The professor shared with us a story that I feel can be related with by one of my friends here. This professor was from the western side of New York State. Unlike a “standard” American accent, which many purport to be like that of Chicago newscasters, she had a regionalized Midwest accent that many people unfortunately could not understand.
And it’s really not that uncommon. Though I would be quick to point out several differences between a more standard Midwest accent and a Californian accent, in many ways characteristics of the two have converged with spoken media (such as Hollywood productions) becoming widespread, and as such, neutral. The logic of which is as follows: there is no one natural way of speaking. As such, everyone has an accent in the language(s) that he or she speaks, though some may be seen as more neutral than others due to exposure and proliferation.
This means that accents that aren’t heard on widespread media are generally understood less. So a regionalized accent such as Cajun, Scottish, or Southern, is often stigmatized as not being the norm. With such speakers’ non-standard pronunciation (and often grammatical forms as well as lexicon), they tend to stand apart from the crowd.
Such problems are made worse as students learning English as a second language are taught British Received Pronunciation or Standard American English. When learning a second language, students are taught what is wrong and what is right, and sometimes things are just different.
This story that she shared took place in Spain, with an audience from all around the world. It consisted of a guest lecture taking place in English by a German scholar. At the end of this scholar’s lecture, she asked a question, which received an answer. Afterwards, she heard people trying to figure out in hushed tones who “that woman who asked the question” was, because they could not understand her. These people were speakers of English as a second language, and in her experience she realized that being a native speaker of English did not automatically give her the ability to be understood in English-language settings. On top of that, she found that those people who spoke English as a second language felt they spoke better than her because they could not understand her regional accent.
Like I said, HKU is an English-language institution, which makes it arguably more attractive to a wider range of students over a different Chinese university where they would teach classes in Mandarin. As such, and possibly to my disadvantage, I rarely have to speak any form of Chinese here as most of the exchange students appear to converse to each other in English.
But this isn’t to talk about Cantonese again. Improperly so, this is to talk about English. I heart English, and as a student of linguistics, I’ve made a point of noticing all the different varieties I’ve heard.
To start, there are the people who’ve learned English as a second language. In that range, I’ve met and heard people from the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Norway.
Native English varieties I’ve heard are Scottish, British, Australian, Canadian, Californian, and Midwestern American. Some that I’ve mentioned I cannot be more specific about because I do not have enough experience with such varieties to the point where I could narrow it down further.
In particular, my friend from Scotland finds herself having trouble being understood the most. Except on the phone, I have little trouble understanding her. Though she is a native English speaker, the lack of understanding of her variety really shows how English is a world language of sorts.
So what have I seen?
Well, English speakers overall use most of the same words, so we can understand almost all of what we’re saying if we speak clearly. There are several words that I’ve not heard of and many more that have different meanings. The majority of the differences are in drastically different sounds.
So how do we cope?
Well we explain things to each other of course. We often make fun of each other though for the particular words that we use. It’s all in good fun. Part of learning about other people is being accepting and understanding.
I don’t have an accent, right?
Well no one thinks they really have an accent, because everyone feels like they speak naturally. So how has my speech changed since coming here?
Well for one, I’ve never really used California slang. I’d be hard-pressed to say there’s ever been a point in my life when I’ve used “dude” excessively, in say every sentence. Beach Boys-slang I’ve never used. Terms like “wipeout” never made it to me, though I know where all the places in their songs are. The thing I used the most that regionalized me is “like.”
Like though I’ve like learned how to, well, like monitor my use of “like” so if I like don’t want to say “like” so much, I like can.
So here I don’t use “like” very much at all. I’ve heard more “hella” here than I’d like from people from Northern California, and have come to terms with it here. Luckily I haven’t incorporated that particular term into my lexicon yet.
The biggest change in my speech is my intonation of questions. Whereas as home I would ask something like “Have you eaten yet?” Like
Speaking of returning, I just got back from my reading week trip to Beijing. Stay tuned for all the juicy details and awesome pictures!
Thanks for reading.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
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I like to say that I like what you wrote.
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