“Where is your accent from?”, a woman asked me breathlessly at the gym the other day.
We had said barely anything to each other, but we don’t need to say more than one word for people to detect our accent, and for their brain to start painting a picture of us. Studies upon studies show that foreign accents can in our minds. Things like trustworthiness, intelligence, friendliness come into question once an accent is revealed.
Accent enquiries have always been a stabbing reminder that I'm not from here, that I don't belong in the way that someone without my kind of accent does.
A few weeks ago, I attended an author interview led by Ukrainian-born Australian author Maria Tumarkin. As she spoke, her Eastern European accent almost as strong as her vibrant eloquence, I felt my eyes moisten.
Something about the accent felt like home. Viscerally so. The sound of it softened my bones. That surprised me greatly because I've never been a fan of my accent, particularly my Eastern European inflections.
It’s not just that my accent is ‘foreign’. It’s that in the hierarchy of foreign accents, it falls in the undesirable bucket.
It’s not just that my accent is ‘foreign’. It’s that in the hierarchy of foreign accents, it falls in the undesirable bucket. (At times, even criminal - think those Hollywood baddies whose heavily accented English words fall like weapons themselves). This, compared to the melodic, attractive ones (say, for example Ewan McGreggor’s Scottish drawl).
For my Irish partner, his accent is a source of pride, a belonging he eagerly jumps to claim. Mine has been a secret source of self-consciousness, if not shame. In popular culture, Irish accents tend to be associated with humour, confidence, friendliness, even sex appeal. Romanian accents, on the other hand, signals danger, plotting - aggression, even.
That is, until I heard Tumarkin speak. And, for the first time, I felt compelled to interrogate the source of my accent shame.
Looking back, it’s not just how particular words sound, though there is that too, of course: the harsh Hs, the strongly rolled Rs aren’t exactly ‘musical’. But even more unwelcoming is the split second bio that my accent gives about me - the suggestion that I’m from a land whose recent history can still be hard to grasp for the Western mind.
People sometimes mistake me to be from Germany, Belgium, mostly Western European countries. Only the globetrotters suggest an Eastern European country.
People sometimes mistake me to be from Germany, Belgium, mostly Western European countries. Only the globetrotters suggest an Eastern European country.
Not ending up with a full-fledged Eastern European accent is perhaps accidental. But if I'm really honest, I've been grateful to have an ambiguous accent that people can't immediately place in those less-desirable, more troubled parts of Europe.
Because my generation of Eastern Europeans (or at the very least, this here Eastern European), do carry a chip on our shoulder about our history whether we like to admit it or not; about outsiders’ perception of what happened behind that iron curtain.
For a long time, my own linguistic prejudice gave me the urge to prove myself as soon as I open my mouth so as to counteract any snap judgement. After hearing Tumarkin speak, I’ve become even more mindful of my accent - though in a completely different way. More as an observer than a scolding censor.
For a long time, my own linguistic prejudice gave me the urge to prove myself as soon as I open my mouth so as to counteract any snap judgement.
Since then, I began to notice the beauty of a confidently rolled ‘r’. My Eastern European inflections would slip in more often than usual, as if a part of me started relaxing and stopped trying to control the ebb and flow of my thoughts. The consonants in my ‘to’, ‘from’, and ‘later’s crash ever slightly heavier against my clauses.
In the past, I’ve been telling myself that my accent is simply accidental, not a conscious performance of what’s deemed acceptable, respectable. But I’m beginning to doubt that’s the whole picture.
I now see that I’ve been treating my accent as a sign that I don’t quite belong. And I had never stopped to question that judgement. Until I saw Tumarkin, sparkling with intelligence to the brim; charming the audience because - not in spite of - her Eastern European cadence. Her accent embodies a rich part of who she is. A part that adds to her complexity as a writer, and as a person. And so does mine.
