Celtic influence

[Rick Mc Callister]

	Educated Peruvians have an accent corresponding to a Midwest accent
in American English or to the BBC accent in the UK. In Peru, class
differences are more often based on language than dialect. The middle and
upper classes speak Spanish and the lower classes generally speak Runa [AKA
Quechua/Qheshwa] or Spanish with a strong indigenous accent. There is also
an Afro-Peruvian minority that has its own accent as well. Speaking Spanish
"perfectly" is essential to social advancement in the Andean countries.
	As I said, differences in accent among people of the upper classes
are often less than the difference between upper and lower classes in the
same country.
	I have the same experience as your mother when I go to Spanish
speaking countries. My wife is from Costa Rica, which has a rather
"neutral" accent --there are some peculiarities but they generally involve
familiar expressions which you wouldn't use with strangers.
	But Spaniards knew that your mother was not from there. Which is
the experience I usually have in Latin America. In Mexico, people asked me
if I was Cuban. In Cuba, people asked if I was Mexican. And given that
Mexican and Cuban Spanish sound about as different as Ross Perot and Rocky
Balboa, this was a strange experience. In Honduras, people did ask why I
sounded like I was from there given that they had never seen me before
[it's a small country with an even smaller educated middle/upper class] but
as soon as I explained that my was Costa Rican, they realized why.
	Besides social accents, Latin American Spanish also tends to have
stronger sex-based accents than contemporary American English. This is
often related to social class in that women are more likely to marry upward
in the social hierarchy than men. Among the lower middle classes and
working classes in some countries, women are more likely to attend college
as well and move into white collar professions while their brothers work in
the factory or on the farm.

>>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>>In every Spanish-speaking country I've been in, including Cuba, class
>>dialects are very noticeable. >>

>-- that's odd, because my mother grew up in Lima, Peru, and when we were
>travelling in Spain in the 1950's, if she didn't tell the locals about it
>people were repeatedly puzzled as to _where_ she came from, and thought she
>had a rather old-fashioned way of speaking (like some remote village), but the
>question of social class didn't come up.