A few thoughts on accent-related issues

Hi!

This is the last post for our class, so there are a few things I'd like to comment on before saying good-bye:

* My final project’s conclusion, which some of you are going to learn in detail during our last class, is essentially that, in order for one to identify the different accents in a given country, not only language proficiency but also living experience in the country is necessary. Having recently moved to the United States, I can attest to it based on my own experience. One example has to do with my roommate Nathan is from Mississipi. My other roommate, Ram, has been talking about his accent since our first week at Stanford. But at first, I couldn’t really notice it and that bothered me (now I know that actually his accent is not really strong). During Thanksgiving break, though, I had the opportunity to talk to his mother on the phone a few times. She has a strong southern accent which now, after almost 3 months in the US, I was able to notice!
During this past week, I received some wonderful news: my twin brother is coming to the US next January, he's going to spend a month studying at the University of Tennessee. I'm sure he's going to be better than I am at identifying southern accents after that month.

* I also learned some Californian (or maybe only Stanfordian) words during this first quarter. One of them is “sketchy”. It was pretty easy to learn this word, people here say it all the time! Another one is “hella”, used as an adverb of intensity (synonymous with “very”). But just like Adelaide, I still don't use it. I don’t have exams anymore, I just have midterms (we have final exams, though). That’s a pretty new word for me. And what I would earlier call ice cream, now I can call frozen yogurt (or just fro-yo)! I also noticed that, whenever people want to express their appraisal for something, they say that this thing is "the best ever", which is sort of funny for me, because I would never use the literal translation for this expression in Portuguese (and, believe you or not, I mentioned that during my last IHUM paper).
I think it is very important for me to acquire this everyday vocabulary because I feel I have a good grasp on formal English, but sometimes I don’t know how to say things informally. Sometimes, when I ask my roommate whether a given sentence construction is appropriate, he says: “people are going to understand it, but it seems you’re giving a lecture”. I still have a lot to improve; sometimes I can’t measure properly the level of informality I’m using in my speech. But I’m happy to notice that it is getting better overtime. Actually, I feel more confident in relation to my English skills now, as opposed to when I arrived here. But I can do it better, I want to speak perfect English!

* My last thought is a THANK YOU to Meghan for teaching my first IntroSem at Stanford. Stanford is all about pushing the limits of knowledge and now I certainly know more about Accents, Phonetics and Linguistics than I knew 10 weeks ago. And thank you to my readers too!

Now it's time to say Good-bye, and I want to do it the Brazilian way: TCHAU!