It’s Always About the Accent

I had four accents from my childhood moves around the world. I now switch among them unconsciously.

Down at the creek, Queensland, Australia. Author, left, with brother and cousin. Photo from author’s collection.

A Kiwi friend of my mother’s popped by for tea one day a few months after our arrival in Australia from New Zealand. Over the drone of cicadas in the stifling January heat, I said something about going swimming in “the pool,” which in Aussie-speak sounds something akin to “pewl.”

Mary chortled like a bloody kookaburra. “She’s picked up the accent already,” she said, as if I weren’t sitting in front of her. Mum laughed right along.

What was so funny? Why was it wrong? Twisting with embarrassment, my seven-year-old self dropped into silence. The seed of an insecurity over how I spoke was sown. It would grow into twisted tree of lifelong angst.

For most people, accents are like passports and birthplaces. They present a simple, immediate and immutable story of who we are, a one-stop shop of identity. But for people like me, who grew up in numerous countries, the narrative — and the accent — is a lot more complicated.

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I’ve actually had four accents in English. My first was British. I learnt to talk when we lived outside London and then moved to Nigeria. It also helped that my mother was English. When we moved to New Zealand, where Dad was from, I adopted the Kiwi accent…