Dhugal Gardner CP 9

Last Thursday I met up with Abdullah in the CIES lounge after his clases. I don’t remember much of what we talked about before Mayowa joined us with his partner Hamad. Even then, I must admit I took the backseat in this conversation, which is not to say I didn’t take part, I just did not lead it. Fine by me. Mayowa brought up something about practicing Arabic, which got us going on a tangent about accents. Apparently there are tons of accents throughout the Middle East, and some are looked down on. Indeed, it is often hard to ignore the implications of a strong accent; if a man with a strong Louisiana accent said the exact same thing as the British prime minister, the latter would be taken seriously whereas the former would be overlooked as a country bumpkin. That is why Morgan Freeman is chosen to narrate documentaries, we respect his voice.

            We talked about some accents here in the United States. I said that sometimes I have a hard time understanding poorer African Americans. Hamad told us he went to Georgia and had a terrible time understanding the people up there. It is amazing how much speech can vary within the same language. My mother (she has an English accent) tried to ask for straws through a drive-through once here in the south, and it took her several tries; she was finally understood when she pronounced it as ‘strah’. Though it seems like speakers of the same language are naturally equipped with the ability to decipher all accents, this is not always the case. This should be an indication of how hard it must be for a learner of English to acclimate to different accents.