One day I was walking with a group of friends to the bus stop. I was just in middle school, and we were all heading home. My mom called me to make sure I was on my way home, so I answered, and we spoke for a while. While we spoke, I noticed heads turned towards me with confused faces in the corner of my eye. I didn’t think much of it yet. I assumed they were curious about my conversation. The moment the call ended, I was bombarded with questions.
“Why did you sound like that Alliyah?” said one friend.
“Where the hell are you from?” said another friend.
“What language was that?” said another friend.
I was genuinely confused. I looked at them all.
“I was speaking in English, what are you guys talking about?”
I did not understand why they were all confused and some of them were even laughing. They began to explain to me that when I got on the phone, my voice changed. I sounded like another person to them. I genuinely never noticed a change in my voice when speaking to my family compared to speaking with my friends. That conversation stuck with me as I tried to understand why that happened to me. That is when I began to pay more attention to my family and myself when we spoke. I realized that when my mom would get on the phone with someone she did not know or a coworker, her voice would change just as my friends said mine did. A lot of my family members did that as I watched. I realized that only when I was with my family, I would speak one way. However, the moment I am in a space with new people, my voice will change all by itself without me realizing. Then everything started to increase as I got older. My mom would be more strict on the way I spoke at home. She wanted me to speak “properly” and sound educated. She would correct my Caribbean accented words whenever she had a chance.
“But she tell meh dat!” I said to my mother mid-conversation one day.
“But she told me that,” she corrected me. “But mom, you know we have an
accent. I don’t speak like that outside,” I would respond.
I realized my voice would sound more like the way white people spoke in movies: proper, elegant and clear. She wanted me to fit in with white society to get ahead in life. Codeswitching. That’s when I watched how people in the world would judge the way people speak. I constantly see the looks on people's faces when I pronounce the number three as “tree.” They would laugh, mock me and correct me.
We all have different dialects when we speak. We all pronounce words differently and sound different. Natalie Zarrelli, a writer, explains that there is no proper way of speaking English in her article “Why There’s No ‘Right’ Way to Speak English.” Zarrelli informs us that “there are estimated to be two billion people speaking dozens of varieties of English in the world, a number far beyond the estimated 340 million native English speakers.” Yet society has structured us to believe that there is one way of speaking proper English. That proper English is what we see former presidents, famous actors and professors use. When we hear rappers talk with slang, most are automatically seen as uneducated.
Like writer Chimamanda Adichie’s “The danger of a single story,” we are shown
a single story of what an educated person would sound like in life. Adichie explains
how easy it is for an individual to develop limited knowledge on a topic, creating a
lack of understanding of the full topic. To create a single story is to “show a people
as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they
become” (Adichie 9:17). This can lead to stereotyping in societies. My mom saw
how society treated people who spoke in a certain way. She knew that society saw
people who could not speak “proper English” as inferior and made sure that I fit
what an “educated person” would sound like in our society.
I'm not mad at her for teaching me “proper English.” I see how privileged you are when you speak “proper English.” I do feel sad, however, that part of me is hidden. It is very rare that someone guesses on the first try that I am Caribbean. I am always mistaken to be from a Spanish speaking country. I feel like my accent is almost like me taking pride in my roots. As a light skin girl, I tend to think I am not dark enough to be considered or thought of as a Black young woman. With my accent being concealed, I feel more distant or less worthy of the title Caribbean girl or Black girl.
I have friends who love to hear my accent and think it is cool. It makes me unique and different from others. Some people ask me why I don’t speak like that all the time. I would love to be able to switch to my Caribbean accent in public just as easily as I unconsciously switch to a “proper English” accent. I wish I could, however, I feel as though I can't. Trying to switch purposely makes me feel like it is not fully authentic. Somehow being aware of the change makes it hard for me to be in control of it. It is as if I am forcing or pretending to speak differently since I have grown used to unconsciously speaking a certain way in front of certain people. I feel like people can see through me, thinking that I may be trying too hard to sound a certain way.
My voice belongs to whoever I am speaking to at that moment. I don’t think about it, I just adjust unconsciously and accordingly everyday. It took me a while to realize that society was changing me, making me different. We don’t tend to realize how big of an impact society can have on our lives. One moment I think I am being authentically me, while another I feel almost like a fraud. It has me rethinking who I really am and what else has society influenced me to do or not do. But I try to take it one step at a time and remind myself that I am not the only one who may feel this way. Hopefully we can create an environment for the younger generation to grow up embracing their accents to normalize the fact that just like we all look different, we sound different as well.
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