【Ted-ED】诗歌系列 EP09 口音 'Accents' by Denice Frohman

I'm Denise Froman and this is Accents. My mom holds her accent like a shotgun with two good hands. Her tongue all brass knuckles slipping in between her lips. Her hips are all laughter and wind clap. She speaks a sancocho of Spanish and English, pushing up and against one another in rapid fire. Mira, there was no telling my mama to be quiet. My mama don't know quiet. Her voice is one size better fit all. And you best not tell it a hush. She waited too many years for her voice to arrive to be told it needed housekeeping. See, English sits in her mouth remix. So strawberry becomes a strawberry and cookie becomes a cookie and kitchen key chain and chicken all sound the same. My mama doesn't say yes. She says, aha. And suddenly the sky in her mouth becomes a Hector Lavoso. Her tongue can't lay itself down flat enough for the English language. It got too much hip, too much bone, too much conga, too much cuatro to two step, got too many piano keys in between her teeth. It got too much clave, too much hand clap, got too much salsa to sit still. It be an anxious child wanting to make play dough at a concrete English, be too neat for her kind of wonderful. Her words spill in conversation between women whose hands are all they got. Sometimes our hands are all we got and accents that remind us that we are still bomba, still plena. You say, wepa. And a stranger becomes your hermano. You say, dale. And a crowd becomes a family reunion. Our mother's tongue is a telegram from her mother decorated with the coquis of El Campo. So even when her lips can barely stretch themselves around English, her accent is a stubborn compass always pointing her towards home.