How Important is the Accent??

So spanish has accents on a lot of words. At first it seemed useless to me. So what if my accent is a little bit different?? I am not native, I am supposed to have a different accent. Well I learned the hard way this past week about the importance of the accent.

First I was reading an email a loud. It was supposed to say that "Marta called me", but because I messed up the accent, I said that my name was Marta (Marta was my first host mom). I got a strange look, being a young thin male and saying my name is Marta.

Thursday night, after class, the girls invited us all to a restaurant for dinner. We all piled into the cars to go. Someone mentioned my messy hair. My calloch (ah I have no idea how to spell that word and I dont have an english dictionary) was sticking up. Well, I decided to practice my spanish at this moment. I tried to say, ¨I don´t have a comb¨ but instead I said "I don´t have a penis". You wouldnt believe the look I got from my friend Fernanda. At least this time I caught my mistake and was able to laugh at myself. For those of you wondering how I made this mistake... Comb in spanish = peine and penis = pene. I forgot to stress the "I" in "peine". Yeah huge mistake, especially when I was trying to flirt with the girls.

Yesterday, I had an asado (a barbacue) with one of Marta´s friends. Its amazing that once I said I was moving, they started inviting me more places. The asado was great with very tasty meat and lots of wine and pop. Well, I was wearing my bright red SMU CREW shirt with the cardinal on the front. One of the men at the asado asked what the logo was... I responded Pajero instead of pájaro. Pájaro means "bird", but pajero means "jerk off". Again, I did not get the best look from this man. He laughed and then explained to everyone what I had said.

The same thing is true with gestures. A common gesture here is to brush the tip of your chin with your fingers. In the United States this gesture is interpreted as duragatory. I asked a question to my host brother the other day and he gave me that gesture. I thought, why is he flipping me off, but what I learned later is that simply means "I don´t know".

This serves to show that I am learning here. Sometimes it is the easy way, and other times it is hard way.