English being the number 1 language of the United States is viewed as a fairly easy language to comprehend and pronunciate. Compared to Arabic or Amharic English is a pretty basic language but for foreigners and immigrants their difficulties with language stretch beyond that. For a immigrant living in America isn’t as easy as natives speaking their natural born tongue. A different accent or tone in voice makes day to day communication more challenging . It can make things such as ordering over the phone and getting a job much more difficult than others who can speak that language. Accent discrimination relates to unfair treatment between people when someone might be prejudice towards the quality of another person’s voice. You would think that it’s not that much of a struggle, but the problems that come with having an accent are more than you might think. Foreigners and immigrants not only battle a language barrier, but also an accent barrier as well.
Joseph
Throughout my life I constantly would witness accent problems continuously creating barriers within my family. My parents are immigrants from Ethiopia with thick Amharic accents. There would always be problems when they tried ordering food for us or tried doing anything else relating to speaking for us. It would lead to me and my siblings doing many things for them because of our ability to speak English fluently. Whenever I would help my parents with their tasks I would always notice how different I got treated than them. I would think they didn’t say the right thing or pronounced something wrong, but as I frequently started helping them I started seeing how prejudice people were to my parents due to their thick accent. One time my mom was trying to trade in a sweater she purchased in the store. I noticed she was on the phone for 30 minutes yelling at the guy if shes allowed to do so and the employee was giving her blunt responses that she couldn’t. I ended up calling the same store myself and asked to speak to the manager to see if you couldn’t trade a sweater for something else. As I talked to him I noticed how nice he was being towards me and answering my questions fully. In 5 minutes he was able to tell me what to do to trade in the item and told me to have a great day. I believe the reason people respond in a better way when hearing someone with the same natural accent as them is due to linguistic style. In the Power of talk article it describes linguistic style saying, “Everything that is said must be said in a certain way — in a certain tone of voice, at a certain rate of speed, and with a certain degree of loudness.”This leads me to believe that if they're just having small problems like trying to get a refund on cloth their accents must also hold them back from being successful. It makes me think of the difficulties my mom must’ve had at job interviews trying to communicate with the interviewer. Just due to the fact that English isn’t her native tongue. My mom and other foreigners have this struggle in their everyday lives, but is it possible there's more to this struggle than we think ?
I believe there is fine line between accent discrimination and racism. Language is not supposed to be seen as something related to race, but typically when hearing someone's accent you get an instant picture of what they might look like. It's easy for people to hear a foreign accent and stir negative stereotypes in the mix, This is when accent discrimination can quickly turn into racism/social injustice. For example, when hearing a british accent you think of a white man from england and when hearing an african accent you think black man from africa. Some people might say racism has nothing to do with accent discrimination because picturing how someone looks is more of an instinct than a stereotype, but when that picture of a person is used to judge them that's when it turns to racism/social injustice.
Sujata Bhatt in her poem Search for my mother tongue says, [What] would you do/ if you had two tongues in your mouth/and lost the first one, the mother tongue, and could not really know the other, the foreign tongue. You could not use them both even if you thought that way. And if you lived in a place where you had to speak a foreign tongue, your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth until you had to spit it out.” What this says to me is when your able to speak 2 languages the mother tongue is always going to be your primary language and you’ll always have trouble with the foreign tongue. And as you continuously use that tongue your mother tongue starts to slip away from you. I agree with Bhatt 100 percent because I see difficulties in my parents ability to speak amharic due to them having to speak english more, but they will always have an accent when using english. This makes it overall more challenging for foreigners and immigrants in America.
Hugo
Foreign people struggle speaking native americans language which is the language of standard english. For example, when some Immigrants try speaking English you could hear an accent or sometimes they can’t pronounce words correctly but they are still understandable. My parents are both from Mexico and they both struggle and have accents when it comes to speaking American standard English. I’ve witnessed accent discrimination firsthand within my family many times.
For instance, My father is a foerginmen at Colorado Structural repair. Being a foreginmen means you’re the leader of the work group and the leader is the one that usually speaks to the clients if they have any questions. My dad doesn’t speak standard English in fact some might say he speaks “Broken English” or others can call it “Spanglish”. He also has a Mexican accent that you could distinguish right as he starts speaking English. As we are at the job site doing our work, clients like to watch what we do and sometimes ask questions. My dad is the one who answers the clients questions. Oftentimes when my father is talking you could notice confusion in the customers face because they can’t understand him. Some clients don’t respect him and see him differently because of it. There are also times were the boss or the engineer have to go to the job site and give an understandable answer.
In Amy Tan’s reading,“Mother Tongue”, she writes, “Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as ‘broken’ or fractured’ English. But I wince when I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “Broken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness or soundness.” Amy Tan is describing how she had a certain language that she grew up with and only they would understand. But, If other people heard them they would describe their mother tongue as “Broken English”.
Accent discrimination plays a big roll in the lives of immigrants and foreigners whose first language was not standard English. English being America’s primary language, foreigners have to learn and understand this language in-order to live discrimination-free. If they don’t they face many challenges that have to do with speaking. Instead of discriminating people with accents we should be viewing them equally and even amazing because of their bilingualism.The struggle foreigners go through everyday cause more challenges in their lives and impact the opportunities they can get because of it.
