Yes, and as you mention in your piece, since English is the lingua franca, not much incentive to learn otherwise. I think I’d like to learn Spanish though.
I left Canada for my gap year a week after graduating high school. Four decades and a week later the gap year ended when we moved to Canada.
For the first two decades of the gap, I lived in Norway. I lived in a rural area and the Norwegian I learned was the dialect spoken there. Locals were proud of me, but inside, I felt I wanted to learn "real Norwegian" because the spoken language I was learning was nothing like the written language I was trying to learn. A few years later I was living in student housing, sharing a kitchen with three guys from Oslo. I started changing my dialect so it resembled "real Norwegian". After university, I moved to Oslo and learned that I was much more adept at understanding people with different dialects than many people in the capital who had never learned a dialect that didn't resemble the written language. I spoke Norwegian with no discernable accent, and, as a foreigner, I felt that was a huge benefit.
Halfway through my "gap life", I moved to Denmark. I was worried I wouldn't understand Danes. Even though their written language was very similar to Norwegian, their pronunciation is markedly different. I managed, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that they didn't understand me! I learned to speak Danish, although with a markedly Norwegian accent that often had people complaining that they couldn't understand me before I was halfway finished with my first sentence... I married a Dane and we still speak Danish at home today.
After a decade in Denmark, we moved to Belgium. I picked up some French and Flemish, but can't converse in either. Working in a global company with English as our corporate language most of my days were spent speaking English to people that didn't have it as a first language. I tried to adapt my language to make it understandable to those I was speaking with.
Over time, my English changed. Now, when I'm introducing myself to students or workshop participants, I always ask if anyone can guess where I'm from or where my accent is from. Many Europeans guess that I'm Irish. Here in Canada, it's a bit of a mixed bag but there's usually surprise when I disclose that I grew up in the city in which we now live!
Thanks for sharing your story, Paul! What an interesting multilingual journey. I guess the best way to learn such a complex language such as Norwegian, even more a dialect, is to immerse yourself in a rural area without much international exposure.
It's very commendable that you learned, at least partially, the local language everywhere you moved. I didn't do that in all countries where I lived, and looking back, I know it wasn't the best decision.
By the way, I love that you call it a "gap life"! Such gaps make up the most interesting of lives.
In many ways, I was fortunate that I arrived in Norway in the 1970s, long before social media and travel turned English into a language everyone speaks on a semi-regular basis. Back then, it was more "sink or swim".
I lived in Australia for 6 months as a teenager and returned with a cute Aussie accent just to lose it again after a few months.
When I have meetings with my American colleagues now I can’t not start speaking in a US accent.
In the UK people thought I was South African although I had never been there.
I sound like the Queen for the non British English speakers and now that I’m back in Germany I seem to have adopted a completely new accent. 😂 who knows why.
My theory though is that you need to have some level of language talent to be a chameleon otherwise you just sound the same forever, accent wise of course, and I also know some people like that.
Hahah I grew up in the south of Germany but maybe it helped my subconscious that my parents travelled a lot with me when I was young and was exposed to different languages.
I generally pick up new languages super quickly and forget them at the same rate again if I don’t use them haha so not a useful talent.
I lived 5 years in the UK guess that’s where people get confused.
Thanks, Thomas. I'm not too familiar with the Anatolian languages' historic path, it could be. Or maybe that branch had already split from the indo-eu trunk before year 0 when this image starts.
I've lived in Spain for over thirty years. My first lasting memory of being asked where I am from, however, dates from a couple of years after settling in there. I was traveling through Prague on holiday, and was hanging out with a group of tourists from all over the world.
Of course, my answer, "I'm from Scotland," was met with the inevitable, "Scottish! Whiskey!" Then big grins and arms raised high for hugs.
Peeved, I rolled my eyes and turned to a couple of guys who I had already heard speaking Spanish. "I always get this response," I said to them.
"You're lucky," one of them replied. "When it's my turn, they always answer, 'Columbian! Oh, drugs...'"
Hahah you're such a good storyteller! Loved your story about being asked this question and those poor Columbians! People love to recognize *something* (anything) about your place of origin, like a hook of connection, to relate from there on easier. And of course alcohol is a common unifier of people. ;-)
I loved this piece! As someone who recently moved to the States from Italy, I have had a hard time making peace with my accent. While this is certainly not the first time I've lived abroad, there is a huge difference between living abroad while being surrounded by other foreigners (as it often happens in most European capitals), vs. living in the States being surrounded a good 80-90% of the time by native English speakers. Of course, I'm not complaining about being surrounded by native speakers in their own country haha - I love refining my English skills and take every conversation as an opportunity to improve myself ;) However, I can't deny that, even after living abroad for almost 10 years and speaking more English at work than my native tongue, I have often found myself thinking about the research on accent bias, fearing it may impact my career opportunities. Exactly what you describe in your article: "That’s not enough, I’m still non-native in the eyes of an employer."
Part of myself hopes that my 'accent insecurity' will fade away overtime through exposure, aging and simply by growing and gaining confidence as a professional. I met several Americans with a foreign accent or foreigners living here who didn't care at all about their own accent, which makes me think my 'ruminations' might be more related to imposter syndrome than anything else haha I'm curious, have you noticed any evolution over the years in your way to think about your accent? :)
Hi Caterina, I can imagine that being self-conscious about your Italian accent among US Americans can be quite hard, and also boosted by impostor syndrome (doubled by being a woman, because a man might not have it?). This reminds me of a colleague who lives and works in France and who has quite a thick Romanian accent in French, but she proudly displays it rather than hiding it and trying to do the 'r' like a native French person. I must say I found her owning her identity inspiring! We don't need to be perfect, we need to be ourselves.
To your question, I did notice an evolution in my accent: I used to speak better English than now! hahah While living in the US myself, I had a beautiful accent, but after moving to Spain and becoming fluent in Spanish, I believe my accent in English worsened due to speaking so much more Spanish now. It's all an opportunity to tell a story of my life path, not something to stress about. ;)
Just catching this great post! As a fellow language chameleon, this topic hits home for me. I joke that I speak about six languages, all with unidentifiable accents.
I grew up speaking English in the US— but have spent the past 30+ years outside the US, speaking English with people who have it as their second, third, fourth language. So in addition to wiping out any strong US accent, my spoken English tends to be clear, slang-free, and without complex or messy sentence structure. Writing is another matter entirely. 😉
re: “native language”, of course I can copyedit in German too. And in Switzerland, my (high, standard) German is better than that of the locals who grew up with Swiss German and were “forced” to learn High German in school. It’s weird.
re: native language vs. mother tongue, now there’s a dilemma. My son was born and grew up in Switzerland, in a household speaking High German and English. (in primary school, he used to come home in tears because the teachers were “teaching the other kids WRONG in German!” but that is another story) Strictly speaking, his “mother tongue” is English. His “native languages” are German, English, and Swiss German equally. I’d say his first or dominant language is probably German (standard).
I love the story about your son and it drives the point home. We can have a mother tongue and another native language. I also have a few friends who raise their kids multilingual, third culture kids basically, and they are native in all for all purposes. I guess this phenomenon is also much more modern, at a historic scale, so perhaps we are also slowly adapting our views to what's a proper accent, what's a native language, etc.
And yes, I also toned down my English vocabulary since I don't live in an English speaking country anymore. As for my proper English accent, no comments... I lost it while becoming fluent in Spanish and acquiring a bit of the Spanish accent into English.
Intra-language accents can also confirm prejudices! For example, a Southerner in the United States vs. someone from Chicago.
Incredible you speak so many languages, I can barely think in one, let alone many!
Absolutely, intra-language accents and prejudices!, good point - I missed mentioning it.
Thanks for the kind words ❤️ As Eastern European in a post-Communist country, learning languages was my ticket out. Do you live in the States?
Yes, and as you mention in your piece, since English is the lingua franca, not much incentive to learn otherwise. I think I’d like to learn Spanish though.
Just spend a few weeks in Miami, you'll have a serious intro to Spanish. 😄 That's where I first took contact with it.
Great post! Accents and dialects are fun.
I left Canada for my gap year a week after graduating high school. Four decades and a week later the gap year ended when we moved to Canada.
For the first two decades of the gap, I lived in Norway. I lived in a rural area and the Norwegian I learned was the dialect spoken there. Locals were proud of me, but inside, I felt I wanted to learn "real Norwegian" because the spoken language I was learning was nothing like the written language I was trying to learn. A few years later I was living in student housing, sharing a kitchen with three guys from Oslo. I started changing my dialect so it resembled "real Norwegian". After university, I moved to Oslo and learned that I was much more adept at understanding people with different dialects than many people in the capital who had never learned a dialect that didn't resemble the written language. I spoke Norwegian with no discernable accent, and, as a foreigner, I felt that was a huge benefit.
Halfway through my "gap life", I moved to Denmark. I was worried I wouldn't understand Danes. Even though their written language was very similar to Norwegian, their pronunciation is markedly different. I managed, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that they didn't understand me! I learned to speak Danish, although with a markedly Norwegian accent that often had people complaining that they couldn't understand me before I was halfway finished with my first sentence... I married a Dane and we still speak Danish at home today.
After a decade in Denmark, we moved to Belgium. I picked up some French and Flemish, but can't converse in either. Working in a global company with English as our corporate language most of my days were spent speaking English to people that didn't have it as a first language. I tried to adapt my language to make it understandable to those I was speaking with.
Over time, my English changed. Now, when I'm introducing myself to students or workshop participants, I always ask if anyone can guess where I'm from or where my accent is from. Many Europeans guess that I'm Irish. Here in Canada, it's a bit of a mixed bag but there's usually surprise when I disclose that I grew up in the city in which we now live!
Thanks for sharing your story, Paul! What an interesting multilingual journey. I guess the best way to learn such a complex language such as Norwegian, even more a dialect, is to immerse yourself in a rural area without much international exposure.
It's very commendable that you learned, at least partially, the local language everywhere you moved. I didn't do that in all countries where I lived, and looking back, I know it wasn't the best decision.
By the way, I love that you call it a "gap life"! Such gaps make up the most interesting of lives.
Thanks, Monica,
In many ways, I was fortunate that I arrived in Norway in the 1970s, long before social media and travel turned English into a language everyone speaks on a semi-regular basis. Back then, it was more "sink or swim".
You might enjoy this post I wrote back in April:
https://alwayscare.substack.com/p/sink-or-swim-or-fake-it-till-you
Thanks for sharing, I loved it, great storytelling & adventure!
Oh gosh so truuuueeee.
I lived in Australia for 6 months as a teenager and returned with a cute Aussie accent just to lose it again after a few months.
When I have meetings with my American colleagues now I can’t not start speaking in a US accent.
In the UK people thought I was South African although I had never been there.
I sound like the Queen for the non British English speakers and now that I’m back in Germany I seem to have adopted a completely new accent. 😂 who knows why.
My theory though is that you need to have some level of language talent to be a chameleon otherwise you just sound the same forever, accent wise of course, and I also know some people like that.
Ohh I love your accent travelogue! 😉 What a journey, especially navigating multiple accents in the same language. Of course that takes talent!
I'm curious, whereabouts did you grow up? (Not sure why I imagined saying that in a royal British Engliah accent) 😊
Hahah I grew up in the south of Germany but maybe it helped my subconscious that my parents travelled a lot with me when I was young and was exposed to different languages.
I generally pick up new languages super quickly and forget them at the same rate again if I don’t use them haha so not a useful talent.
I lived 5 years in the UK guess that’s where people get confused.
Find your languages and accents fascinating too
I can bet childhood experiences are impacting and shape our capacities. And being exposed to other languages is super valuable!
Thanks - I love this mixed bag of languages, notions, accents in my brain. ☺️
Beautiful image, but it left out the Anatolian languages.
Thanks, Thomas. I'm not too familiar with the Anatolian languages' historic path, it could be. Or maybe that branch had already split from the indo-eu trunk before year 0 when this image starts.
I've lived in Spain for over thirty years. My first lasting memory of being asked where I am from, however, dates from a couple of years after settling in there. I was traveling through Prague on holiday, and was hanging out with a group of tourists from all over the world.
Of course, my answer, "I'm from Scotland," was met with the inevitable, "Scottish! Whiskey!" Then big grins and arms raised high for hugs.
Peeved, I rolled my eyes and turned to a couple of guys who I had already heard speaking Spanish. "I always get this response," I said to them.
"You're lucky," one of them replied. "When it's my turn, they always answer, 'Columbian! Oh, drugs...'"
Hahah you're such a good storyteller! Loved your story about being asked this question and those poor Columbians! People love to recognize *something* (anything) about your place of origin, like a hook of connection, to relate from there on easier. And of course alcohol is a common unifier of people. ;-)
I loved this piece! As someone who recently moved to the States from Italy, I have had a hard time making peace with my accent. While this is certainly not the first time I've lived abroad, there is a huge difference between living abroad while being surrounded by other foreigners (as it often happens in most European capitals), vs. living in the States being surrounded a good 80-90% of the time by native English speakers. Of course, I'm not complaining about being surrounded by native speakers in their own country haha - I love refining my English skills and take every conversation as an opportunity to improve myself ;) However, I can't deny that, even after living abroad for almost 10 years and speaking more English at work than my native tongue, I have often found myself thinking about the research on accent bias, fearing it may impact my career opportunities. Exactly what you describe in your article: "That’s not enough, I’m still non-native in the eyes of an employer."
Part of myself hopes that my 'accent insecurity' will fade away overtime through exposure, aging and simply by growing and gaining confidence as a professional. I met several Americans with a foreign accent or foreigners living here who didn't care at all about their own accent, which makes me think my 'ruminations' might be more related to imposter syndrome than anything else haha I'm curious, have you noticed any evolution over the years in your way to think about your accent? :)
Hi Caterina, I can imagine that being self-conscious about your Italian accent among US Americans can be quite hard, and also boosted by impostor syndrome (doubled by being a woman, because a man might not have it?). This reminds me of a colleague who lives and works in France and who has quite a thick Romanian accent in French, but she proudly displays it rather than hiding it and trying to do the 'r' like a native French person. I must say I found her owning her identity inspiring! We don't need to be perfect, we need to be ourselves.
To your question, I did notice an evolution in my accent: I used to speak better English than now! hahah While living in the US myself, I had a beautiful accent, but after moving to Spain and becoming fluent in Spanish, I believe my accent in English worsened due to speaking so much more Spanish now. It's all an opportunity to tell a story of my life path, not something to stress about. ;)
So interesting! And yes, I love the reframing of this all as a way to tell your life path!!
Just catching this great post! As a fellow language chameleon, this topic hits home for me. I joke that I speak about six languages, all with unidentifiable accents.
I grew up speaking English in the US— but have spent the past 30+ years outside the US, speaking English with people who have it as their second, third, fourth language. So in addition to wiping out any strong US accent, my spoken English tends to be clear, slang-free, and without complex or messy sentence structure. Writing is another matter entirely. 😉
re: “native language”, of course I can copyedit in German too. And in Switzerland, my (high, standard) German is better than that of the locals who grew up with Swiss German and were “forced” to learn High German in school. It’s weird.
re: native language vs. mother tongue, now there’s a dilemma. My son was born and grew up in Switzerland, in a household speaking High German and English. (in primary school, he used to come home in tears because the teachers were “teaching the other kids WRONG in German!” but that is another story) Strictly speaking, his “mother tongue” is English. His “native languages” are German, English, and Swiss German equally. I’d say his first or dominant language is probably German (standard).
I love the story about your son and it drives the point home. We can have a mother tongue and another native language. I also have a few friends who raise their kids multilingual, third culture kids basically, and they are native in all for all purposes. I guess this phenomenon is also much more modern, at a historic scale, so perhaps we are also slowly adapting our views to what's a proper accent, what's a native language, etc.
And yes, I also toned down my English vocabulary since I don't live in an English speaking country anymore. As for my proper English accent, no comments... I lost it while becoming fluent in Spanish and acquiring a bit of the Spanish accent into English.