Spoken Language Accents and Their Cultural Implications

Accents… We all have them.  Well, some of us don’t.  Or at least many of us think we don’t even though we do.  It’s interesting how even when a language is shared, our various cultures alter it or are influenced by other languages.  Letters get ignored, sounds changed, and although not always spoken to reflect it, words have their spellings changed.  We accept that other people talk funny, but the sociological implications are broad.  Accents tell people a lot about who you are, where you came from, perhaps where you were educated and perhaps how long you’ve been in a country.  Even though these effects are multiplied many times over throughout the world, I’ll focus on accents people have with English here in the U.S. because I don’t understand what goes on in other countries.

Travel and earn money by teaching English.

From what I’ve read, “news English” or normal English is what is spoken somewhere in Pennsylvania.  I always thought it was Cleveland English, but I guess us calling Coke “pop” disqualifies us from that distinction.  Even the late Peter Jennings, a Canadian, spoke perfect standard American English.  Maybe that’s why people liked to watch him.  If he had used his Canadian accent, with words like “aboot” instead of “about”, he would have never made it so far.  He is just one example of how much an accent can affect your life.  People with British accents seem intelligent to us Americans even if the person may be as dumb as a proverbial rock.  Most of us can’t tell the difference between different British accents, so we lump them together.   When it comes to Southern accents, the reverse is true. 

I would venture to say that most people subtract points from the first impression intelligence test for people with Southern or Texas accents, even if the person is a genius.  Accents for people from other non-English speaking countries are generally made fun of.  But we should be happy that the person speaks English to begin with.  It makes communicating a whole lot easier and chances are, we probably don’t know their language very well. People with Indian language, Chinese language, or Spanish influenced accents are often ridiculed.  I don’t know why, but for some reason, it’s funny when an accent is exaggerated.  Back when I took improv comedy classes at Second City Detroit, the bit I did which got the most laughs was my Indian accented character.  People were dying of laughter which I appreciated but didn’t totally get.  Then I thought I was just perpetuating stereotypes and ridiculing people who share my culture.  So, I don’t do the Indian accent very often, and I don’t think I will on a stage.  Doing so reduces the respect people with that accent get.  It doesn’t help in the job market or in the dating world. I can imitate a generic Indian accent, even though that varies by region of India since they speak many languages there.  That made me notice why people have accents.  It stems from the person’s native language. 

All languages don’t use all human-possible alphabetic sounds.  Trying to learn a language that uses sounds which are new to you leads to not speaking it very well.  There are no short ‘i’, or short ‘a’ sounds in many of the northern Indian languages, and there are no ‘kh’ (versus ‘k’), and no ‘una’ sounds in English, so I have a tough time speaking Gujarati properly.  It’s what you grew up learning that matters although multilingual kids are probably more adept at picking up new languages later in life.  Some people think what matters is your genetics.  I doubt it makes much difference, but what if our voice boxes are genetically predisposed to being better at the languages our ancestors have spoken?  Maybe this influenced language development. As an Indian American, I can’t remember all the times that I’ve been told that I don’t “sound Indian.”  Some of the more ignorant ones assume that brown skin leads to an Indian accent.  (But then, these are some of the same people who call me “O’toole, as if I were Irish.)  I am O’toole only on St. Patrick’s Day. 

+ Atul

Comments

[chancelucky]

Supposedly language is something that wires into the brain by roughly age 7. You can actually get raised in multiple languages, but if you learn a language after age 7 you learn it through the filter of your original language. People do often learn to speak a later language without an accent, but it's very difficult.