Those International Accents

Now, a word about the accents.

By "the accents," I mean the British accents, the German accents, the South African accents, the Australian accents... and I'm sure many more. Far before I came to the UK, I knew these accents would trip me up, that I would misunderstand and entirely miss parts of a conversation, that I would need to ask for repetition.

And all of those things have happened. Lipreading different accents continues to be incredibly difficult. The various phonemes of an English word, so clearly decipherable on paper, twist and hide from me on different people's lips. I feel my brow furrowing to concentrate. I burrow deeper and deeper into someone's face, only to find that his or her words elude me at the last -- projected from somewhere in the mouth, the throat, the mind, that I cannot quite grasp. Here and there beacons of light surface, small words, small revelations that help me piece together the puzzle, even if I'm more often left with those stray pieces more than I am a complete picture. In this accent, "e" is smaller, more fleeting. Or, in this accent, "r" is broader across the face, more hidden inside the throat, different in its intonation. Or, going farther yet, in this accent, the words are generally more crisp, or generally more elongated, or slurred, or something that makes them look like text italicized, set in different fonts, the same words but with a vastly different typeface -- a vastly different worldview, if you will.

Slowly, I find myself getting better. If I speak to a single person more than once, his or her accent imprints its texture on my memory. I return to it later, to find its contours getting more and more familiar, if still not easily navigable. This is the best of scenarios, however, and many people I've only spoken to once so far, or maybe a handful of times. The standard British accent is getting easier, especially compared to the last time I studied in the UK, but then again there are so many variations of the British/Irish/Scottish accent. Each new one plunges me in anew, requires me to start over. And then these international accents. As I think I've mentioned on this blog before, never have I met so many people from so many countries within such a short period of time. It's fascinating, but at the same time exhausting. More than once have I felt as if I possess a sole, single, rather small battering ram, and am using it to attempt to break through a many-sided, at times impermeable fortress.

Someone turns to me and says something; her accent moves across her lips, so that her words are slightly but still only scarcely recognizable to me as English. I take a deep breath, humble myself (yet again), and say, "I'm sorry, I'm reading your lips right now, could you say that again?" The person reels, sometimes looks panicked, sometimes yammers on just like before, other times considers and slows down and enunciates a little more. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes I get stuck asking, could you repeat, could you repeat, I'm sorry could you repeat, over and over again. At last I grasp some thread of meaning, even if it is incomplete; this is the best I'm going to get. Then I run with it, attempting to hold it high, this meager scrap of a flag laughably substituting for a full-streaming banner, and try to make conversation. Or I get the sense that my new companion and I are at cross-purposes, that I'm talking to her about ABC and she's talking to me about XYZ. So many avenues of possible conversation, here, that we are not taking. That we are perhaps incapable of taking, unless we write it down or unless I beckon someone to my rescue.

And this, at the end of the day, is why I return to writing. The individual whose accent was so impossibly vaporous becomes starkly intelligible when I send an email, or follow up with a text message, or something like that. It is astonishing, the clarity of the written word on the page (or screen). Once they know my situation, I have found that many people here are sympathetic. They do attempt to shape their words more carefully. They do attempt to slow down. They do attempt to use improvised sign language. All of these things help, and I so appreciate them. Still, the sight of an American face, an American way of speaking, sends cool waves of relief washing through my soul. (This is not to say that all Americans are easy. They aren't. But many of them are.)

At times I find myself wondering, what am I to do with myself, if my friendships and close relationships are thus shaped by whom I can understand and whom I can't? This is a conundrum I have not yet solved, and it continues to grate at me. I put the issue aside for the moment, though, and walk back out into the day, into whatever accents I might encounter. All I can do is try again. And try and try, in faith that comprehension and language and mutual exchange are all possible.

Already, though, I've learned so much from so many of my peers. Accents or no, I know that they -- that people in general -- are worth the effort. More strategies upcoming.