Accents, Y'all.

“Ya sheer ya want ta go ta Pontsticill?” sang the driver in a lilting Welsh accent. “Pawb at y peth y bo—each ta their own.”??

Raindrops dappled the windows of our cab. I sat in the front seat, while my mom, dad, and sister squeezed into the back. Wisps of clouds draped the verdant Welsh hills that rose around us. The cabbie followed the winding lane past cascading waterfalls, ancient forests, and low stone fences that surrounded postcard farms. Sheep stared at us—-wondering why we had chosen to visit their corner of the world.

“Weer ya frem?” the driver asked.

“Arkansas.”

“Never heerd of it,” he said as he pulled in front of the small bed and breakfast. “Croeso i Gymru—weelcome to Wales.”

We thanked him and unfolded ourselves out of the small British car. The white cottage was set against the backdrop of the stunning Brecon Beacons—with its mysterious peaks, tall forests, and clear black lake. I guarantee at least one owl has flown through a window in this village with a letter welcoming a child to Hogwarts.?

“Oh my stars … ” said my mom as she gazed at this magical landscape.

Our hosts—a Welsh couple about my parents' age—opened the front door and welcomed us out of the mist and into their cosy (cozy) home.

After putting my things in my room, I came out and joined my mom and the Welsh gentleman in the living room. They were in the middle of a conversation that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I sat down on the sofa between the two of them.

“I said how long are you staying in Wales?” the man asked my mom.

My mom just stared blankly at him. She looked at me for help.

“He asked how long you are going to be in Wales.”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” my mom laughed. “We are visiting Chris, our son, for a few weeks and he wanted to bring us to this village where he had taken his girlfriend.”

This time the man returned the blank stare. He looked from my mom to me.

“She said …”

For the next several minutes, I found myself translating a conversation between the two of them.

They were both speaking English.

But the way they were using the language was vastly different. He spoke in a lilting Welsh accent, my mom responded in a mid-South American accent somewhere between a Georgian drawl and a Texan twang that alternated between rhotic and non-rhotic. My mom’s voice, which sounded so familiar to me, was nearly incomprehensible to this man.

At that point, having lived in the UK for about a year, I had learned to tamp down my accent enough to be understood—particularly by people living in remote corners of the British Isles. But I would still receive the occasional blank stare if I ordered food too fast or shouted something to my British teammates on the basketball court.

I knew we had an accent. People as close as Texas had commented on it. But this was the first time I really felt it. In my mind, we were just speaking the standard version of English. And I am sure that Welsh man felt the same way. But we might as well have been speaking completely different languages.

Why do we have accents?

What is it about a place that shapes the very way we speak?

Was there something about being in the vicinity of the Caddo River and the Ouachita Mountains that caused us to say “motor ahl” instead of “motor oil” or “wadder boddle” instead of “water bottle”?

Last week in Boston our older waitress told us to go to “Muah-duhn (Modern) Pastries” instead of “Mike’s” to get a cannoli. Did the old brick streets of Beantown cause her tongue to form those vowels in certain ways?

Why do Idahoans say “crick” instead of “creek” when they literally do not pronounce any other similar words like that?

Why do the British cram so many more, vastly different accents into their small island than we do on our sprawling continent?

I love accents.

I am fascinated by the stories accents tell about each of us. Peter’s Galilean accent told a story that gave him away the night of the crucifixion. We can assume Jesus also had pronounced His words in that specific, Galilean way.

He didn’t speak the Queen’s English, y’all.

If the Son of God had an accent, why for the longest time did I resent mine?

I worked on saying “you guys” instead of “y’all.” I worked on shortening my vowels. I was self-conscious about the conclusions I thought people would jump to about me when they heard me speak.

I regret that now.

Not just because the word “y’all” fixes a glaring flaw in the English language, but because I have come to realize that I didn’t just poof into existence. I was formed by a people and a place. The way I use my language tells a story not just about where I am from, but about all the people who formed me.

The way I shape my words today is a reflection of the loving prayers my mom whispered over me at bedtime when I was a child. The inflections I place on vowels and consonants today is a testament to the community and family that embraced me as I was growing up.

Our family has spent some of the past two summers in England, and I watched as my daughters came to the realization that they have accents. Rather than react with shame the way I did, I noticed they started to speak even more loudly so English people on trains would smile and ask where they were from.

Their accents are slightly different than mine. I think that Welsh B-and-B host would have an easier time understanding them than he did my mom. But there is a trace of that Southern drawl that still lingers on their lips. Each word is an indelible image that tells the story of a place and a people.

As Emily and I pray over our daughters each night—that “y’all would know the goodness of God”—we weave a story into their hearts they will carry with them into this wide world.

Perhaps someday not just what they say, but how they say it, will invite others to step into a story that took place in a specific time and a specific place.

Perhaps someday they will find themselves sitting on a couch between me and another native English speaker helping our two vastly different accents bridge a gap to discover a shared story that transcends time and place.

#somewhereoutthere