I Grew up Sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger

Or what’s it like to grow up speaking with a jarring foreign accent

All images by the author.

I’m 12 years old. It’s 1994. Two girls and I are sitting at a kitchen table. The tape recorder is in the middle of that table and one of the girls presses play. I hear the first girl’s voice. Then I hear the second girl’s voice. Then I hear my voice.

Wait. What?! Why does my voice sound like a miniature Schwarzenegger auditioning for the role of Speedy Gonzales?

“Is that how I sound?!” I ask.

“Yes.”

I’m stunned.

I didn’t know I had an accent

For a school project, we had been reciting a poem and recording it on tape. And while the two girls’ voices sounded normal, with beautiful rolling r’s and lisping c’s, mine clearly sounded wrong.

What jarred me wasn’t just the usual “I don’t like the sound of my voice.” It was the fact that until then I had never realized I had an accent when speaking Spanish — a language I spoke fluently but, quite obviously, not inconspicuously.

You see, although I emigrated to Spain while still wearing diapers, grew up in that sun-infused country, went through school there, and am still living there, I never…