Nick noticed it with some dinner guests last week, but it became official this evening: I’ve become accentless.
I don’t mean that I speak French without an identifiable accent–God, no. What I’ve lost is any hint of an accent in English.
It’s not like I had far to go, really. People from my area of Connecticut sound just like the people in national commercials, unless those people are supposed to sound like they’re from somewhere else. We speak the non-region-specific English that newscasters practice when they’re hoping to make it big. As a Texan told a high-school friend of mine in his enviably booming drawl when the subject of accents came up: “Son, you lack one.”
My friend was crushed.
I got a couple of “Are you Spanish?“-es right when we first moved, but most French people guess that I’m British. A lot of that is the convenient geography, but some is that, as my former vet explained, “You don’t talk like this.” He did that in a bizarrely French version of my friend’s Texan’s enviably booming drawl, naturally. Apparently without a patented twang or a pinched Quebecois note as a clue, all us English-speakers sound alike…in French.
A couple of hours ago, though, I just had the pleasure of speaking with a Frenchman who has spent the last few years in, by a stroke of good luck, my old corner of Connecticut. “Where are you calling from?” he asked absently while arranging his coworker’s notes on the first half of my call.
“France.”
“Really?” He sounded like he honestly thought I might be lying. “You don’t sound French.”
“I think you might be,” I pointed out reasonably. “But I’m from Connecticut.”
“Oh.” He didn’t sound any more convinced. “But you don’t sound American, either. You don’t….” He trailed off, but I got it.
I don’t sound like anything anymore.
I’ve spent about four years giving Nick a hard time about the way that he speaks to non-native-English-speakers in English. There’s this lilt to his voice, and his syntax gets all rearranged, and there’s even the hint of some unnameable accent. It doesn’t seem to matter where his conversation partner is from, although I’m sure there are subtle differences.
I’m sure of this because I no longer believe it’s an intentional effort on his part to make his English as unthreateningly un-English-sounding as possible…because apparently I’m doing it now, too. Something about my articulation changes; I switch around the order of things. I almost never hear myself doing it, but if Nick is my example then I must get closer and closer to the way a French-speaker speaks fluent English. It makes sense if you think about it: conversation works the best when both people have the same accent, and I have more flexibility in my first language than they do in their second or third.
But habit is habit, right? I feel off lately with native English-speakers, especially with strangers or even just people I don’t talk with often. My words come too fast, and I feel like I’m walking on a verbal tightrope, swaying back and forth too violently to stick to any kind of plan. I was relieved when the young woman this evening passed the phone to her French boss, just like I was frustrated yesterday when heavily-accented Kumar on my bank’s main tech-support line passed me off to Wendy the [Northeastern American] Premier Rep.
“It happens,” the displaced Frenchman assured me. “I tried to give my parents my phone number, and I couldn’t say it in French. And my friends say I even sound different sometimes.”
Sounds about normal to me…apparently.