Watching Spanish language television in old-time Phoenix


I don't recall watching KPAZ-TV, which was on channel 21 in Phoenix, when I first moved there in the '70s. I had a tiny little borrowed TV, and as I recall was glad to just get the VHF channels, and it didn't have a UHF antenna. By the way, VHF means Very High Frequency (which I always considered a vague term) and UHF is Ultra High Frequency (which I remember being able to get on the TV back home in Minneapolis, and made me feel as if I were getting something no one else knew about, although there wasn't much on the UHF channels.)

Anyway, after I moved back to Phoenix, in 1989, I decided to continue to brush up on my Spanish, and so I would watch Spanish language television every once in a while. If you've ever watched it, you know that it can be, ahem, rather more revealing than the usual channels, especially when the weather forecast is being done. I would watch the weather forecast, and study my Spanish! I'm not going to say anymore here, as the English-speaking world, and Google, tends to be kinda prudish about certain things, and I respect that.

What I discovered when I moved back to Phoenix from Los Angeles is that while Spanish is common, very few people speak Spanish exclusively, like they did in my neighborhood in Canoga Park, California. Yes, of course a lot of people speak Spanish, but I found that most people preferred to speak English with me. They wanted to practice their English, and were not very helpful to me for practicing my Spanish! To this day I can read Spanish much better than I can hear it, as it seems to be going by too quickly. I don't watch Spanish language television anymore as I now have friends who are happy to speak Spanish, and do it slowly, so I can practice.

By the way, although my ear isn't sharp enough to detect accents, I was told a few years ago that my accent when I speak Spanish is Mexican. I was told this by people who were from Spain. And it makes sense - the Spanish I've heard all of my adult life has been from Mexico, not Spain. I studied Castilian in high school, and was told to smile to pronounce the words correctly, but it faded away. My advanced studied were with my friends in LA, and on Spanish language TV in Phoenix!

Image at the top of this post: Looking east on McDowell at 45th Street in the early 1970s.
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