Can you hear beyond an accent
Transcriber: Thi Nguyen
Reviewer: Eunice Tan
Monday morning.
Your typical start to the week
with a coffee and a catch-up
with your colleagues.
I rushed straight over
to my colleague Phil.
I said, ‘Phil, my uncle bought a cannery.’
[CANNERY]
I was met with a puzzled face
and a blank stare.
So I repeated the word again
with more passion and excitement.
I said, ‘A yellow cannery?’
I was hoping to provide
more information in the form of colour.
Still I had no luck.
I could sense the growing feeling
of frustration and awkwardness
between us both.
I started to feel anxious.
So in my last desperate attempt,
I dug deeper to provide more information
to this guessing game.
I remembered that the yellow canary
was a popular Looney Tunes character
that had a friend,
a black cat called Sylvester.
I believe this was a turning point
in our conversation with Phil,
and a penny dropped for him.
He asked, ‘Tweety?’
I happily shouted
as my face lit up, ‘Yes, Tweety!’
He laughed out loud
and enlightened me
with the correct pronunciation
of the yellow bird called a canary.
I accepted the fate
and apologised for my accent.
I realised that day that I will always
be a canary singing in a cannery.
This story illustrates
the many awkward situations
and conversations I have experienced
on my journey to master
the English language
with a Northern Irish accent.
I moved to Northern Ireland 16 years ago,
and I couldn’t speak a word of English.
The language what
I experienced on arrival
was not what I was used to hearing on TV
or what I learnt in school.
Everything was different:
the words, the accents,
the slang and the speed of speech.
I spent my first 12 months
lip-reading and listening
and observing the people
who I worked with.
After every shift in the evening,
I went back, and I was reading
the children’s books
and just researching
the words I couldn’t understand
In the dictionary I brought with me.
I immersed myself into the language
of the community that welcomed me in.
At the weekends, I was invited
to spend time with the local people,
where I had many opportunities
to learn all the jokes and the idioms.
I wanted to master
this tongue-twisting accent
of the social group I was invited to.
We learn to imitate
the words and the sounds
from the people close to us.
We create our own accents,
and we carry those with us.
Our accents and speech change
as we move through life:
when we move to a new country,
when we learn a new language
or join a new community.
I happened to do all three
at the same time.
Language is perhaps the most human
manifestation of our intelligence.
There are over seven billion people
speaking more than 7,000 languages.
The English-speaking community
is the largest in the world.
According to Ethnologue
language research,
there are over 1.3 billion
English speakers across 146 countries.
This figure represents both
native and non-native speakers.
In general, people struggle to imagine
the concept of how challenging it is
to lead a professional career
in a second language.
The effort of having to keep up
with your colleagues
using jargon, metaphors,
abbreviations, idioms
takes years to master.
The burden of bridging
the communication gap
falls on the shoulders
of the non-native speaker,
who must work harder to keep up.
Can you imagine how fluently I must
be able to speak in a second language
to be able to communicate
ideas worth spreading?
I want to encourage your curiosity
to think and hear beyond my accent.
The way we speak
shapes the world we live in.
And every time we speak,
we reveal a small part of our identity
to the people and
to the world to interpret.
We wear our accents on our sleeves.
And often,
we open ourselves to stereotyping,
misunderstandings and assumptions.
There are three common misconceptions
people have about accents.
The first one is that everyone
has an accent apart from you.
Everyone who speaks has an accent.
The second misconception is that everyone
hears accents the same way as you do.
One person may find my accent strong;
another may disagree.
The third misconception is the listener
thinking that they cannot understand.
People tend to underestimate
their own abilities.
Often, we are called poor communicators,
whereas we might be talking
to a poor listener instead.
By becoming active in listening,
clarifying and reflecting,
we can create better
experiences for each other.
When we aren’t exposed
to different accents,
our brain does not have enough information
to correctly identify what it is hearing,
so it tries to fill in the missing pieces
from its database of past experiences.
By exposing ourselves
to new accents and different accents,
we can grow our database
and we can shrink our bias.
There are many positive aspects
of learning multiple languages.
A linguistically challenged brain
processes information more efficiently
and slows down cognitive decline.
You can sharpen your brain at any stage
of your life by learning a new language.
By engaging in this process,
you indirectly enhance
your social and communication skills.
You become more aware
of cultural differences,
language nuances and complex situations.
You are moving from simply hearing
to actively listening.
Next time you speak to a person
who may sound different to you,
imagine the different colours
and patterns of a kaleidoscope
that represent one’s identity,
heritage and journey through life.
If I were to ask you to name
all the colours you see in a kaleidoscope,
you wouldn’t be able
to distinguish them all clearly.
Those are our personality traits.
But you could, however, tell some
of the large groups of the colours
that represent our stereotypes
that we associate with those accents.
When we hear a person speak,
we don’t listen to the words -
we hear sounds.
We instantly start to process
what we can hear
and look for shortcuts of information
that we can use to categorise the person.
By remembering the colourful
pattern of a kaleidoscope,
I want you to imagine a world
where we can hear beyond an accent
and see the human behind the voice.
My voice creates my accent,
my accent completes my speech,
my speech tells my story,
and my story reveals my identity.
For years, I was trying to hide
who I was and how I sounded.
I had to rediscover my own identity,
my culture and my heritage.
I am proud to be a Slovakian woman
but of Hungarian heritage.
I learnt two beautiful
languages as a child.
‘Az első szavaimat magyarul mondtam’
means that I spoke
my first words in Hungarian.
‘A prvé slová som písala po slovensky’ -
I wrote my first words in Slovakian.
Let’s celebrate
the beauty and distinction.
Celebrate that we can offer insights
into cultures through our accents
and find common ground
through our differences.
Anywhere I travel to,
my ears will always perk up when I hear
a familiar language or an accent.
We have a strong connection to both
that drives our bias and our appreciation.
You have heard me speak
three different languages.
Each one is a window into a new culture
that are all part of my identity.
Let’s use our languages
to welcome people into our cultures
and our accents as a key
to unlock potential
to being more inclusive,
being better listeners
and having great conversations.
The art of conversation
is in the delivery of the speaker
and the ear of the listener.
So speak with confidence
and listen with intent.