Leave My Accent Alone
While I talk to my friend on the phone on Friday evening, I tell him about my plan to join the protest the next day, and how I hope it remains peaceful. I have an American citizenship but also an accent, so if I were to be stopped by police, they’d hardly believe I’m one.
He suggests I try to blend in. “Give me your best American accent,” he nudges.
He can’t see it, but I immediately frown. If I were able to speak with an American accent, wouldn’t I be doing it already? Even if just to stop people from constantly asking me where I’m from and then welcoming me to this country I’ve lived in for 12 years now? Although I try to hide my annoyance, it must be vibrating through the phone across states because he offers an apology shortly after.
I know my reaction is disproportionate to the little comment, but it’s because the path to this moment has been paved with other little comments about the way I speak that I’m immediately triggered.
Just earlier in the week, while I was being introduced in a group setting, as soon as I said “hi,” someone made a comment that although I may not sound like one, I’m a U.S. citizen. To which another person, by way of explanation, added that I have a “funny” accent. I’m mostly nonconfrontational, one of the reasons I’ve always been a target of jokes bordering on bullying, which I learned to ignore, but something about that one silly adjective stuck with me.
Two weeks before that, I met a guy who was fascinated by the way I speak. “Interesting how you pronounce that word,” he’d repeat a few times, without noticing that with each comment, I’d get quieter.
My Slavic accent has always been a conversation stopper. Most of the time, I’m understanding of people’s curiosity and dutifully answer, but occasionally I get tired of repeating myself over and over again, especially when all I’m trying to do is order dinner to-go and go. Sure, they’re meeting me for the first time, but I already met some version of them, who asked the exact same set of questions.
While working at Barnes & Noble, I made it a point to count how many times I’d get asked where I’m from during a single shift. It would almost always, without exception, be a double-digit.
Once an older man asked for my help locating a book. “I hear an accent,” he interrupted my answer about why we didn’t have it in stock. It wasn’t a question, so I nodded and went on explaining that the title was only printed on demand. “You’re not from here,” he continued butting in as I tried to tell him he needed to order the book. “You sound Russian,” he informed me, the only demand he was interested in being the information that had nothing to do with the job I was paid to do. At that point, I lost my patience. “I’m Czech,” I retorted. “Ha, I knew it!” He grinned triumphantly. At that point, I decided I was not paid enough to engage with him further—I told him to order the book at checkout and walked away.
“Are you Spanish?” another customer asked another day. “I’ve a Spanish coworker and you sound just like her.” I just stared at him. “You mean, I also have an accent?” Spanish would be just one of the many wild guesses people would make instead of asking an open-ended question: German? Swiss? Irish? Croatian? Polish? Algerian? Brazilian? In these words: that country in Europe that has the queen (when it still did)?
While working as an Uber driver in college, during Trump’s first presidential term, I picked up a couple from a fancy restaurant after dinner. The husband asked me where I was from, since he heard an accent, then immediately launched into his other questions: Am I permitted to work in the U.S.? How come? Do I own the car? Do I pay taxes? I tried to defuse the situation. Uber does a background check and requires a Social Security number, just like any other job. He eventually let it go on his wife’s insistence, but the money I made from that trip seemed inadequate for how long the 20-minute ride with him in the car felt.
The age at which accents become permanent is around 12, according to studies. After that, sounding like a native and speaking accent-free is improbable—though not impossible. I started studying English at 15, from a teacher who herself wasn’t a native speaker. Though I’ve tried over the years, my pronunciation won’t sound more American at this point. I don’t hear my own accent, and I cannot replicate the American one.
I’ve wondered many times if not getting through an HR person during an interview process meant I truly wasn’t qualified for that journalism job, or they were deterred by my accent during our phone call. Even my college adviser tried to steer me away from declaring journalism as my major because English isn’t my first language and no one would give me a pass for being an international student—in her opinion, it could be too much for me (all without reading anything I’ve written—purely based on that one conversation).
It’s little comments like these that rattle my confidence in the years of late-night studying of grammar rules and vocabulary, and shift my focus from what I’m saying to how I’m saying it, getting in the way of me expressing anything of substance and praying for the conversation to be over. It’s the hyper-awareness that every mispronunciation can be understood as incompetence instead of a mistake that keeps me on high alert and needlessly exhausted. It’s the prejudice that negates what I’d achieved so far and almost stopped me from applying for the job I currently have because “it could be too much for me—after all, I’m not a native speaker.” It took my therapist multiple sessions to get me out of my head and make me take a risk. Thank goodness she did.
In the end, I don’t care how I sound, and I wish others wouldn’t either. Immigrants sound the way they sound. We don’t speak with an accent to be funny or entertain anyone. We already have to try harder at whatever it is we do, and prove ourselves at every turn; it would be nice not to feel interrogated or made fun of on top of it.
To turn the tables, I’d welcome anyone to try pronounce some words in my language—křovinořez, řeřicha, jestřáb, zmrzlina, čtvrtek, or even just my last name, Černá—and see how that goes. Maybe my accent won’t sound all that funny after that.