How to speak Andalú

Part of the joy/trials/tribulations of moving to Spain was having to learn Spanish all over again. I'd spoken it well when I was a kid in Costa Rica, but we left for southern California when I was seven or so, and that was the end of that. (Supposedly, one needs to be exposed to a language up until age ten to remember it.) Now, I still had the canto, the the song, so to speak, of the language, and I remembered some vocabulary, but I knew absolutely nothing of grammar other than what sounded right.

In many respects, this is one of the few times where I honestly say, "Thank God for television." The news, especially. Here were people who were trained to speak clearly using good grammar and pronunciation. Be that as it may, what I understood on TV, and what I understood on the street were two different matters entirely. Andaluz, the... accent? dialect? ...that they speak in Andalucía, where I was, is a lesson in great economy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard kids contract "Mamá" into "¡Maáa!" as they were yelling up to the second floor for someone to let them in. If written Hebrew gets rid of the vowels, spoken Andaluz gets rid of the consonants. I remember, very early on, one of the guys in the church youth group trying to teach me how to speak "Andalu" ("Instead of 'voy a la casa de Paco' say, "vocapáo'") ...I just stared in amazement.

So it was with a great deal of laughter that I watched this video, "Curso Dandalú." Yes, normally you'd say, "Curso de Andaluz," but we're going for authenticity...

Note: The video may not make much sense unless you speak Spanish.

Note: Even if you do, it may not make sense anyway.