Steve Simmons wrote: > > The Mexicans couldn't understand the Portuguese at all. But us Anglo > kids who spoke OK Spanish could struggle thru the Portuguese and > ferret out the meanings. My guess is that our ears were tuned to > deal with badly pronounced Spanish and Russian accents, so the > differences between Portuguese and Spanish didn't throw us off as > badly as it did the > native Spanish speakers. Plus we'd been learning Castillian Spanish > rather than Tiajuana street Spanish. I'm not fluent in Spanish. But when I watched _Como Agua Para Chocolate_, I found when the Texan spoke Spanish, I had no need to look at subtitles. He was very easy to understand. I asked a Spanish speaking friend and was told that that character had a strong American accent.