Learning to love your accent
[Music]
if you are british
and you have a friend who’s not british
or you’ve traveled to a different
country before
chances are you’ve heard someone tell
you that they love your accent
not being british myself i’m 100 guilty
of having done this before
our fascination towards accents is
nothing new
all over the internet there are memes
and videos of people
trying to imitate different accents
around the world
take this for example try saying rise of
lights
sounds like you’re saying razor blades
in an australian accent
what i’m trying to say is people have
always been fascinated by accents
and with good reason they’re what makes
us unique
they’re how people identify us say
you see someone with blonde hair and
blue eyes
for all you know they could be from
anywhere but
if they start talking with an irish
accent then you know that they’re
probably irish
similarly if a person starts speaking in
a heavy southern accent
chances are they grew up eating a lot of
fried chicken
your accent is not only how others
identify you
it’s also how you identify yourself
it ties us to our identity in a similar
way that our gender and our race does
because of how incredibly unique every
accent is
you can actually use it to discover more
about your family’s history
people like referring broadly to the
american accent or the british accent
but that is a huge generalization
take the us for example where people
like talking about the
oh my gosh totally valley girl accent
that’s
actually only common in places like la
but if you go to the south there ain’t a
lot of that down there y’all
this difference isn’t limited to the
english language either
take mandarin for example in beijing
they curl their r’s a lot but in taiwan
where they speak the same language it’s
much softer and gentler
to say i am a student a beijing mandarin
speaker would say
well sure he goes well a taiwanese
mandarin speaker would say
well she goes see
the difference isn’t huge but it is
there
because of these indicators between
different accents
you can actually use it to learn more
about your own ancestry
which makes it an important part of who
you are
this made me wonder why on earth are
accents a thing
are they permanent or can we change them
and
most importantly why do we associate
certain assumptions and stereotypes with
certain accents
well today we’re going to dive into what
your accent says
about you first let’s dig into what an
accent is
the term refers to the way words are
pronounced
every person has an accent that is the
unique result of
how when and where they learned the
language they speak
as a result your accent can tell a lot
about you
from the community that you grew up in
to your family’s background and history
the most common type of accent that we
refer to is the native accent
where a person develops their accent
through their mother tongue
but here’s the thing our circumstances
change people move travel and meet
people
from all around the world and as a
result
accents can and do transform
when we come across another distinct
group it is possible to pick up another
accent
either by choice or by long-term
exposure
and this is called your foreign or
additional accent
take me for example since guangdong or
cantonese
is my mother tongue the english accent
that i’m using right now
is my foreign accent
now that we’ve understood the basics of
what accents are and how they can
actually change
under certain circumstances let’s dive
into the most glaring topic when it
comes to accents
the stereotypes discriminations and the
assumptions that come with some of them
now i attend a private boarding school
in britain as an international student
and as such i faced my fair share of
challenges and hurdles
when it comes to my accent now
before you click of this video and call
me a private school snob in the comments
section below
just hear me out first us international
students get a lot of slack
and while some of that might be deserved
being one is not as easy as you might
think
as someone from hong kong i’ve grown up
and lived my entire life
in a predominantly cantonese-speaking
community
and to come here and suddenly find that
everything’s in english
from the textbooks to the groceries to
the news when you turn on tv
and to have to adjust to everyone around
you speaking english
all the time while we do expect that
before we come here
the difference is still jarring and it
can be intimidating
and scary at first not to mention
we’re also faced with the constant
pressure of having to speak
english all the time because if we don’t
do that
people around us might take offense to
it and while that is
understandable it still puts a lot of
pressure on us
i know a lot of my friends who are in
similar situations
who have found it incredibly hard to
adjust to this change
and as such they take it very hard in
themselves
because a lot of international students
aren’t confident
with their accent or their ability to
speak english
many of them choose to be quiet and not
talk to anybody
a lot of the times they might also find
it more comfortable sticking with people
from their hometown
because they’re embarrassed and afraid
to talk to the locals
not only can this experience be
incredibly lonely
it can also create a huge barrier
between local and international students
and make it hard for foreign students to
integrate
into local school life and live like a
normal student would
which is obviously unfortunate because
your accent
shouldn’t limit you from experiencing
life
now i can’t speak for them nor can i
fully understand what they’re going
through
but for me personally my adjustment
period
was ultimately a process that involved a
lot of shame
and self-doubt back at home i was
really confident in my ability to speak
english but
when i first came here all of that
changed
now everyone around me could speak
english fluently
and way better than i could and i
started to really doubt
my abilities and my intelligence i even
started to feel
inferior almost and ashamed of my accent
growing up english literature has always
been one of my favorite subjects
and that’s why when i switched to my
current school in britain from my
previous school in hong kong
i kept it as one of my electives
everyone around me kept telling me that
it was such a stupid thing to do
that i wouldn’t be able to hold a candle
to the locals here and then
i should choose maths instead even
though i’m terrible at maths
but because i’m asian it doesn’t matter
right
well i didn’t end up listening to them
and i stuck with my original decision
however when i first came here because i
was so ashamed of my accent
i started to doubt my ability to do well
in class
i felt very frustrated with myself and i
kept on asking myself
why can’t i speak english the way that
my classmates can
what is wrong with me and why am i not
good enough
week after week though i began to
realize that
this self-doubt this feeling of
inferiority
and shame it was all in my mind
my accent is not an indicator of my
abilities and it is definitely not an
indicator of my intelligence
i think the thing that a lot of foreign
students do is that
they focus way too much on their accent
and how it’s not good enough
how it doesn’t sound native enough that
they forget
that being able to speak a completely
different language on a day-to-day basis
is an amazing thing to do in it of
itself
retreating into yourself and sticking to
people from your hometown
might seem like an appealing and easy
decision
but it is ultimately not helpful because
not only does it limit the people you
talk to
it also limits the things you can
experience
so if you are foreign and you’re afraid
to talk to the locals
let me tell you something you’re not the
only one
your accent shouldn’t hold you back from
experiencing life though
and remember the more you practice
speaking in an accent and the more
you’re exposed to it
the more native it is going to sound so
if that is your goal there is no better
way to do it
so get out of your comfort zone and put
yourself
out there
this experience isn’t limited to foreign
students only
if you are new to a predominantly
english speaking country
like me chances are you’ve been through
the same thing
you’ve probably also heard someone tell
you this
is our country speak english
which can i just say i find such a
strange thing to tell somebody
because if you’ve been to virtually any
non-english speaking country before
99 of the locals there won’t expect you
to speak their language
much less do it fluently like if you
come to hong kong
and you can even speak one word in
cantonese
everyone is going to be so impressed
with you
a lot of people have very strong
feelings about
foreign accents and they believe that
immigrants should be able to speak
english perfectly and fluently
which is basically biologically
impossible
for foreign speakers to do this is
because the most
critical period of brain development
happens at six months old
this is when your brain begins to
recognize phonemes which are the
distinct
units of sounds in a specific language
that separate one word from the other
after the age of six it has been
scientifically proven
that your ability to change your accent
has been greatly diminished
and from the age of 12 the length of
residence has almost
zero effect on your accent that’s why
it’s so hard for native speakers to lose
or to change their accent
and why it’s so hard for foreign
speakers to develop a native accent
in a language that isn’t in their mother
tongue
because of how early accents are formed
and their largely permanent nature
they can become barriers because they
can represent
different life experiences studies on
babies have even found
that actions play an even bigger role in
perception than the likes of
gender and race as a result
these barriers can create stereotypes
and assumptions that can lead to
discrimination towards certain accidents
for example studies have found that
african-american speech patterns have
been statistically perceived to sound
more violent and less intelligent than
white speech
patterns another study found that the
majority of employers admitted to
discriminating against applicants
on the basis of their accent a third
study found that
working class candidates have a hard
time acquiring elite professions
despite having the relevant
qualifications and skills
purely because of the way they speak
a lot of the times how you hear someone
matters more
than what you actually hear them say
as humans we love to judge each other as
soon as the first word leaves someone’s
mouths
even as they continue to talk your brain
has already identified the type of
person they are
applying existing generalizations and
stereotypes about that type of person
and in a way categorizing them
people like to associate different
behaviors with different accents
and while sometimes that can hold some
truth a
lot of the times it is flown way out of
proportion
and this can lead to generalizations
about entire cultures
as we can see the discrimination towards
foreign accents is
very real and very problematic
individuals with non-standard accents
have to be constantly faced with
negative perceptions and prejudice
researchers have consistently found that
people with non-native actions are
judged as
less intelligent less educated
having poor language skills and
unpleasant to listen to
not only do native speakers subscribe to
these beliefs
people with actions themselves do that
as well
take my home city hong kong for example
where being able to speak english
fluently
makes you appear more educated growing
up
i was always told
which basically means it doesn’t matter
if your cantonese sucks
as long as your english is good you’ll
be fine
if a person is unable to speak english
fluently or has a strong cantonese
accent when they speak english
they’re automatically seen as having a
lower social status
a lot of the times this belief stems
from the long history of colonization
back in a time when british colonizers
held a higher stat
status in our own city as a result
being able to speak english fluently has
also been associated with prestige
an assumption that sadly still exists to
this day
i personally don’t have a very strong
foreign accent
compared to the average person from hong
kong in fact
i have kind of the opposite where i have
a very very slight english accent when i
speak cantonese
as a result i’ve received a lot of
undeserved praise and compliments
sometimes even from complete strangers
in regards to the way i speak
i still remember the time someone told
me they’re going to walk
which means that your cantonese sounds
kind of off
you must come from a great school
i didn’t know if i should have taken it
as a compliment or as an insult
on the other hand i have a lot of family
and friends
who don’t speak english as well mainly
because
they didn’t have the chance to learn it
from such a young age as i did and as a
result
they suffer from it tremendously on a
day-to-day basis
take my parents for example who grew up
in hong kong in a time when
it was not common to learn english from
a very young age when they first settled
in the uk
they faced extreme difficulties not only
because of cultural barriers
but also because of how locals perceived
their action to be
i was privileged in the sense that i
grew up with great english teachers
and i started learning english from a
very young age
but that simply is not the case for
everybody
and if studies are shown the older you
get the harder it is to develop a native
accent in a language that isn’t in your
mother tongue
because of how brain development affects
our ability to pronounce certain
phonemes
yes it’s possible for foreign speakers
to develop a more
native accent through hard work and
constant practice
but compared to a native speaker there
will
always be a difference but that’s okay
while it’s important for us foreign
speakers to continue to improve our
english
accent nobody should ever be embarrassed
about their accent instead as
multilingual people we should be proud
of our ability to speak multiple
different languages
as learning a different language is
actually one of the hardest things
you could ever do so be proud of your
progress
celebrate your differences and most
importantly
never be ashamed of your accent
as tom robbins said our similarities
bring us together
and our differences allow us to be
fascinated by each other
embrace your action and be proud of it
be it a native
or a foreign accent because at the end
of the day
it’s what makes you you
last but not least i’ve wanted to say
this for a very long time
thank you for coming to my ted talk
[Music]
you