ACCENTS

ACCENTS

I was just wondering to myself the other day about Etonian accents, and how people attend Oxford or Cambridge for a couple of years or so and come away with a Boris Johnson accent. (Johnson was born in New York City.) I’ve been in Australia for nearly twenty nine years and still can’t do anything that even remotely resembles an Aussie accent!

Like Donald Trump with his Queens' accent, I too have never shed the accent I developed during my formative years. However, unlike The Donald, I use two ways of speaking: one for public and the other for private. The other day I had to undergo an intrusive procedure at an X-ray clinic. I was very nervous. Upon seeing my obvious distress and hearing my accent, the specialist asked what part of Scotland I was from. Later, he asked me what part of Canada I was from!

Talking to my wife on my office phone she always knows whether I have company or not by whether I'm using my public or private accent. However, it's great visiting Scotland where I get to use my private accent in public! 

Accents are in the ear of the beholder! Our accent betrays our history and ethnicity to the hearer. It is appointed unto man once to speak. Then comes the judgment! Do I sound like a snob or a yob? Only the hearer gets to judge. What are the listeners’ presuppositions? For example, I find Etonian and such-like English accents very irritating. The Bronx accent is grating, as is the Brooklyn accent particularly exhibited by Bernie Sanders. Indeed, New York accents are not the most pleasant ones.

Strange as it may seem, though both New Yorkers, I find Donald Trump’s accent less irritating than Bernie Sanders’s. Therefore, judging accents must also have to do with actual words being communicated. Is the speaker trying to sound tough? Sophisticated? Educated? Do they sound condescending, like folk with an Etonian accent? This brings us into the ear of the beholder.

Stereotyping people on account of their accent is what we’re talking about. Are all New Yorker and New Jersians obnoxious loudmouths? Are all Australians uncouth? Are all Texans slow and dim-witted? Those who live in Britain view accents through the prism of the British class system: working class, middle class, upper class etc. Australians are very egalitarian when it comes to accents. They dispute minor nuances, (such as whether castle should be pronounced cossel or casel), but love oversea accents.

Before leaving Canada to live in Australia I asked a workmate if his accent was Australian. Turns out he was a Cockney. However, to my ears the Cockney and Australian accents were very much the same, that was until I settled in Australia. A stranger asked my wife and I a question on the street one day. My wife answered him. All I heard was something like ENSEEBONKIS. I wasn’t sure what language he was speaking. Afrikaans? Turns out he was an Aussie guy asking where the “ANZ bank is”. Well done wife! Then I began noticing that the New Zeelander accent was starting to sound quite different to the Australian! Prior to all of this, when I had first moved to Canada from Scotland, I thought all North American accents sounded the same. As time went by, I became very much aware of clear differences, north, south, east, and west. Therefore, accents definitely are in the ear of the beholder!

But meanwhile back to Donald Trump. To quote the English bard, “Clothes maketh the man.” Turns out that Shakespeare actually wrote, “For the apparel oft proclaims the man.” Same difference though. Take The Donald. He wears a suit. We expect people who wear suits to speak as if they were educated lawyers. He doesn’t sound at all like that. So, we must do a double take with The Donald. He sounds the same no matter where he is, whether on the golf course or at Buckingham Palace. What a gift! I thought speaking to others was all about knowing your audience. But President Trump has put paid to that theory! So, all you Australian Labor Party people. You don’t need to need to make sure that you have your hard hats on for TV soundbites. Just talk to us as you would normally do. Same for American Democrats from the north when they’re in the south. You don’t have to say “Y’all” all the time. You can identify with others just by being yourself while operating in the realm of your own accent. The Donald proves this!

To this day Scotland is plagued by men all tartan and tweed speaking Etonian English while in Scotland! One would expect a kilt clad man in Scotland to sound Scottish not English, but one digresses, doesn’t one? Quite!

When she was little, one of my three Canadian daughters used to try to impersonate a Scottish accent by saying, “Aye ock the noo!” I think it’s supposed to be, “Och aye the noo!” But close is good enough in throwing horseshoes, hand-grenades, and Scottish accents!

Regardless of your accent, surely the bottom line is this: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”