genes.