re: #156 wrenchwench

Back in the 70s, I spent a month in Mexico, travelling by train and bus (and hitch-hiked once). I found that the words-per-minute decreased as I headed north. I’m almost positive it wasn’t my ability to understand increasing.

Heh. Perhaps it is my biases. But my experience regarding the speed of spoken English when approaching the US Southwest from the northern urban areas seems to mirror your experiences with Spanish.

I grew up in Pittsburgh. The local region speaks ‘yinzer’, but outside of that area, the local dialect is “Midland”. I spent time in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Northern Texas while in the Army. I found the dialect of spoken English there was a very similar Midland, but spoken a bit more slowly with a drawl.