Archive for June 2007

My brother-in-law called last weekend to ask us about portable video games for his son's upcoming birthday. Since my nephew-in-law is turning 10, he gets to choose between a PSP (Playstion Portable) & a Nintendo DS. And since my nephew-in-law has a 6 year old brother, he also gets either a Nintendo DS or Nintendogs (for the dog lovers). We strongly advised Nintendo for Nintendo's platform is truly geared for the kids. I couldn't really remember what I used to get for my birthdays but it's sure nothing like the toys of today. Sunny smiles of the kids at Villa Escudero.

Like the evolution of our society, toys have advanced to the greatest imagination & creativity ever. Scientific researches resulting to absolutely educational gadgets, employing different skills necessary for learning. Some toys are so complex that even an adult is required to concentrate & understand first before playing & having fun. There are so many toys to choose from. From the cuddly stuffed toys, the colorful blocks, the singing books, the puzzles & lego type constructions (which I am so bad at) to video games. It sure is fun while learning.

But for my generation, I preferred to be on the street than playing with my classic & standard toys which solely required my own creativity. I remember my mom shouting behind me to be careful & to come home on time for lunch or dinner, and to be as clean as I can be. In my childhood, learning was more about the joys of picking up recreational materials in the park & playing fair with my friends. Learning was about getting dirty & having little bruises.

Street games are as educational as the toys of today & it builds character:
- taguan (hide & seek) taught us agility & the motion of time. Without them, we'll still be hiding while everybody has already gone home.
- patintero taught us teamwork, strategy & the art of bluffing.
- shato taught us focus & concentration, coordination & math, and determination to chant shato continuously for the whole loser's run.
- tumbang preso taught us speed, coordination & sportsmanship, especially to the "it."
- agawan base likewise taught us agility, teamwork, strategy & competitiveness.

Street games also build camaraderie & teaches us to be a good loser. It only requires trees (or lamp posts), rocks, sticks & cans to almost no materials at all. We get a lot of exercise & sun. My mom used to freak out & send the maid in a thorough hunt to find me but it taught me basic responsibility. Me & a friend went on a search for the perfect grass sled, found a dilapidated plywood & sled down a 10 meter slope down to a main road. We were saved from crashing a car but we didn't get away from the old woman sceaming at us for all the dust we brought to her house just in front. We had freedom.

We didn't have high-tech, state of the art toys. We didn't have 15 channels of cartoons & kid's shows but only Sesame Street, The Electric Company & the Saturday Fun Machine on channel 9. As classic & as standard our toys are, they encouraged imagination, creativity & inventiveness. Look how we all turned out. I loved smelling like the sun.

After moving to Marseille from Paris, I clearly remember how I hoped not to pick up the accent of the Marseillaise. It's not that their accent is unlovely, I just prefer to speak my French with the standard accent, say like the newscasters on TV - clear & understandable. Well that is one of my burst bubbles because I will always have an accent, definitely not as refined as the news, and not southern but probably Pinoy. The R always gives me away.

It's amazing how our speaking accents can tell where we come from even between towns a couple of kilometers away. In the south of France, Marseille will already have a different accent from Montpellier (165km) & Montpellier will have a different accent from Toulouse (230km). A French can even locate the exact region of all the different accents of France. Like we Filipinos can tell between the north & the south.

Then in speaking english we can likewise tell one's nationality. In Europe, the French, Germans & the Italians, to name a few, have all very distinct accents when speaking in english. Unlike in Asia, there is just a subtle difference between the Vietnamese & Chinese, especially for an ear so unused to the sound of these languages. But it is the beauty of these accents that distinguish one person from another, from one place to the next.

While some accents are just more understandable than another, it usually takes us a couple of hours to get used to it. But I noticed between Asians there are some that are just incomprehensible that sometimes it's not a difference of nationality but individually. At times, accent & articulation are not the same. Some tongues are just harder than others. It's an effort for me to speak clearly in French, careful with some pronounciations when the same word can have two meanings.

Some say I speak French with a Manila accent, Hazel says I have a Paris accent when I say au revoir & a lot of French just says I have a tout mignon (an all cute) accent which simply means an accent they just cannot place. As much as I wanted to speak in a newscaster French, I think I'll stick with my special/tout mignon accent. Everytime I call the chatterie (cat daycare center, if you will), the cat lady will always recognize me right away through my accent. It is part of my identity.

The idea of this post on accents is after I had a call from a woman who spoke so fast in French with an accent I likewise cannot place. Probably she was like me a bit clueless on not having a newscaster French. She was German. Then Russell Peters came into mind. Watch him here talking about Asians & accents.

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