Accented

Years ago we watched a movie called “Looking for Eric”. The titular Eric was Eric Cantona, a colorful French footballer perhaps best known for his time playing for the English club Manchester United. The movie was set in Manchester and the characters were working-class Mancunians. The movie was in the English language, but the accents were so strong we had to watch the movie with English subtitles to understand what the characters were saying.

At ARI the lingua franca is English, but sometimes we wish it too came with English subtitles. The participants come from 19 countries in Asia and Africa. Add in the staff and volunteers and there are at least 22 countries represented. Look at the picture below and at the top of this blog to see the variety of faces.

Most of the people here speak English as a second (or third or fourth) language. And for the most part their English is pretty good. But, oh, the accents…. We think of the many places we have been were English is not the primary language, and we know that usually after a while we are able to home in on the accent of the place and better understand their accented English. We probably could even pick up the accent in Manchester, give enough time.

The issue here is the variety of accents, and often strong ones at that. One moment someone is speaking with a Zambian accent, the next a Japanese accent, then an Indian accent. And because the participants often come from countries with different ethnic groups with different native languages, the accents may differ even within a country. It is actually tiring to have to work so hard to understand what is being said all day. Especially in the early days we would listen to someone make an announcement and we would say to each another, “I have no idea what they just said.”

We asked some of the participants if they had trouble understanding each other when they first arrived, and they emphatically said they did. But they have gotten used to the diverse accents, and we are getting better too. Still, there are a few people we may never fully understand.