Language between friends

I watched this videos in my listening class during my first week in Sevilla. Cruzcampo is the prized beer of Andalucía, and you'd be a crazy Sevillano not to like it. The commercial shows many of Andalucía's delicacies until the end, when the dramatic voiceover says, "Cruzcampo: made of Andalucía." If you watch, you'll see a pretty Spanish girl holding a sign (colorado means colored, not referring to the state), and she covers the D. The Andalucían accent, luckily for us American students, is not only fast but also eats the D's and S's at the end of a word. During this chalkboard moment, the narrator exclaims that this way of speaking is 'not an accent-- it's a language between friends.'

I was walking home from tapas with my friend this afternoon, about to point out that I was jealous of the accent a woman in passing had, and that I agreed with our friend who had said the other day that he wants the Andaluz accent, despite the fact that outside of Spain he wouldn't be easily understood. Before I could point out my envy, I thought about this commercial and suddenly understood the profundity of Cruzcampo's marketing strategy. Despite their wanting to sell beer, Cruzcampo really hit the small head of a big nail. Upon arriving in Sevilla, I was overwhelmingly trying to pick up on any word I could understand, often returning friendly conversation with confused glares. Slowly as my Spanish improved, I became more excited each day to actually converse with locals and better understand the culture. But I have recently realized, it is not only the words in a language that create a culture; the way in which members of a community communicate is incredibly forceful in shaping the relationships we have with one another and thus the way we choose to live our lives. There is so much more to language than words.