Transcript
Let’s work on a general Mexican dialect. And we’re going to straight for the caricature, and then we can knock it back to a more realistic version. Once we get really good with the caricature. So what’s the oral posture of a Mexican dialect. My daughters is why I work hard, you know? Because I don’t want my daughter to have two jobs, you know? That’s a line from one of my plays. I have a Mexican character. So did you notice anything about where my mouth was moving? The corners of my mouth were coming down a little bit. There was jaw movement. There was also a lot of nasality, because the mouth doesn’t open up too much. So some sounds go through the nose, you know? So, I don’t want my daughters, you know, have two jobs, you know? You hear that nasality quality?
A lot of sounds become de-voiced in the Mexican accents. So daughters has a s at the end instead of a z at the end. So it’s not daughters. It’s daughters. And you’ll hear also that the y sound in you know. It’s a phrase that this one speaker that I studied said a lot. You know? Do you know? Do you know? Starts with a sort of a ja sound. Ja know? Ja know? Ja know? That’s because in the Spanish language, the letter y is pronounced as a j. And so a lot of the times Mexican speakers will speak words that begin with a y with that ja sound.
A lot of times you’ll hear that hard r sound. Like daughters. Daughters. Instead of daughters. That general r sound. You’ll hear a really dark, hard r. Daughters. So what’s the musicality of the Mexican accent. It’s (?), (?). Slow it down. And talk slow. And you take your time. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to some native Mexican speakers. And try it on for yourself. Do some conscious mimicry. By trying to imitate the way they move their mouth. The way they inflect their phrases. And go work on your Mexican accent.
