[Music] if you are british and you have a friend who's not british or you've traveled to a different country before chances are you've heard someone tell you that they love your accent not being british myself i'm 100 guilty of having done this before our fascination towards accents is nothing new all over the internet there are memes and videos of people trying to imitate different accents around the world take this for example try saying rise of lights sounds like you're saying razor blades in an australian accent what i'm trying to say is people have always been
fascinated by accents and with good reason they're what makes us unique they're how people identify us say you see someone with blonde hair and blue eyes for all you know they could be from anywhere but if they start talking with an irish accent then you know that they're probably irish similarly if a person starts speaking in a heavy southern accent chances are they grew up eating a lot of fried chicken your accent is not only how others identify you it's also how you identify yourself it ties us to our identity in a similar way that
our gender and our race does because of how incredibly unique every accent is you can actually use it to discover more about your family's history people like referring broadly to the american accent or the british accent but that is a huge generalization take the us for example where people like talking about the oh my gosh totally valley girl accent that's actually only common in places like la but if you go to the south there ain't a lot of that down there y'all this difference isn't limited to the english language either take mandarin for example in
beijing they curl their r's a lot but in taiwan where they speak the same language it's much softer and gentler to say i am a student a beijing mandarin speaker would say well sure he goes well a taiwanese mandarin speaker would say well she goes see the difference isn't huge but it is there because of these indicators between different accents you can actually use it to learn more about your own ancestry which makes it an important part of who you are this made me wonder why on earth are accents a thing are they permanent or
can we change them and most importantly why do we associate certain assumptions and stereotypes with certain accents well today we're going to dive into what your accent says about you first let's dig into what an accent is the term refers to the way words are pronounced every person has an accent that is the unique result of how when and where they learned the language they speak as a result your accent can tell a lot about you from the community that you grew up in to your family's background and history the most common type of accent
that we refer to is the native accent where a person develops their accent through their mother tongue but here's the thing our circumstances change people move travel and meet people from all around the world and as a result accents can and do transform when we come across another distinct group it is possible to pick up another accent either by choice or by long-term exposure and this is called your foreign or additional accent take me for example since guangdong or cantonese is my mother tongue the english accent that i'm using right now is my foreign accent
now that we've understood the basics of what accents are and how they can actually change under certain circumstances let's dive into the most glaring topic when it comes to accents the stereotypes discriminations and the assumptions that come with some of them now i attend a private boarding school in britain as an international student and as such i faced my fair share of challenges and hurdles when it comes to my accent now before you click of this video and call me a private school snob in the comments section below just hear me out first us international
students get a lot of slack and while some of that might be deserved being one is not as easy as you might think as someone from hong kong i've grown up and lived my entire life in a predominantly cantonese-speaking community and to come here and suddenly find that everything's in english from the textbooks to the groceries to the news when you turn on tv and to have to adjust to everyone around you speaking english all the time while we do expect that before we come here the difference is still jarring and it can be intimidating
and scary at first not to mention we're also faced with the constant pressure of having to speak english all the time because if we don't do that people around us might take offense to it and while that is understandable it still puts a lot of pressure on us i know a lot of my friends who are in similar situations who have found it incredibly hard to adjust to this change and as such they take it very hard in themselves because a lot of international students aren't confident with their accent or their ability to speak english
many of them choose to be quiet and not talk to anybody a lot of the times they might also find it more comfortable sticking with people from their hometown because they're embarrassed and afraid to talk to the locals not only can this experience be incredibly lonely it can also create a huge barrier between local and international students and make it hard for foreign students to integrate into local school life and live like a normal student would which is obviously unfortunate because your accent shouldn't limit you from experiencing life now i can't speak for them nor
can i fully understand what they're going through but for me personally my adjustment period was ultimately a process that involved a lot of shame and self-doubt back at home i was really confident in my ability to speak english but when i first came here all of that changed now everyone around me could speak english fluently and way better than i could and i started to really doubt my abilities and my intelligence i even started to feel inferior almost and ashamed of my accent growing up english literature has always been one of my favorite subjects and
that's why when i switched to my current school in britain from my previous school in hong kong i kept it as one of my electives everyone around me kept telling me that it was such a stupid thing to do that i wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the locals here and then i should choose maths instead even though i'm terrible at maths but because i'm asian it doesn't matter right well i didn't end up listening to them and i stuck with my original decision however when i first came here because i was so
ashamed of my accent i started to doubt my ability to do well in class i felt very frustrated with myself and i kept on asking myself why can't i speak english the way that my classmates can what is wrong with me and why am i not good enough week after week though i began to realize that this self-doubt this feeling of inferiority and shame it was all in my mind my accent is not an indicator of my abilities and it is definitely not an indicator of my intelligence i think the thing that a lot of
foreign students do is that they focus way too much on their accent and how it's not good enough how it doesn't sound native enough that they forget that being able to speak a completely different language on a day-to-day basis is an amazing thing to do in it of itself retreating into yourself and sticking to people from your hometown might seem like an appealing and easy decision but it is ultimately not helpful because not only does it limit the people you talk to it also limits the things you can experience so if you are foreign and
you're afraid to talk to the locals let me tell you something you're not the only one your accent shouldn't hold you back from experiencing life though and remember the more you practice speaking in an accent and the more you're exposed to it the more native it is going to sound so if that is your goal there is no better way to do it so get out of your comfort zone and put yourself out there this experience isn't limited to foreign students only if you are new to a predominantly english speaking country like me chances are
you've been through the same thing you've probably also heard someone tell you this is our country speak english which can i just say i find such a strange thing to tell somebody because if you've been to virtually any non-english speaking country before 99 of the locals there won't expect you to speak their language much less do it fluently like if you come to hong kong and you can even speak one word in cantonese everyone is going to be so impressed with you a lot of people have very strong feelings about foreign accents and they believe
that immigrants should be able to speak english perfectly and fluently which is basically biologically impossible for foreign speakers to do this is because the most critical period of brain development happens at six months old this is when your brain begins to recognize phonemes which are the distinct units of sounds in a specific language that separate one word from the other after the age of six it has been scientifically proven that your ability to change your accent has been greatly diminished and from the age of 12 the length of residence has almost zero effect on your
accent that's why it's so hard for native speakers to lose or to change their accent and why it's so hard for foreign speakers to develop a native accent in a language that isn't in their mother tongue because of how early accents are formed and their largely permanent nature they can become barriers because they can represent different life experiences studies on babies have even found that actions play an even bigger role in perception than the likes of gender and race as a result these barriers can create stereotypes and assumptions that can lead to discrimination towards certain
accidents for example studies have found that african-american speech patterns have been statistically perceived to sound more violent and less intelligent than white speech patterns another study found that the majority of employers admitted to discriminating against applicants on the basis of their accent a third study found that working class candidates have a hard time acquiring elite professions despite having the relevant qualifications and skills purely because of the way they speak a lot of the times how you hear someone matters more than what you actually hear them say as humans we love to judge each other as
soon as the first word leaves someone's mouths even as they continue to talk your brain has already identified the type of person they are applying existing generalizations and stereotypes about that type of person and in a way categorizing them people like to associate different behaviors with different accents and while sometimes that can hold some truth a lot of the times it is flown way out of proportion and this can lead to generalizations about entire cultures as we can see the discrimination towards foreign accents is very real and very problematic individuals with non-standard accents have to
be constantly faced with negative perceptions and prejudice researchers have consistently found that people with non-native actions are judged as less intelligent less educated having poor language skills and unpleasant to listen to not only do native speakers subscribe to these beliefs people with actions themselves do that as well take my home city hong kong for example where being able to speak english fluently makes you appear more educated growing up i was always told which basically means it doesn't matter if your cantonese sucks as long as your english is good you'll be fine if a person is
unable to speak english fluently or has a strong cantonese accent when they speak english they're automatically seen as having a lower social status a lot of the times this belief stems from the long history of colonization back in a time when british colonizers held a higher stat status in our own city as a result being able to speak english fluently has also been associated with prestige an assumption that sadly still exists to this day i personally don't have a very strong foreign accent compared to the average person from hong kong in fact i have kind
of the opposite where i have a very very slight english accent when i speak cantonese as a result i've received a lot of undeserved praise and compliments sometimes even from complete strangers in regards to the way i speak i still remember the time someone told me they're going to walk which means that your cantonese sounds kind of off you must come from a great school i didn't know if i should have taken it as a compliment or as an insult on the other hand i have a lot of family and friends who don't speak english
as well mainly because they didn't have the chance to learn it from such a young age as i did and as a result they suffer from it tremendously on a day-to-day basis take my parents for example who grew up in hong kong in a time when it was not common to learn english from a very young age when they first settled in the uk they faced extreme difficulties not only because of cultural barriers but also because of how locals perceived their action to be i was privileged in the sense that i grew up with great
english teachers and i started learning english from a very young age but that simply is not the case for everybody and if studies are shown the older you get the harder it is to develop a native accent in a language that isn't in your mother tongue because of how brain development affects our ability to pronounce certain phonemes yes it's possible for foreign speakers to develop a more native accent through hard work and constant practice but compared to a native speaker there will always be a difference but that's okay while it's important for us foreign speakers
to continue to improve our english accent nobody should ever be embarrassed about their accent instead as multilingual people we should be proud of our ability to speak multiple different languages as learning a different language is actually one of the hardest things you could ever do so be proud of your progress celebrate your differences and most importantly never be ashamed of your accent as tom robbins said our similarities bring us together and our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other embrace your action and be proud of it be it a native or a foreign
accent because at the end of the day it's what makes you you last but not least i've wanted to say this for a very long time thank you for coming to my ted talk [Music] you
