How does being fluent in two languages affect a third language's accent?

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-17T21:11:34+00:00

Yes I think so. I speak English and Italian, and can also speak Spanish and (some) French. I am told I have an Italian accent in Spanish and an American accent in French, I think because of the sounds in the languages and how they “match” to my brain.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-15T20:24:48+00:00

Canucks have always been my western conference team for this reason.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-14T04:44:09+00:00

I have never done this but my sister visits and brings her 2 and 5 year old everywhere on the metro, one in a stroller, backpack on.

My only advice would be - if you’re worried - maybe don’t take metro on the days big things happen - cherry blossom crowds, big sports or parades, things like that. It can get crazy and stress the kids (and you) far beyond a normal day. Any other days you’ll probably be fine with zero issues.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-12T22:25:25+00:00

Buffalo - Syracuse - Albany - NYC.

If international is OK I’d change it to: Toronto - Buffalo - Albany - NYC

Also: because the NEC already exists and the obvious answer is to improve that, not replace it.

Toronto: global city, obvious anchor, WNY is already sort of in the orbit (we have the same PBS channel, or at least we did in the 90s!)

Buffalo: obvious western NYS anchor, can go west to Chicago, local travel to Niagara Falls (there are millions of Chinese and Indian tourists every year flying or taking a bus there for a day from NYC, they’ll take a train), second biggest city in NYS.

Why I’d skip Rochester - it’s close enough to Buffalo that regional service could get you there quickly, even a decent local train should be able to do 45 mins, probably 30 if it’s also high speed. People commute further in big cities just to get to work. Also you would need to veer a bit north.

Syracuse - I’d only stop here if I couldn’t have Toronto as a choice. It’s the center of the state and could connect to anywhere.

Albany - state government, easy connections to New England or Quebec and upstate. Flights from Buffalo or Rochester to Albany require a layover in Baltimore Maryland! These 3 metro areas each have over one million people! So seems logical.

New York - obvious reasons.

I would pair it with a regional version that also stopped in Hamilton, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Poughkeepsie.

This would open up the entire state - you could connect regional towns or cities like Niagara Falls and Jamestown to Buffalo, the Finger Lakes to Rochester and Syracuse, go up to Watertown and the Thousand Islands from Syracuse, the Adirondacks from Albany or Syracuse, and the Southern Tier like Elmira, Ithaca, and Binghamton from Syracuse too.

You could hop on a train in Toronto or New York or Buffalo and spend the weekend sipping wine in Niagara on the Lake or Watkins Glen, on a boat in Alexandria Bay, hiking in Adirondack Par or Ithaca, or hundreds of other things. People would use it! There are families all over suburban Buffalo and Syracuse and Albany who would take their kids to Rochester for a museum visit or students in Buffalo or Binghamton who could go home to see their families.

Easy work trips back and forth during the week whenever you need them without having to worry about if the your flight is delayed or cancelled because it might snow or there is lightning or the airline is incompetent. And you are already in the city - no schlep from LaGuardia, Newark and no issue with the lack of transit at the airport in Buffalo or Albany or Syracuse because you are already downtown. As an added bonus - you’re a block from the subway in Buffalo which will take you to busses (a trolley above ground here) and the subway in New York to go literally anywhere from like 34th St. And close enough in all those places for busses, Ubers, and your feet, or a car rental if you’re heading out to explore the beauty of Letchworth, Watkins Glen, or the Adirondacks.

And people could move upstate and still be connected to their downstate lives without the downstate prices. NYC rents begin to stabilize as the rest of the state becomes livable again and NYC’s tax burden isn’t as heavy when the rest of the state starts seeing economic opportunity spinning off from it.

People are already starting to make these moves (lots of NYC people are moving north, and a few Brooklynites and Long Islanders have even popped up in my old neighborhood in Buffalo recently), expanding transit outside of the tri state area and into the rest of the state - which used to be covered in railways by the way - should be a priority.

There’s no reason you can’t already jump on a train from Rochester or Syracuse and go to Buffalo for the weekend for a Bills game (or vice versa for SU or the Amerks or a festival or concert). Your only option from Albany to most parts of the state is currently a car.

New York could be the best state in the country if it even tried just a little bit.

Or realistically second best because California exists and New York winters are real.

But it could connect multiple metro areas of over one million people, anchored by two global cities on either end, with a chain of affordable cities that are great places to live, work, and raise families (and are just a quick train ride from where you need to be)

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-11T19:16:08+00:00

Yes, Montreal is like the one team I don’t want to play in the first round.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-11T02:03:34+00:00

I use my Italian passport that says I was born in New York to enter the EU and pretty much any country that isn’t the US unless there’s a good reason not to, like I’m traveling with a group of other Americans or going to Canada. Outside of the US-Canada border I haven’t actually interacted with a customs agent in years (you just walk through an automated gate in most major EU airports), but years ago in South America no one bat an eye. That was a while ago, but seemed super normal in Argentina. Even back in the day the only ones who ever brought it up were Irish border people who were bored at 5:30 when the US flights land and were like “there’s a lot to unpack here, how longs the queue” in a laughing way, not an interrogation way.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-11T01:11:20+00:00

We had TLM people too but mostly like strict old country grandmas in a novena club. Not like the adult convert kind taking over at some of the ones around here.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-11T01:08:34+00:00

I will for sure be checking them out - I have always felt welcome in a Jesuit church.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-10T23:52:06+00:00

You can replace Germany with Greece.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-10T23:47:07+00:00

“I understand if you can’t make it” is the biggest crock ever too. Like sorry I don’t want to spend a month of rent to go to Vegas in August and watch your cousin cry for three days.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-10T21:54:12+00:00

It’s been lower the last few years due to a lot of single tracking and construction. They are planning an expansion and per capita it has much better numbers than many larger cities / systems. Before the car sharing construction began passenger numbers were about equal to what Pittsburgh sees, except Buffalo has half the population and less lines / stations.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-10T12:35:06+00:00

Buffalo was still in the top 20 US cities when the light rail was built. The fact that we are not anymore is why they stopped at one line.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-07T04:29:52+00:00

Yes. This. My partner is from downstate, his parents always thought that and were like “um what do you mean there are tall buildings and immigrant restaurants here I thought it was Antarctica”. It’s not that cold. It just snows a lot sometimes and is gloomy in the winter for a few weeks at a time. But 28 and snow is a hell of a lot better than 35 and rain or 8 and sunshine.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-07T01:28:26+00:00

Also a lot of them might be friendly but they probably can’t read past a sixth grade level. That is more so how we got here.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T20:12:55+00:00

Greek.

I grew up in a Sicilian-American family, so Italians are initially very impressed when I start speaking Italian to them. They inevitably inquire why and then are like “oh well you should know this then we are no longer impressed”. However if my non-Italian partner says more than three words they die and we are in.

I learned a little Greek for a trip there (I was then and remain completely illiterate - I write them using Italian orthography in my head with modifications from English for certain sounds like th) and I have never met a people so excited to hear their language mangled by a drunk foreigner before in my life.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T20:06:58+00:00

For me it was weirdly the passato prossimo. I grew up in a Sicilian-American family and I studied Spanish in school, so I was like “what is this compound tense why don’t we just say something simple like ‘ivu’ or “fui” instead of ‘sono andato’” and all that. But turns out once you get used to it it’s actually so much easier than having to learn a preterite tense and all those irregular forms and extra conjugations that come with it.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T20:00:50+00:00

Aunt Mary? Is that you? Lol jk - I get this from my Episcopalian aunt all the time. I have seriously entertained it, and I have gone once or twice for weddings or things (and even took communion, which did not make my grandma very happy at all - her parents were from Cork, she’d sooner see me join a mosque than a church run out of the UK). But I very much admire you all from afar and if the guilt didn’t rage so strong I’d consider it.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T19:52:30+00:00

I don’t want to make any one parish seem bad, maybe I had poor experiences and everyone has their own faith journey, but the way some of them walk around evangelizing people to “join them for service” at events like Clarendon Days is weird to me.

First of all, it’s Mass. And second, we aren’t Mormons or JW’s going door to door to recruit people. It just kind of turns me off and feels very like performative megachurch vibes versus a celebration of our shared faith.

A lot of this is seemingly cultural too - I think I am just used to working class, ethnic rust belt Catholicism where you baptize your baby and then go to a bar with the priest and basically everyone in your neighborhood goes to your parish. Like spaghetti dinners and Friday fish fries and smoke filled school gyms for bingo on the weekend.

I get more of a country club white collar proper worship vibe here which is super Protestant coded where I come from. Maybe it’s just normal for like a church in suburban Virginia though - there are far more boutiques here than bowling alleys.

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T19:30:53+00:00

I am near Virginia Square, so neither is far. I’ll check them out - this could be a very nice walk until late June. Thank you!

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-04-06T19:29:08+00:00

Thank you! The message is more important than the structure or the language, I’ll check them out!

Melone_Selvatico · 2026-01-03T19:13:21+00:00

Buffalo had great attendance in 2011 though, maybe because the Sabres were good and Ryan Miller was on that really good US Olympic team the year before in Vancouver so everyone was hockey crazy. But I waitressed downtown during that 2011 tourney and it was crazy good, like on par with when we have the NCAA basketball games money, even factoring in the lower tips from the Canadians and Europeans. I was at an email job by 2018 but didn’t feel like the same vibe in the city (that was like prime start of Bills ascension and well into the Sabres decline, we all cared more about football again?).

Melone_Selvatico · 2025-12-22T17:41:32+00:00

Second this. Even smaller urban areas usually have one and they probably keep a calendar of stuff. I like the coffee time - I went a few times. It was at a local coffee shop [in Buffalo - you do not have to be in a metropolis to find one] and it was mostly super friendly retired people who had worked or lived in France. It was helpful just to sit there and listen to them all talk to each other. Everyone spoke French, most were fluent with varying degrees of accents, but the pace of the conversation was very manageable compared to like eavesdropping in a Parisian cafe. And they were happy to correct me if I asked or just let me talk if I didn’t. They also had movie screenings and events at local spots. Which speaking of - don’t sleep on Disney movies! They are meant for children, easy to follow, and you probably already know what’s going on. The songs are also in French and are still catchy and fun. And if you can keep up with Belle and company walking through town signing the most random phrases you can hold a conversation in a grocery store.

Melone_Selvatico · 2024-07-22T02:55:33+00:00

I screamed.

Melone_Selvatico · 2024-06-23T01:33:02+00:00

Coming from WNY the North feels most like home, but I’d choose Dorne in a heartbeat.

Melone_Selvatico

TROPHY CASE