To talk about my experience with the different types of English, I have to make a few points clear first.

  1. I was not born in the US, I was born and raised in Ecuador, Latino from the bush.
  2. I arrived in the country approximately four years ago. 
  3. My first language is Spanish, but I speak English fluently because in Ecuador, all schools, whether public or private, teach English, and since I was little, I fell in love with the language. 
  4. When I arrived here, I perfected it avoiding losing my strong foreign accent in honor of where I came from.

Once this has been clarified, I must admit that my experience with the different types of English has been varied. To begin with, when I just arrived in the country, the only thing I had as a reference and experience I had about English, in general, were the movies and a couple of tourists I met in my country, so the first time I got involved in a conversation with people from here I realized two things. People speak very fast, and it was more difficult to understand them than in the movies, and two, I had enough level to start a light conversation. However, sometimes I had to repeat things so that I could be understood. 

As time went by, I loosened up more and I could speak faster and more understandably, at that time people told me where I was from and how long ago I arrived, I guess it was because my accent was too strong and I didn’t sound like them. Once I started working as a mechanic in the Bronx I used to speak more English than Spanish and I began to feel more comfortable, however, the questions they asked me when I met someone new changed, now they told me that they liked my mixed accent, that Where he was from. I only answered that from Ecuador but I live in the Bronx. They answered me “yes, you kinda have a Bronx accent”, the first time I heard that I didn’t understand what they meant because to me they all sound the same, but there was a change in my accent because in my work most of the clients I interacted with were black and Hispanic people born or raised in the Bronx, so I kind of adopted that way of speaking.

To be honest, this situation is complicated by the different ways in which it can affect different English, I think I was lucky that in my case it was nothing drastic or problematic, it was just the natural process of adapting to a new place. Just like Juan said, “We are empty bank accounts”, people just filled with checks or experience to me.