Working in Spain-language, pronounciation and the "exotic"

I'm currently working in Spain...southern Spain, to be more exact...the city of Jerez de la Frontera, in lower Andalucia to be even more exact.  I'm shooting videos-films.  I'm a cinematographer.

Lots of people tell me how lucky I am to be working in southern Spain, as if I'm on vacation, which I am not.  Lots of people in California also seem to think that southern Spain is "exotic."  There is a tendancy on the part of most of us to believe that people who have a different way of life from ours are "exotic."   So let's look at that.

The old cabildo (government center) of Jerez de la Frontera.  It is some 500 years old.

By "exotic" they seem to mean that the people a) dress differently, b) make conversation using incomprehensible sounds...meaning that they don't speak English, c)  eat different foods, d) have a different rhythm of life and e) live in houses that don't resemble American homes.

To take just one of these, let's look at the language.

Yes, it's very true that people in southern Spain insist on talking in Spanish.  Not only do they speak Spanish, but they speak very rapidly (and I mean VERY rapidly).  Plus not all that many people speak English.  Plus the rapid Spanish they are speaking is not the standard Spanish taught in schools in the United States.

A street in the newer part of town.

They eat consonants, by which I mean that they leave out a lot of consonants.  Almost everyone in the United States knows that the word in Spanish for "father" is "padre."  Here in Jerez, lots of people say "pare."  Instead of "muchas gracias," people will say "mucha gracia."  And so on.

(Once, one of our actors by mistake referred to a bus as an "autobus."  This caused him to stop the scene as he cracked up laughing.  What he´d INTENDED to say instead of "autobus" was "autobu.").

Our NEXT BLOG will be about vocabulary for southern Spain.