I used to speak English with a pronounced "Indian" accent, and snark about Indians who'd grown up in India, moved to foreign lands and mutated their accent to sound American/British/Canadian/Australian/whatever.
When I moved to the UK though, I was initially pretty "stand my ground" about only communicating in my accent -- after all, I was speaking perfectly correct English. After many rounds of having to repeat myself, and often slow down so that the "locals" could understand the way that I put together syllables, I realised that "being understood with low friction" is a pretty big factor that people use to decide whether or not to engage in future interactions with you.
So I've worked on a slightly more "neutral" accent that's about as close to RP as I can get without accent coaching, and it's worked wonders, both for communication, and given the nature of British society, for my implicit acceptance in certain circles.
These days I can slip in and out of either accent depending on who I'm talking to, but I can now completely see how using just one accent for extended periods of [valuable] time changes that to be the default.
- are content with a trial-and-error approach
- have friends/colleagues who can give you useful feedback
- don't mind making the odd [amusing] mistake
If on the other hand, you:
- want something more structured and results-oriented
- don't have enough self-aware friends/colleagues across different British social classes
- are not in a position to have mistakes brushed off without consequences
I briefly knew a Greek girl who'd moved to London for a project management role in a large company here, and she sounded reasonably British middle class (RP) having done daily professional accent coaching for I think 8-10 months.
Sorry I can't be more concrete, but I hope this helps!
A lot of Slovak people move to Czechia, especially to one of the university cities. This has been the case since the 1920s at least. Movement in the other direction is, these days, negligible.
Many Czechs can understand standard spoken Slovak (not so much the eastern dialects), but it is a high-friction interaction nowadays. My experience is that Slovaks tend to stand their ground for a year or two, then silently join a Czech language course and, within a few months, switch completely to Czech, just with slightly softer vowels that will indicate their origin, well, forever.
The friction thing is important. Even Austrians who move to Germany say the same.
That's an interesting cultural difference. Here in France (at least around me) teachers insist on trying to develop an accent similar to a native English accent. From what I've read in this thread, I think they're trying to teach people Received Pronunciation. Having perfect English with still a noticeable French accent is generally looked down upon.
You can pick up accents, both pronunciation, phrasing and vocabulary this way. Incidentally, this is why I dislike (find divisive) the fact the Afro-Americans use the N-word liberally - I don't think it would be hard for an non-PoC to accidentally pick up the word if they often communicated with people who used it.
As an aside: I don't have a strong accent from my place of origin, although I notice it is stronger on certain terms. One type of term is, obviously, those words that have features that are most pronounced differently (e.g. the "Aboot" as in the article). But I also notice it happens with place names in my place of origin - maybe because I rarely say them outside that area?
I studied in an English speaking middle school, in a Spanish speaking country. Only a few of our classmates were native U.S. English speakers and we occasionally picked up words from them, from music or movies.
> You can pick up accents, both pronunciation, phrasing and vocabulary this way. Incidentally, this is why I dislike (find divisive) the fact the Afro-Americans use the N-word liberally - I don't think it would be hard for an non-PoC to accidentally pick up the word if they often communicated with people who used it.
At some point, when we were about 13 years old, my classmates picked up the "N-word", perhaps from a song or from a movie. And we started using them between ourselves (classmates) during recess and lunchtime.
This went unnoticed for some time. Even by some of our local teachers.
That lasted for some weeks until an U.S. American teacher heard us. Then he took us to the classroom and spent the class explaining to us that not everyone could use that word. We spoke about how some people may use it and other not. While Spanish does not have this restriction, English does.
For example he explained to us that because he was white, there was no way he could use it. Then he looked at us, and told us that some of us _may_ be able to use it depending on our skin color, but not all of us. That it should be better for us not to use it.
Perhaps if it be quite far off from one's own, but in many cases it does not hinder at all.
As a more interesting example, consider that intelligent characters in U.S.A. cinema have a statistically high probability of having either a received pronunciation, or German accent, — given that the target audience is one of the U.S.A., one can assume that either, especially the latter, would hinder communication to at least some degree, however marginal.
Yet, both accents impart upon the listener an impression of intelligence. This was even referenced in The Practice, in one scene, where a lawyer for his expert witness specifically picked an expert with an English accent, on his experience that an R.P. English accent leads to U.S.A. jurors' holding the expert more credible.
I'm quite sceptical that communication is truly hampered in many of these cases. It is certainly not difficult by any margin to understand what Eliza Doolittle is saying in My Fair Lady, but the story of course highlights the absurd degree of accent discrimination that permeates British society.
That people still take the effort to go beyond this step and effectively remove all local traces from their accent can only be understood in the framework of social pressures. Because people tend to make all kind of assumptions about you based on your accent, it makes perfect sense if you want to get rid of it. But for intelligibility, you can stop way short of this goal.
I understand this, but you have a point that I didn't really communicate it. I don't take issue with local accents and dialects when intelligibility is reasonably presumed not to be an issue. Hence my chosen example of the writer thinking that primarily using a local accent on TV is ethically beneficial, for the intended audience of TV.
> That people still take the effort to go beyond this step and effectively remove all local traces from their accent can only be understood in the framework of social pressures. Because people tend to make all kind of assumptions about you based on your accent, it makes perfect sense if you want to get rid of it. But for intelligibility, you can stop way short of this goal.
I agree with this. I think you also have a point regarding my criticism of the example, that Colbert for instance ethically shouldn't need to extinguish all traces of his accent on TV: just to the extent that it doesn't cause intelligibility problems to a weak English speaker (if it does in the first place).
In what possible way would it be "supremacist" to speak in one's native accent on TV?
> using one's native accent on TV for certain programs when they are perfectly capable of speaking in a more standard accent
Thankfully, you are asking only for me to show that it is possible.
If:
* You are as fluent in a standard accent and dialect as in your local accent and dialect
* You know that using your local accent and dialect can cause intelligibility problems with a far greater part of your audience than using a standard accent and dialect
* You are communicating something to your audience
* You have an ethical duty to communicate to as much of your audience as possible
* You don't care that you may not be communicating the important information because your audience doesn't understand your accent well
* You are aware of the above
* And consequently choose to use your native accent, with all other things being equal
Then it is supremacist, because you favor a smaller group of your audience that understands your accent when there is an ethical duty to communicate to as much of your audience as possible.
Of course, much of what appears on TV is rarely important, but for business reasons you already see this: news tends to use a more standard accent for their audience and more informal programs have more diversity (and often in the latter the accents are an important aspect of what is being communicated as the utterances they are a vehicle for).
Of course, if more non-General American and RP accents were heard in the media more often, they would also be more easily intelligible by more people than they are now.
Standardising on one accent over others so that more people can understand the speaker is a bit of a self-fullfilling prophecy, that is. If everyone is constantly putting on a particular accent, how is anyone going to learn to understand all the others?
This proposal just moves the threshold, while making it even harder for weak English speakers to consume media. To the extreme, sufficiently strong accents and dialects effectively are another language, and we acknowledge that learning another language requires effort and exposure: I think we agree that this is beyond the threshold.
> Standardising on one accent over others so that more people can understand the speaker is a bit of a self-fullfilling prophecy, that is. If everyone is constantly putting on a particular accent, how is anyone going to learn to understand all the others?
I don't think it's necessary, beneficial, or feasible for someone to understand all the accents and dialects of English and keep updated on their evolution. One should learn to understand accents and dialects at least to the extent of interest and also to the extent that it helps intelligibility with the people around you. (This rule, applied to media, favors media using GA and RP).
We cannot expect everyone to be familiar with every accent and dialect, so we have General American and Received Pronunciation as standard accents (and Standard English), which helps communication especially with weak English speakers and ESL speakers. So for some examples mentioned
> while we’re at it: can’t we let Steven Colbert speak in his natural South Carolina accent, or Don Lemon in the strains of his native Baton Rouge? As with bias against visible ethnic features (skin colour, the epicanthic fold typical of Asian people’s upper eyelids), exposure is all.
from another perspective, using one's native accent on TV when they are perfectly capable of speaking in a more standard accent is arguably more supremacist than "antibigoted".
There is a subtle but very important (wrt what is ethical) distinction between prejudice against one's native accent and dialect, and deciding instead to speak, or require to speak in a standard accent and dialect: the latter can be due to prejudicial pressures, but also often for mere intelligibility and comprehension, and I'm not confident that the author notices and appreciates the distinction.