Author: Erin

Anon

A few years ago a girl at my English department at a German university had her final oral exam to become a teacher. Unfortunately this girl spoke English with a very heavy Swabian (southern German) accent/dialect. The external examiner who was from northern Germany was close to failing her. To be honest her English was very difficult to understand. And only after the girl’s supervisor insisted that she’ll only teach English in southern German schools (because that’s how the teacher program used to work in Germany) was the external willing to let her pass with a 4 (the worst possible grade he could give her without failing her).

On a personal level, I’ve lived in the US and UK for about 10 years now but as a German I occasionally still get the v/w distinction wrong. Especially when I’m tired. Saying vikipedia instead of wikipedia always gets a few good laughs in the office.

Rebecca

I am currently studying to be a speech and language therapist in the south of England. I noticed during my phonetics classes that there was no teaching on the vowels and allophones used in my accent (or any that weren’t RP). When I questioned my lecturer she responded she’d never considered it, didn’t think it was relevant and wouldn’t be useful.

Shiraz

I was a child growing up in a rough part of Croydon and attending a normal local primary school. Because my parents were immigrants, they encouraged my sister and me to ‘speak properly’, so I wasn’t allowed to speak like the other kids even if I’d wanted to. As a result, I was bullied for the way I spoke. However, now, I fully acknowledge that my RP accent is more likely to get me places in life than if I spoke with a Cockney accent, and this is unjust. I even take issue with the phrase ‘well-spoken’, which basically means middle- to upper-class RP and nothing else, and it’s an erasive and discriminatory term that reinforces negative stereotypes of people with all different types of accents, as if they’re automatically idiots because they don’t speak with a BBC newsreader accent.

Ozaru

RP speaker in Japan, late 1980s.

There were many tales of discrimination of various types, both for and against ‘outsiders’ (with quite different attitudes towards whites, blacks and Asians), as detailed by Arudo Debito amongst others. Many were flattering, amusing, or mildly irritating, rather than distressing – for example, one Western friend (fluent in Japanese) who had a perfectly normal conversation with an eyes-down shopkeeper until the latter looked up and realized it was a ‘foreigner’… whereupon they suddenly lost the ability to understand any of the Japanese said gaijin was saying.

One experience of my own: I telephoned an estate agent. My Japanese was good, but evidently still had some kind of twang to it.

“Are you foreign? We don’t let to foreigners.”

I fibbed: “No, I’m just from [a remote area], maybe it’s our local accent?”

“Ah, that’s OK then”.

Bryanna

I’m from Long Island NY, from a family with a pretty light accent to begin with, or so I thought. When I went away to college (the first one in my immediate family) to upstate NY the first thing that I knew had to go was my accent. Every time I said anything with my natural lilt my roommates were laughing and demanding I repeat certain words for their entertainment because it was just so funny. I was majoring in Linguistics and when we learned phonetics in the introduction class I used that understanding to change how I spoke. The making fun stopped and no one could tell where I was from anymore; I had to lose a piece of my identity to be accepted by my peers here and more broadly in academia as I’m now working on my PhD.

Adam

Man who’s just been introduced to me in a pub: ‘You don’t SOUND Australian’.

His partner: ‘Well perhaps he’s got a posh Australian accent?’

Man: ‘Oxymoron, dear. Don’t be silly!’

Sid

Just went to a shop and with my now weak Scottish accent spoke to the staff, he jerked his head up and looked at me with a frown trying to place it. nothing was said but the frown…

Montserrat

Once my older brother took a taxi in Madrid. He often goes to the capital for business. During the trip he was called to his mobile phone. When he heard him talking, the taxi driver stopped and ordered him to get out of the cab. He had recognized that he was speaking Catalan.

Madeleine

Undergrad at York, during phonetics tutorials one awful guy kept asking me to repeat words in my hilarious Cheshire accent (nuts, cup, bus etc) – are you studying linguistics because you talk weird, did they close all the coal mines back home etc. More fool him it was actually SALT mines in my town not coal…ha!…now after PhD I have had comments at networking events about ‘doing very well for yourself considering…’

Natsumi

‘I did not expect THAT!’ – Reaction over an American accent coming from an Asian girl.

‘How is your English so good?’ – Presumption that my native language can’t be English.

‘No, you ARE American’ – This guy started a fight over this, convinced he knew me better.