Amazingly it turns out someone other than my friend Jon from work reads my website.  My post about learning Irish Spanish actually got a response from Mark, the host of the podcast.  It turns out that among the things I was wrong about is that he’s Scottish and not Irish.  I have to admit that after I wrote that post I had a nagging feeling I had gotten that wrong.  I didn’t figure it would somehow get back to the people that do the show.  Ah well, a fairly gentle way to learn the lesson of how public speech on the Internet really is.

As penitence, Mark, I promise to listen to a few more episodes.  You can listen for yourself and decide if he speaks his Spanish with a Scottish accent or not at Coffee Break Spanish.

Here’s the full text of his comment:

Hi there to the Watson family. I’m Mark from Coffee Break Spanish and there are a couple of things I think I should point out. First of all, we’re Scottish, not Irish! Not that I’ve got anything against our Irish neighbours, but I’m equally proud of my Scottish heritage! We do indeed speak in Scottish accents when we speak English (as is normal for Scots, I guess), but, as the teacher, I certainly don’t have a Scottish (or Irish!) accent when I speak Spanish. I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain, and if you have a look at the comments on our blog and website, and reviews on iTunes you’ll see that quite a number of people have commented on my excellent Spanish accent.

I’m not trying to make a big deal of this, but you’ll understand that if people are claiming that learning Spanish from a Scot is pointless because the Scot doesn’t speak Spanish with a proper Spanish accent then this is quite likely to affect our podcast and therefore our business. My Spanish accent is peninsular Spanish, having spent time in Salamanca, Madrid and the Balearics. It is not, perhaps, the Latin American Spanish accent you may be more used to.

I’d encourage you to listen to more of the podcast, and in particular to listen to the early shows where we give lots more information about the podcast and why I’m the teacher and Kara is the learner. As a learner, obviously Kara will be trying her best to develop her accent and she has, in fact, made excellent progress in the past few months. Compare her Spanish accent in lesson 1 to her accent in lesson 17 for example!

I wish you well with your continued study of Spanish.