They satisfied the morbid curiosity in us 8 year olds. We had never seen death, and pictures of dead gunslingers in caskets and the cavalry rotting on the battlefield were like a magnet, drawing our young eyes to the pages. And the “death by a thousand cuts” was an intro to inhumanity.

We moved on and I suppose a younger generation took to leafing through them. I bet the carved faux leather binders eventually wore smooth in spots.

I feel sorry for the kids that get their introduction to death on the internet these days. There are few things I wish I hadn’t seen.

I have a 19th century Havana accent, a subset of Cuban Coastal Dialect, which can be traced back to the Canary Islands, from which a disproportionate number of Spanish immigrants to Cuba came from. I also have strong ties to the Havana neighborhood of Santo Suarez. and the Havana suburb of Regla. I’ve also noticed, from talking to recent arrivals from the island, that Cuban Spanish is evolving, changing in time, as does all language. Haven’t you noticed how odd people in old movies talk? In English I have traces of a modified Bronx Jewish accent, colored with Florida Cracker. And people who have learned a language as an adult often have an accent based on their native tongue. My French teachers used to say I had a Spanish accent when I recited in that language.

Accents are highly regionalized and also evolve through time, but they are also highly correlated with social and economic class. Great Britain is really bad about this, it really doesn’t matter how accomplished you are if you don’t have a “posh accent”, nobody takes you seriously. Of course, some people, like actor Michael Caine, whose dramatic training allows him to switch seamlessly from one class or regional speech to another, loves to use his native Cockney (London East End) speech just to piss off his snooty interviewers.

When I went to Puerto Rico, I was very concerned my Spanish might be identified as a second language (I have been educated in English, and I think in English, and I often make grammatical errors in Spanish, or use “false friends”). For example, in Spanish when you introduce a speaker at a conference you don’t use the the infinitive “introducir” (“to introduce”). You use the verb “presentar” (“to present”). It’s subtle, but it will give you away every time. When I speak Spanish with a native speaker, they usually compliment my speech and accent, but if I speak for any length of time, I start catching them correcting my little mistakes and errors. I could never make it as a secret agent. Sonner or later they’d have me pegged as an English speaker.

So I deliberately spoke Spanish very slowly, clearly and distinctly, to disguise my machine-gun Cuban delivery which the Puerto Ricans instantly recognize and loathe.

As a result, most Puerto Ricans thought I was something exotic, like Peruvian or Ecuadorian.

The “Official” Spanish dialect is Castilian, from the province of Castile around Madrid. This is probably because that is the dialect Cervantes spoke, and wrote Don Quijote in. But Spain has many dialects, some of them, like Catalan, almost unintelligible to other Spaniards.

Pure Castilian differs considerably from New World Spanish, although the two can speak to each other with little misunderstanding. Still, Castilian sounds to me like Klingon; guttural and brusque, delivered in bursts and filled with harsh tones and that annoying lisp they affect.

Be proud of your English accent. It shows you at least made an effort to learn another language, something most Americans obstinately refuse to do, and which makes them very few friends in the world. We don’t like people in our country speaking their language, even if it is only amongst themselves. But when we go to other countries, we seem pissed off that not everyone there has bothered to learn ours.

I saw a lot of that in Puerto Rico, and it makes us look like arrogant pricks. A lot of Puerto Ricans speak good English, but often feign ignorance when talking to pushy tourists.
On the other hand, they are flattered and delighted when a visitor makes an effort to speak Spanish, even if he has an awful accent, keeps his nose buried in a phrasebook, and is making glaring grammatical errors all over the place. It shows respect, and respect is usually reciprocated.

Do people such as myself…as we amateurishly speak Spanish to prolific masters of the language….have an accent like say..Desi Arnaz had when he spoke English?

What I wrote is from an old Cuban song, it is a bit awkwardly (poetically) phrased to make it flow more smoothly over the rhythm and rhyme of the tune.

It actually translates quite well, although it trashes the poetic meter (and true meaning) in English

“Women in love are like chickens,
when the rooster’s dead, any young cock will do.”

A literal translation would be

“The woman in love resembles the chicken. Because when the rooster dies, any young fowl she’ll approach.”

Its a good illustration about the subtlety of language. A literal translation, even if grammatically perfect, often does not convey the true meaning inherent in the text, certainly not the implications coveyed by context, subtext, culture, etc. Literal translations, like you would get out of a translation software, often miss the whole point of the message.

Language is an imperfect means of communication, and relies a great deal on stress, tone, gesture, visual and auditory cues, inflection, and so on to get a point across. This is why writing is so difficult, you have to get your point across without the aids we normally employ in conversation. They can be made up for to an extent typographically
(italics, for example) but it takes a lot of effort, and in some highly emotional communication, fails altogether.

And don’t let my command of Spanish intimidate you. I can’t remember ever not being bilingual because I was brought up that way. Both my parents were bilingual, but we had friends and neighbors and relatives who weren’t. At age 4 or 5 I was often used as a translator by friends or relatives who spoke only one language. I take no credit for that, all kids are wired that way. When I took courses in high school and college in French (a language very similar to Spanish in grammar and syntax, and English in vocabulary) I was no better at it than any of my classmates. And I quickly forgot what little I learned the moment I stopped taking classes.