Argentine provincialism

[Tony25]

I went into a shop recently with a friend from the UK. She speaks Spanish reasonably well but with an accent. The shop assistant mocked her. We were both offended. My friend thought this was both rude and provincial. Have others had similr experiences?

 

[dropthezero]

it depends what you call mocking. latin americans all over the continent will laugh at our accents and 99% of the time it's not meant in a hurtful way; they usually think it's 'cute' the way we pronounce things.

that's not to say it's not off-putting and belittling (it's something that really pisses me off and i've made damn sure my friends and girlfriend's family know that if they do it to me i'll simply talk at them in english) but it's not usually malicious. the fact is that the vast majority of english people (i can't talk about the US) would never even contemplate laughing at a foreigner's accent to their face and i guess that's why we find it rude when they do it to us.

 

[malbec]

As dropthezero stated it, people in Argentina find it cute when
someone speaks with accent. When I was a child there were many older
people who still spoke with a very strong accent (many were second
generation of inmigrants in Argentina). We were used to it and found it
great that those people could actually speak another language! (At that
time English was not usually taught at school).You said that
your friend speaks Spanish well...but are you sure she didn't say
anything funny? (by mistake I mean...like using some word or expression
that in Argentina has a completely different meaning...or just another
meaning) The slang is monstrous in BA...even for Argentineans!