Accent-ed Challenges

I was born in Malaysia and like most Malaysians, I grew up exposed not only to a myriad of cultures but also languages. Most Malaysians can speak at least three – Malay which is our national language, English which is taught in all schools (and widely spoken) and our mother tongue. And that’s not counting the various dialects out there !?

With these languages, the tones intersect, and hence the end product is a very distinct accent. It’s still English, but with a dash of Malay, Indian and Chinese influence thrown in. Go ahead and google Manglish !

And yes, we speak fast, and it is clear (to us at least!), but it can throw off many people who are unilingual.?

Perceived Education Levels

The way we speak and the accents we carry more often than not, unconsciously gives the assumption of the level of our education. Speak with an American or British accent and chances are, there is an initial presumption that you must have been exposed to a good university in the west with everything else scaling downwards. You may have graduated with a PhD from the best university in your local country, but the confirmation* bias people have on account of your accent can put you at a disadvantage of having to prove that you’re just as good (or even better !).

Socio-economic Status

Accents are sometimes also a giveaway of where you’re from, and this sometimes also leads to a bias of your socio-economic status based on the country you’re from. As with education levels, countries also have a ranking. BCG’s Sustainable Economic Development Assessment shows how countries are placed based on their per-capita GDP and living standards. And no surprises here -?almost every country at the top end are English-speaking western countries.

And if you're one of the lucky one's from these upper-tiered countries, there is almost an immediate unconscious sense of pride, casting a shielding aura of privilege upon you. And when meeting others from countries with lower socio-economic statuses, the innate confirmation bias projects a sense of judgement upon them.

I Don’t Understand, therefore I Don’t Trust?

Shiri Lev-Ari, a psycholinguist at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, published a very interesting research based on a social experiment on accents and trust.?

Her experiment asked people both from non-native and native English speaking countries to record mundane statements like “ant’s don’t sleep” in English. She then asked the native English speakers to rate the truth of the statements and found that native English speakers had the highest scores, supporting?the theory that, “we’re less likely to believe something if it’s said with a foreign accent”. Feels kinda true, isn’t it? This is where cultural* bias kicks in and we find anything that is not similar to our cultures as being abnormal or an outlier.?When this happens, the level of trust particularly during first impression meetings take a much longer time to form and again, you are having to work harder to gain that trust.?

"Wow, you speak English really well!"

Is there a solution? Not an immediate one, but the right thing to do would be to check our bias and acknowledge that we live in a global marketplace. Where singularity of language and accents may have worked in the past, languages also evolve depending on the needs of the society and we have to accept the unique differences that come with it. English may be a common denominator but it’s the various accents and influence which not only allows the language to evolve but adds a lot of fun in conversations!

*confirmation bias - favouring or focusing on information that confirms your existing beliefs and preconceptions

**cultural bias - also known as implicit bias, involves those who perceive other cultures as being abnormal, outlying, or exotic, simply based on a comparison to their own culture